A Bust

Like a beautiful painting without warmth . . . the figure without a bosom. But put the flat-chested woman in the proper foundation . . . giving the illusion of soft, sweet curves. . . .--From an ad by Manhattan's swank Bonwit Teller.

If busts are back, can bustles be far behind? But busts are not all the way back, for "Dr." Jean Paul Fernel has failed again. Mincing, dapper, wax-mustached Jean Paul Fernel has thrice lost his doctor's license since he graduated from the University of Illinois College of Medicine in 1911. Last week the Food & Drug Administration got him convicted in Chicago District Court. On trial with "Dr." Fernel was Fernel's "Breasts of Youth," a brand of capsules which he peddled (at $5 for a month's supply) through ads in Beauty and Health News, a "bimonthly" that came out whenever he got around to it. Sample quote: "A lovely breast is like a melody. . . . Woman's happiness, popularity and success are largely due to the beauty of her breasts." The U.S. District Attorney charged that "the product was misrepresented in that the name suggested it was efficacious to cure underdeveloped, atrophied, flabby and pendulous breasts and . . . to develop the firm, well-developed breasts of youth." An abashed user of the capsules, Mrs. Lucille Frances Hinton Moody, 42, bravely testified that she had always been "thin and never fully developed," had taken one package of capsules with no perceptible result. She began on another package just to give Breasts of Youth a break. Somewhere in package No. 2 she got disgusted, turned the stuff over to a Food & Drug inspector.

The Court found that Breasts of Youth contained some moisture, common salt, magnesium and an unidentified ovarian substance. Dr. Willard O. Thompson, associate professor of medicine at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, testified: "No food I know of will act on the breasts alone or develop them."

After more testimony on five other Fernel nostrums (among them: Fernel's Nerve and Brain Food, which Northwestern's Professor A. J. Carlson said "would have no more effect than a fly speck on the Wrigley Building," the Court found the defendant guilty on seven counts, sentenced him to a $500 fine and a year in prison on each count, to be served concurrently. For Jean Paul Fernel, who once skipped bail in Detroit when charged with having his patients' clothes frisked while he gave them medical examinations, this was his first conviction.

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