Ridicule v. Vice

"Publicity is the cheapest thing a doctor can pursue. But when it serves a purpose, you've got to do it. Make any vice look ridiculous, and it won't flourish much longer.'' So says Northwestern University's Professor Laurence Hampson Mayers, who addressed members of the American Society for the Study of Arthritis at their meeting in Manhattan last week. Publicity was not long coming his way when he waved a fat roll of typed paper at the arthritis specialists. The roll, said he, was 31 ft. long. All that yardage was needed to list the patent medicines sold over U. S. drugstore counters for the cure of arthritis. They included analgesics like aspirin, local balms like antiphlogistine, blood builders like ferric ammonium citrate. Some of their names: Joyzone Pain Analgesic, Clear Water Joint Ease, Rising Mist, Wizard Balm, U-Rub-It, Rivet Cold Breaker, Pain Knocker, Oil-O-Youth, Root-Tea-Na-Salve, Ru-Ma-Ku-Rae.

"If an arthritic hobbled into a drugstore and asked the clerk what he had for arthritis," said Professor Mayers, "the clerk could keep him standing there talking continuously for three days, two nights, seven hours and twenty minutes, and he could devote only one minute to each drug, telling the arthritic how and when to use it." According to Northwestern's Mayers, the ludicrous abundance of ethical, proprietary or quack liniments also sold in drugstores to arthritics "is of no greater therapeutic value than would be a hot, wet towel to the afflicted joint." In contrast, conscientious doctors have some three dozen different drugs, four liniments to treat one of the three most stubborn, chronic U. S. diseases.

Drugs taken by mouth for arthritis are somewhat more efficacious because some of them allay pain, but none "is a cure for arthritis because there are a thousand causes of the disease and each cause requires separate treatment." Continuing his efforts to make vice look ridiculous, Dr. Mayers declared that "of 100 cases of sickness 80 will recover naturally; eight will die in any event, and only in twelve cases can the doctor be of any assistance." He made not a few practitioners in the audience look ridiculous when he concluded: "There is plenty of arthritis that is cured. How much of a part even the doctors play in it is questionable."

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