-




An Interview with Morris Fishbein, M.D.
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        This is the transcript of an interview with Morris Fishbein,

    M.D., held at his apartment in Chicago, Illinois, on March 12,

    1968.   Dr. Fishbein received his B.S. degree from the University

    of Chicago in 1910, his M.D. degree from Rush Medical College in

    1912, and almost iomediately thereafter began his distinguished

    career as medical editor.      He served the American Medical Associa­

    tion as editor both of its Journal, from 1913 to 1949, and of its

    popular health magazine, Hygeia, from 1924 to 1949.      Among current

    editorships held by Dr. Fishbein are those of Medical WQrld News

    and World-Wide Abstracts of General Medicine.

        In late 1969 Dr. Fishbein's fuller reflections on his career

    were published by Doubleday as Morris Fishbein, M.D.; !!!. Auto­

    biography.

        Charles   o.   Jackson, the interviewer, now at the University of

    Tennessee, received his Ph.D. degree in history from Emory Univer­

    sity in 1967, writing a dissertation on "Food and Drug Law Reform

    in the New Deal."      In revised form the dissertation was scheduled

    for publication during 1970 by Princeton University Press.




I
Mr. J.:
I wonder if we might maybe begin by getting you to tell me a

little bit about how you became associated with the AMA.



Dr. F.:

I graduated in medicine from Rush Medical College in 1912.

Previously to that, I became Assistant to Professor Ludwig

Hektoen in 1910.   I did many post mortem examinations, research

projects, published five research papers and then I helped build

and was first resident in the Durand Hospital for Infectious

Diseases for about eighteen months.   After that period en4ed, I

had planned to accept a first assistantship for Dr. Isaac Abt

who was Professor of Pediatrics in Northwestern.     I had also been

offered the position of State Pathologist in Wisconsin.    Just

about that time, the assistant to the editor of the Journal of the

American Medical Association died in ten days of leukemia.     His

name was Hyde, E. E. Hyde.   The editor was Dr. George H. Simmons.

I had begun writing editorials under the auspices of Dr. Ludwig

Hektoen early in 1910.   I had helped him edit the collective works

of Christian Fenger and I had written some papers.    Suddenly one

day Dr. Frank Billings,_whose picture is over there, and Dr. Hektoen,

also over there, walked into my office where I was doing my research

in McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases, and they said to me,
---
                                                                                2




      "We'd like you to do us a favor."      And I said, "What's that?"

      They said, "We'd like you to go over and see Dr. George H. Sinmons

      to see if you can help him out.      His first assistant just died and

      we think you're just the man for the job."      That was in late August

      of 1913.     I went over at once to see him and after some conferences

      he suggested to me that I was just the man that he wanted for the

      position.     There were several qualifications that he raised about

      which we had some discussion.      Incidently, I'm printing all the de­

      tails of that in my autobiography.      Finally he said, "Well, I'd

      like to have you come and work for us."      I said I could and we

      came to a sort of an agreement.      He said, "When could you come?"

      And I said, "Next Monday"--four days later.      I went there with the

      understanding that I would help him out for three months.      After

      three months, he said that he hadn't been able to get anybody and

      would I stay another three months.      I said, "That depends on whether

      my other appointment, Dr. Abt, would release me."      Dr. Billings

      called Dr. Abt.     Billings was the most powerful man in medicine in

      this area at that time.     Dr. Abt consented to another three months

      after which Dr. Simmons then came up and said, "Well, I have found

      nobody and would you please stay?"      I said, "Well, Dr. Abt can't

      let me go indefinitely."     Finally, however, he made me an offer to

      stay for another year with a progressive increase in importance and

      salary.     And I stayed.   I stayed thirty-seven years.
                                                                           3




Mr. J.:
You mentioned Dr. Simmons.     I've read a little about him.    What

kind of person was he?



Dr. F.:

He was a man who came from England when he was in his youth.        Went

to the University of Nebraska, and he helped with the newspapers in

Lincoln, Nebraska.     When he graduated from Lincoln, Nebraska, he

decided he wanted to study medicine, and he came to Chicago and

studied in Hahnemann Medical College which was a short course and

he graduated from that.     Later, he came back and took some additional

lectures at Rush Medical College and got a Rush Medical diploma,

but just a conferred diploma.     By that time, however, he was a

great organizer.     He became editor and general secretary of the

Western Surgical Association, published their magazine.        In that

organization, he came close to several men who were trustees of

the American Medical Association, namely, Priestley and among

others, the Eastmans of Indianapolis, Indiana.     He got to know all

of them in the Western Surgical Association.     So when the time came

about 1899 to select an editor for the Journal   2f   the American Medi­

cal Association because John B. Hamilton had died, there were four

applicants for the position, one of whom was Simmons.     Simmons had

the backing of this group from the Western Surgical Association and

was chosen.   The people who opposed him were G. Frank Lydston,

Bayard Holmes, and Ludwig Hektoen.    Hektoen was probably better
~




                                                                             4




    qualified but didn't have that surgical backing.     The Eastmans

    supported Simmons.     Bayard Holmes was a neuropsychiatrist at the

    cook County Hospital, a quite capable writer but not really an

    editor.   G. Frank Lydston became a permanent enemy of Dr. Simmons

    and fought him bitterly for the rest of his life in every possible

    way on account of having been passed by.     I discovered when I be­

    gan to work with Dr. Sinmons that he was a great organizer and a

    great editor but he couldn't write.     He simply was not a writer.

    And I don't think he ever did write anything himself that was

    worth printing.



    Mr. J.:

    Did you think of him as an aggressive editor for the Journal?



    Dr. F.:

    He was an aggressive man and he had the support of many men and

    he was willing to take good advice.    Now he was sixty-four years

    old when I came there and he stayed another eleven years.     He re­

    tired when he was seventy-five and I was his first assistant for

    eleven years.     During the last five years of his life, he developed

    diverticulitis; he developed herpes zoster, and he was a sick man.

    Frankly, I carried the editorial work pretty well.• The organiza­

    tional work, I didn't really get into until later.
                                                                         5




Mr. J.:
I wondered if you had carried this.



Dr. F.:
I carried the editorial work principally for those last five years

from the time he was seventy until seventy-five.



Mr. J.:
There was something that I ran across in research and actually I

have forgotten where I ran across it right now, but during the

Wilson Administration, there was an effort by the AMA to get Wilson,

I believe, to set up a committee to look into the business of patent

medicines.   Do   you have any recollections of this?



Dr. F.:
No recollection at all.     But no matter whether they did or did not,

you will remember that Wilson was so heavily involved with the War that

all other matters were temporarily suspended.     The same thing happened

with World War II.     There were a half dozen vital public projects in

the air when World War II finally struck us and they just passed from

that time on.     Now that's going on right now again.   Viet Nam now,

as you can see, is superceding all other, many other important social

things and domestic problems which are just simply in abeyance.
                                                                      6




Mr. J.:
I assumed that this might have been what happened.



Dr. F.:
1 have no recollection that that came up at all.     There might well

have been such concern.    The first War began in Europe in 1914.         We

came in in 1916.   We were out in '18.    In that period, Simmons was

most of the time in Washington.     I was both in Chicago and away.        I

was ordered to service even before we got into the war because I had

a Reserve Corps appointment.    Later, I got a special message from

General Gorgas.    I was told to go back and use the Journal to re­

cruit and instruct doctors.    Sinmons couldn't stay there so I did

all of that during the war period.     I visited all the medical

officer training camps in the United States at Fort Riley and many

other places ••• carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania, and Fort Harrison

in Indiana and Fort Oglethorpe in Georgia.     I visited all the camps

and saw the men and I knew so many people already that in personnel

I had special abilities.     I'm quite sure that in the period 1916 to

1918 nothing much could have been done about patent medicines.

Wilson wasn't much good after 1918 because you may remember he had

that stroke.   In that book that has just been published about the

last years of Wilson you can see that his illness •••



Mr. J.:

When the Cheering Stopped.
                                                                       7




Dr. F.:
Yeah,~~ Cheering Stopped.            His illness took over from every­

thing.



Mr. J.:

I wonder if I could get you to talk a bit about your own anti­

quackery work in general.



Dr. F.:
When I came to the AMA, they had already established two agencies

that were functioning in that area.     One of them was the Council

on Pharmacy and Chemistry and the other was the so-called Propa­

ganda for Reform.    The Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry was largely

created in the period around 1905 through a lot of agitation, some

of it from Philadelphia from Professor Solis Cohen as the leader

and some of it from California where the Secretary of the California

State Medical Association was making quite an issue of it.     There

began to be agitation against the quack advertising in most of the

medical journals and particularly the State as well as the Journal

of the AMA.    Of course, that carried over into newspapers and maga­

zines.    It was widespread.   Bear in mind that radio had not yet

been invented nor television nor other means of communication.

When I arrived at the AMA I was introduced to Dr. Arthur Cramp and

he was the man responsible for doing the investigative work on

nostrums and quackery and preparing the first draft of the articles
p

                                                                              8




    after which they then came to me for editing.      After I had finished

    with them Dr. Simmons gave the final okay.     Once Cramp and I had

    finished, that was usually satisfactory.     He okayed them.   The

    first big suit was the Wine of Cardui in which I got involved.        I

    told that whole story in many places.     I think that what I created

    was unique in the way of a medical journalistic feat.      I received

    each day from the Court the transcript of the evidence, immediately

    condensed it and edited it and published it the next week in the

    Journal.    The medical profession was at all times aware of what was

    going on in the trial.     Fortunately, I knew personally all the

    doctors who testified in the trial.     We were involved in that one

    of our trustees, Dr. Oscar Dowling, who was the head of the Board

    of Health of the state of Louisiana, had gotten involved with the

    Wine of Cardui Company himself as a state controller of food and

    drug advertising.     He had gathered evidence which later was used

    in court.     Some pamphlets had been published.   My principal act

    in the Wine of Cardui editing article was to remove any representa­

    tions in the first draft against Patton's membership in the Method­

    ist Church.    This Patton died--the one that was the head of the

    Methodist Church South--the Court pointed out that if that had re­

    mained in the case the Court would have had to issue a judgment of

    libel per se because you could not bring in a man's religion as a

    part of the condemnation of him in relationship to selling the

    Wine of Cardui.     And the other side set up as a defence the fact

    that Patton was a firm believer in Methodism, etc., whereupon the
                                                                9




court made a definite statement to the effect that we were not try­

ing any man's religion.    We were trying this as strictly a business

proposition and that was it.     That was an astute statement which I

have quoted in my articles.



Mr. J •:

There are a couple of other people in particular that I am interested

in and I would like your impressions of them.     One is Harry Hoxsey.

What did you think of him?



Dr. F.:
I watched Harry Hoxsey only in the court.     I never met him personally.

I deliberately avoided a meeting personally with any man with whom

I was involved in an expose or in an article that I was writing

about him.   That kind of detective investigation was done by

trained experts in investigation and we employed the best frequently

in our cases.   Through our lawyers we employed investigators who

would fully investigate.     Hoxsey was a different type of charlatan

from alaost any other that I have known, and I have made some com­

parisons between the different charlatans.     Now, charlatans, in

general, possess astounding impudence.     They think they can get

away with anything.   After a while, they have so much money that

they actually do get away with a great deal.     Hoxs:ey was not the

showman that Brinkley was.     Brinkley was a superb showman.   He had

ways of demonstrating his showmanship, not through himself but
                                                                           10




through his possessions:     three yachts.     He had delusions of

grandeur at all times.     He only traveled as the very best.     You've

seen the description of Brinkley's home down in Del Rio, Texas.

Hoxsey was a shrewd manipulator.       He is the kind of man, he's still

living, I believe, who manipulates and who is shrewd and who uses

people.     Brinkley did not use people.     He bought them when they

could be bought.     They were cheap people and he bought them but

Hoxsey used people.     Hoxsey used politicians, even judges.    He

used whomever he could use.       He used osteopaths on a tremendous

scale.     Strangely, on the day of the final address of the court to

the jury and the instructions and the lawyers appearing before the

jury, into the courtroom came six nurses in white costumes with the

name "Hoxsey" across the heart; in came five osteopaths in white

coats.     Seats had been reserved for them to sit and look at the

jury.     This is using people!   My wife was sitting in the back of

the court.     One of these nurses turned to her and said, "Isn't he

a wonderful man?", pointing to Hoxsey.       "Just to think that he

should be persecuted like this."      They were sold on him, obviously.

Of course, to sell patients on cures is not difficult.       Albert Abrams-­

among the greatest charlatans of all time, Albert Abrams, Brinkley,

Hoxsey.    Then you drop down to Norman Baker, who was really a small­

time circus operator and salesman and then the nearest thing to them

is perhaps, of the older days, Professor Samuels who used to take

tap water and put in some sal.t and sell it for $5.00 a bottle to cure

tuberculosis.     You anointed yourself on each breast and the navel;
                                                                       11




you made the Sign of the Cross.       You only used five drops at a

time for tuberculosis.       We exposed him.   He made millions of dollars.

He used to come to Chicago before automobiles and had a tremendous

carriage with black horses.       There was Snake Oil Cooper even before

that.     He   used to have a long, frock coat with five-dollar gold

pieces for buttons, and he used to ride a carriage around the monu­

ment in Indianapolis.      He had a big bag with nickels, dimes and

quarters and he threw out handfuls and hundreds of kids fought

for that money in the streets.



Mr. J.:

That's just amazing.      One other thing about Hoxsey and this I'm

sure would have to be an impression.




There was currently a rumor that he had a friendship with the local

judge who tried the case.      They played poker together once a week

for a long time.      The judge possibly should have disqualified him­

self.     Certainly, during the trial, Mrs. Hoxsey came into the court.

One time, Mrs. Hoxsey went up to the bench and shook hands with the

judge and kissed the judge.      For a man who has some respect for

courts, this is unbelievable.      But I saw it myself.



Mr. J.:

Do you have any sense that this man Hoxsey really believed in what
                                                                12




he was doing?



Dr. F.:
No.   I'm quite sure he didn't.    He had been through so many previous

performances.     His father was a veterinary who discovered a caustic

paste that took wens off horses and when the father died, Hoxsey

inherited the formula.     He was sued for the formula by his brothers

and sisters who thought it had great value.     That's all in the story

of Hoxsey.    When he left home, as you no doubt know, he became

associated with Norman Baker.     He was employed by Norman Baker.       He

had been associated with Ozias, who was another cancer charlatan.

Hoxsey had been chased around from town to town because he was

practising.     He had never graduated from any kind of a medical

training, and each time that he got dropped out of one, he had

learned some techniques.     He had even tried to operate on a woman

even though be had no medical degree.     In the Norman Baker Sanitorium,

Norman Baker gave evidence and so did several patients that Hoxsey

had actually tried to operate.     I am quite sure that he was deliber­

ately a charlatan.     That's quite different from a misguided apostle

of false medical doctrine, such as Benjamin Rush, who was a great

physician, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, or E.       c.
Rosenow who bee.ame absolutely convinced that poliomylitis was caused

by something that came out in the tap water.     I gave a lecture at

Northwestern on fallacies of the medical profession.     One of the

first jobs offered to me by Dr. Hektoen was when he told me that
                                                                       13




we had a man in Chicago who was doing research in his own little

laboratory and that he believed--his name was Fenton B. Turk--

that the colon bacillus was the cause of all the complaints of

mankind.   He said he needs a young man with knowledge of bacteriol­

ogy and antibodies to help him.    You're just finishing up and if

you want to go over there and work with him a while, he will pay

you anything you ask.   I went over to see Fenton B. Turk and he

actually offered me $500 a month, which was, in those days of 1912

and '13, a tremendous sum to offer anybody.      When I came to the AMA

to be Simmons' assistant, he was only getting $5,000 a year as boss

of the whole works, the AMA.    I looked at all the work and then I

said, "I can't do this."   And he said, "Why?"    And I said, "Because

I think you 're all wrong and I wouldn't work with this for anything."

I just came back and Hektoen asked me, "What did you do?"       I said,

"I couldn't work with him."    He said, "Why not?"     I said, "He's

off on some wild notion; I don't want to spend    my   time doing that."

He said, "Well, I thought that's what you'd say."



Mr. J.:

Another individual that I wanted to mention to you, you brought up

a few minutes ago, was Albert Abrams.    How would you describe him?



Dr. F.:

Albert Abrams began, perhaps, with a misguided belief that he had
                                                                    14




developed something.     That was when he got into Spondylotherapy.

Spondylotherapy was a belief that all disease arose in the spine

through certain reflexes and that if you hit the spine with a

little hammer at just the right spot, those reflexes would be

switched.     He organized a Spondylotherapeutic Society, gave

courses, he established a journal, he sold the little hammers.

He was the whole works.    He did very well with that.     In the

medical dictionaries of that period, the word "Abrams' reflex"

appears.     The~ Journal published one of his articles describ-

ing this reflex.    That was before my time.     Later on Abrams must have

become cognizant of what had been done by the founder of chiroprac­

tic, not the original founder, but B. J. Palmer, in developing this

little machine that would show which vertebrae were out of place

in the spine.    Abrams definitely did hire an electrician to pre-

pare for him a machine which when properly connected up would

register and this was where they made the first oscillometer and

the oscilloclast and the biodynamometer.       The Scientific American

joined with us in making suudies, and Millikan, the famous Nobel

prize winner in physics, aaid that it was the kind of machine

that a ten-year~·old boy would build to fool an eight-year-old boy.

The current never went in or out; the whole thing is a weird tale,

fantastic.    By that time, I'm sure, Abrams knew he was a charlatan,

only he would have not have called it that.      He came here to Chicago,

and this I had by direct conversation, and there was a man here, an
                                                                   15




orthopedic surgeon, who became interested.        He thought maybe there

was something to this; he arranged to have Abrams to come to dinner

with him at the Blackstone Hotel.     I saw the man afterwards; we

talked about it.     After he told Abrams he was interested and he

thought he might go inte     this, Abrams finally said to him, "Well,

now, Doctor, you have a good position here practicing orthopedic

surgery with the Medical Society?"     He said, "Yes."     "Well", he
said "let this go.     Don't monkey with this."    Now a man who be­

lieves in something is not going to ward off a young man saying

"Don't bother with this".     The name of the young doctor was Maurice

Bemstein.    He was an orthopedic surgeon; he died about three years

ago in Los Aqgeles.    He was the godfather and eventually the

adopted father of Orson Welles.



Mr. J.:

You mentioned a few minutes ago Arthur Cramp.       Could you describe

him a little?



Dr. F.:

Yes.   When I came to the AMA I met Arthur Cramp and I was told

that he had been put in charge of the propaganda for reform and

that was this department for investigation of advertising of

nostrums and quackery.    Arthur Cramp had come from England and had

gotten a job at Waukeshaw, Wisconsin, as a sort of attending

physician at the watering resort.    He left that job when he found
                                                                      16




out the AMA needed a man.     He was given this job to head up this

department at $90 a month.     For a doctor in those days, I suppose

this was considered a salary.     Arthur was an Englishman and I think

that that may have had some sway with Dr. Simmons employing him.           I

actually think that that may have worked in his favor a little.        I

became much attached to Dr. Cramp as a friend.      He was a tall man,

close to six feet if not a little over, very thin, with an enormous

appetite.    He was one of those people who can eat six or eight

thousand calories a day and never put on a pound.      There are people

like that.   Just recently a report in England concerned three

people who were seriously studied in the laboratory at Middlesex

Hospital as to why these three people never gained although they

ate six to eight thousand calories a day.     Now, their dynamism in

some way eats that up ••• burns it up.   Well, Cramp loved good food.

He had no children.   He was married.    He liked to live outdoors and

be got himself a home in the dunes.      He was a typical walker, bird­

watcher, some of those English traits.      He wore a whisker which

well, I won't discuss that.     That's a whole subject to itself.

Whiskers, unfortunately, in those days, were to make people who

were not particularly prepossessing look old.     The first picture I

have of the Board of Trustees of the AMA, I think, all but one had

long whiskers.   Whiskers may have been the fashion for doctors in

those days, although in my class that graduated in Rush Medical Col­

lege in 1912, there was not one with whiskers.     Earlier, the whisker

was supposed to confer dignity.     Brinkley wore a little chin whisker,
                                                                     17




some of the othexsdid clear up to the time when they disappeared.

cramp could write incisively.     I think the nicest thing about

cramp was, and this may surprise you what I'm going to say now,

because it's principally my main reason also.       I think Cramp had

fun doing this and I had fun doing it.     People asked me "Why?"

"Why do you pursue the charlatans and expose the charlatans?"
My   common remark is:   "Some men hunt ducks.    I chase quacks."



Mr. J.:
I had heard a very interesting story about Cramp, that he kept a

copy of Alice in Wonderland on his desk and that he liked to read·

a chapter of this for inspiration before writing up a case.



Dr. F.:

Well, I like Alice in Wonderland and, of course, the fellow who

wrote Alice in Wonderland, that great mathematician, was a bril­

liant philosopher, a mathematician, and he wrote the book for fun

for his little daughter, and Alice in Wonderland can be read in a

great deal of enjoyment same as you would Don Quixote.       I just

saw the play last evening, "Man from Mantua".       It's terrific.

One line I liked very much in which Don Quixote described Sancho

Panza.    He said, "You are a little fat man overflowing with pro­

verbs."   A little whimsicality is not bad.      Cramp was not a teller

of anecdotes.    He couldn't tell a story well.    He was not a good

speaker, just a routine speaker.    Simmons was no'speaker at all.
                                                                         18




You don't necessarily have to be a great speaker to have the ability

to think and to express yourself reasonably well.



Mr. J.:

Somehow I had the impression of Cramp that he was a highly intel­

lectual individual who approached the business of quackery in a

very serious vein.



Dr. F.:

He did because it was his job.      But in addition to that, however,

let's consider ••• He certainly was not a lover of music.    He was

not a lover of art.     He did not read a great deal, and so these

are things you have to take into account when you call a man

"intellectual."     He was educated, well educated and he could

write and he wrote quite well.      On the other hand, I thin~like

all of us who have fun doing what we do, we might be carried away

occasionally by what Disraeli described as "intoxicated with the

exuberance of his own verbosity."      He was tempted to run away,

and so he had to have an editor at all times.      Simmons recognized

that.     I recognized that.   Now bear in mind also that as an in­

dividual, Cramp was never successfully replaced.      His successors-­

Halling and Field--were entirely different types from Cramp.         Field

is a lawyer who had gone into Food and Drugs; Halling was just a

novice journalist; he had been trained by Cramp.
.......

                                                                             19




          Mr. J.:

          You, I believe, encouraged Cramp a great deal, particularly through

          the vehicle of Hygeia.



          Dr. F.:

          I made him write more and I made him write several books.        I've

          always been a believer in getting good material, planning it in

          advance, creating a series, publishing as a book, and that's what

          I did with Cramp, right from the first.     His articles in Hygeia

          were created that way.     My series as I did for American Weekly,

          my series as I did for American Mercury appeared in books after­

          wards.    This is good assimilation and also serves to record

          your material.



          Mr. J.:

          What was the thinking in the launching of Hygeia?



          Dr. F.:

          About 1921 I made that trip up to Wisconsin, up to Escanaba, Michi­

          gan, to expose the case of a girl with the high fever.        At that time,

          I made the front pages of every newspaper in the United States.           It

          was a sensational case.     People everywhere knew about it and you

          could talk about it.     People got interested in medicine.     I began

          saying to my chief, Dr. Simmons, that we were not reaching the

          people with our articles on every aspect of medicine.     We were just
                                                                     20




simply not reaching the people.    We were reaching the doctors, but

we were not reaching the people.     I went to Simmons shortly after

and I said to Simmons that I had been asked by Henry Mencken to do

a series of articles for the American Mercury he was founding and

they were to be on the field of quackery.      Simmons said to me,

"Don't do it," and I said, "Why not?"      He said, "If you write

for the public it wil 1 kill you forever with the doc tors".    Now

that's an exact quote.    I-~_said, "Well, Doctor, I don't agree with

that."   We battled around about it, and I said, "I feel that I

ought to do it."   A little later the Council on Health and Public

Instruction, which was the particular council which no longer exists

in the AMA, headed by Frederick R. Greene, began urging that we

publish a popular magazine--to get to the people.      Greene, at that

time, suddenly resigned because he was somehow dissatisfied with

his future, and he joined John Dill Robertson, and they published

a popular magazine apparently with the desire to beat the AMA to

it.   It was not successful and blew up.    Then the matter came more

and more to a head.    Siumons was retired early in 1924.    By 1922

or 1923, this was coming to a head ••• that we must have a magazine

for the public.    Sim:nons still didn't like it.   The Board decided

that the head of the Council on Health and Public Instruction and

the chairman of that Council who was Victor Vaughan of Ann Arbor,

Michigan, should be given that responsibility; he was about to

retire on account of age.    He came down and took a job in the office

with the idea of organizing that kind of a magazine.      This man knew
,.....-
                                                                               21


          nothing about writing for the public, nothing about editing,

          nothing about journalism.       He had never been involved in any way,

          and it didn't take long before he decided that he was out of his

          area.     He didn't want to continue with it.    Then Dr. Billings

          suggested that    Dr.   John M. Dodson, who was the dean of Rush

          Medical College, who was also about to be retired, should take

          Greene's place on the Council on Health and Public Instruction

          and he should edit the magazine.      Well, honestly, he knew less

          about it than Vaughan.      He realized right away that they weren't

          getting anywhere.       By this time, however, I had already begun

          writing newspaper stories for North American Newspaper Alliance,

          and the first one appeared on the front page of every newspaper

          in the Alliance on a Sunday, in the New York Times, Chicago News,

          San Francisco Chronicle, across the country.      My articles began to

          appear in the American Mercury and someone on the Board suggested

          that maybe I could run the magazine.      So I became the editor of

          Hygeia.    First was Vaughan, then Dodson, then myself.     I named it

          Hygeia because I had studied the history of medicine and I knew

          about the daughters of Aesculapius, Hygeia and Sanita, and Will

          Brau who was the business manager had decided if I would tell him

          what it was all about, he would create a cover.      Well, that first

          cover was something horrible to see, but that was the one we used,

          nevertheless.     It had two Grecian pillars with Hygeia standing in

          the middle and it is really comical to look back at it today.         But

          the one novelty we had was mighty good.       In order to promote the
                                                                        22




magazine among the advertisers early, he had created a beautiful

statue, a Greek statue of Hygeia, and they were made in clay and

in bronze and distributed.     The name "Hygeia" went pretty wide

pretty fast.    Unfortunately, I think, they finally changed it

after I left in 1950 and changed it to Today's Health.      I was

present when they changed the name and they asked me what I thought

about it and I said, "Well, as long as I'm quitting, and you prefer

it, it's your problem."     Incidently, after 25 years with Hygeia,

it had achieved a large circulation and had made a profit over

the 25 years.    It was not an effort entirely without success.

It had achieved a tremendous impact and had a profit.      The public

wanted a magazine.     On the other hand, Bemar McFadden with his

bogus Physical Culture was running a 400,000 circulation and made

millions of dollars.     So that it wasn't the high ideals of the

magazine, the quality and all of that.      Eventually, a great part

of the success of Hygeia lay in a deal which I made with DeWitt

Wallace.   When I began working with DeWitt Wallace and I was doing

some articles for him I made an arrangement whereby they would pay

the cost of creating a fine article and then we would have the first

rights of publication without cost and they could copy it in the

Reader's Digest.     This is called "planting._.



Mr. J.:

Did Hygeia catch on pretty quickly in the '20s?
                                                                     23




Dr. F.:
It caught on sufficiently.   You see, it caught on, one way was that

we created the Women's Auxiliary about that time, and the Women's

Auxiliary took that over as a special project and circulated it

through all the different states.    We also made special arrangements

with the schools to use it in teaching Health and various medical

societies would pay to give it to every school in the community.

It had a rather rapid development.



Mr. J.:

You mentioned the American Mercury a few minutes ago and H. L.

Mencken.



Dr. F.:
There's Mr. Mencken up there on the right corner.   That was given

to me in 1921 and it says under it, "To the philological patholo­

gist, Morris Fishbein, from the pathological philologian, H. L.

Mencken."   I helped him also with his book on American language.



Mr. J.:

Oh, did you?   I didn't realize that.



Dr. F.:
Yes, several references in the index, etc.
                                                                    24



Mr. J.:

You worked with him on some articles on quackery?



Dr. F.:

Yes, that's what we decided to do in that series.     He had the

courage of his convictions, and we did articles on eclecticism,

chiropractic, osteopathy••• just went down the list you know.



Mr. J.:

Would you describe Mencken?



Dr. F.:
I was with him many times.     I have a chapter on him in   my   book,

because I developed part of my style through him and it served me

in great stead and, furthermore, he was a learned man but very in­

teresting personality.   He was the first to get the idea of the

newspaper health column in the Baltimore~ and they got a phy­

sician named Leonard Keene Hirschberger to head it.     His name was

carried on the column but Mencken wrote most of the columns out of

what Hirschberger told him.    Hirschberger handled the questions and

that column had a big play.    Mencken was always a little bit in­

terested in medicine because of his close relationships to the

faculty of Johns Hopkins.     I've been in his home for Friday night

beer and music party with Franklin Hazelhurst and Raymond Pearl

and many others that we associated with.     I was asked to come
                                                                     25




 in 1923 to the American Society of Newspaper Editors to make an

address which I did on the responsibility of the press in publishing

unfounded unscientific statements.    It was quite a story.    That's all

 in the book of mine.   Mencken was a man who, because of his peculiar,

highly satirical literary style, was widely read, I would say,

among what are connnonly called the literati••• the young writers of

that period ••• he was the patron saint.    All the men who came up

fast, men like Sinclair Lewis, Ben Hecht, Mart Cormack, many others

who appeared first in the American Mercury; later on, DeKruif got

close to Mencken.   They admired Mencken.     He used to send me let­

ters which would end with the phrase, "Let's shake up the animals."

Now that's a phrase that comes out of circus lingo•      The idea was

that when the crowds were not coming in~~oo well, the circus

people would go into the side show and poke up the lion and the

tiger and the hyena with bars and they would start shrieking and

then the people would rush in to see what it was all about.      From

the side show, they got them into the main show.     He said of me

once that I was "burning the shirttails of the quacks and making

them run for cover".    This was great journalism.    People like to

see that kind of a battle.    They like to read exposes.    People

used to ask me why I iept on publishing these and I would say,

'\lell, this is the sporting page of our magazine.   You've got to

have a sporting page where people read to see what's going on in

the contests."
                                                                        26




Mr. J •:
You mentioned of yourself and of Cramp in approaching the business of

quackery that this was fun.



Dr. F.:
If I didn't enjoy it, I wouldn't do it, frankly.        Neither would

Cramp.     I think Cramp got so that he really enjoyed it.     He would

come down chuckling and say, "Oh, you should see this one."           You

know, he had had fun putting it together.



Mr. J.:

Well, how about Mencken.     How did he approach it?



Dr. F.:
Mencken?    The same way!   He was having fun.    Almost everything he

wrote, he enjoyed.    He chuckled over it himself.      I mean, he

really enjoyed it.    Now Nathan was entirely different.     There was

a team that got along very well together.        But Mencken was reason­

ably good company because he was a good conversationalist.           Many of

the men whom I've known best in the literary field are also good

conversationalists:    Sinclair Lewis, Ben Hecht, Herman Mankwitz

who wrote "Citizen Kane."     He was a dear friend of mine and there

used to be arguments among the publishers in New York as to "who

was the best conversationalist?"     To be a good conversationalist,

one must have a quick mind, fluid flow of speech, and you've got to
                                                                 27




enjoy it.    If you don't enjoy it, you don't do it.



Mr. J.:

You do a marvelous job of anticipating questions that I wanted to

ask, incidentally.    You mentioned Paul De Kruif.     Would you describe

him a bit?



Dr. F.:

De Kruif is a remarkable character.       I've got a small chapter on

him in my book.     I'm afraid that DeKruif was a frustrated physician.

He had wanted to be a doctor and didn't quite make it and became

a bacteriologist.    He was a big, powerful, Dutchman who was im­

pressive by his size alone.     But he had a good intellect and he

also enjoyed investigations; he loved to write.      He had great fun

in his writing and, frankly, much of the material that he got

finally in the Digest, he enjoyed himself so much that he would

wander away from basic science.    What motivated him to do it?

Long before he ever got into that field, he wrote two books about

medical education and doctors.     He wrote a book called Our Medicine

Men.   He ran it as a series in a magazine and without his name on

it, published anonymously.    When the book was published, he sent

me a copy and in the front of the book he wrote, "To Morris, with

love, Paul."   Then I reviewed the book and figuratively just about

tore it to pieces in the Journal   AMA;   whereupon, about a week later,

I got another copy of the book in which it said, "Morris, go to hell,
                                                                   28




Paul."    He resented criticism; he resented anybody calling out

these things, and he got mad at Sinclair Lewis after they finished

Arrowsmith and never spoke to Sinclair Lewis again.     He was of that

temperament.    He was a facile writer and he was a magnificent man

to dramatize medical discovery.     His book, Microbe Hunters, caught

the imagination of the world.     He never again hit that peak.



Mr. J.:

You said a little bit about his type of writing; take, for example,

Microbe Hunters.    Did you regard this as good, scientific litera­

ture?



Dr. F.:

No, it's not scientific writing at all.     It's dramatization.   That's

entirely different from scientific exposition.     If you want to read

a true story of Pasteur, you read Paul Vallery-Radot 1 s Pasteur. If

you want to read the true story of Paul Ehrlich, there are several

good lives of Paul Ehrlich; there are good lives of Lister, good

lives of John Hunter.    For anybody that De Kruif ever discussed,

there are good biographies.     But the biographers stick closely to

facts.    Take Edward Jenner!   Nobody knows what Edward Jenner said

to that little girl who answered Edward Jenner when he said to

her••• the story was reported in various ways ••• "You are very pretty,

my child.    Beware of the smallpox."   And she said, "I shall not

have the smallpox because I have had cowpox."     Nobody knows exactly
                                                                           29




what she said or what he said.      We do know that he wrote a letter

then to John Hunter and he said, "I am thinking of seeing if you

could not take the cowpox and give it in inoculation and in that

way prevent smallpox."     Whereupon, John Hunter wrote back, "Don't

think.   Try."     In the light of history, Lady Montagul had already

brought back to England before that the inoculation against small­

pox with smallpox and the Turks had been practising that which she

had observed.     This was a step, naturally, to precede what Edward

Jenner did.      If you tell the true story, you put it in its se­

quence from the first thought.      I have just been trying to puzzle

out, and it 1 s in my book also, the true story of penicillin.       It's

not exactly known even to this minute.      I've got it in my book

just about as well-documented as you can get it because I knew

personally Fleming, Florey and Chain and I have picked up every­

thing they have contributed in this area.      I think I've got the

part that each played and how they played it in a true story.         My

whole point is that De Kruif was dealing with people who were, for

the most part, dead and he dramatized.     He gives you a picture of

Robert Koch looking through the microscope and saying "What are

these little wiggly things?"     This is dramatization.   In the

English edition of De Kruif's Microbe Hunters, he had to eliminate

three pages to avoid a suit for libel because there was a battle

between Bruce and Nabarrow as to certain discoveries which De Kruif

had dramatized in favor of the fellow he talked to who was Bruce, so

Nabarrow got sore about it.
                                                                         30




Mr. J.:

You met De Kruif when?



Dr. F.:

Oh, I've known DeKruif many, many years.   I persuaded Sinclair

Lewis to abandon the writing of a labor novel with Eugene Debs

as a protagonist and persuaded him to write a medical novel because

his father and his brother were both doctors, both graduates of my

college.   Lewis said to me, "I'll have to have somebody to pro­

vide me with background.   Will you go to Europe with me?"    I

said, "No, I can't drop my work at the AMA and go to Europe."

But I introduced him to De Kruif who was with us at the time and,

"De Kruif," I said, "now, he's not doing anything special.        He

can go with you."   But, of course, he was not a doctor; there­

fore, the article took the point of view of the basic science

experimenter who doesn't hesitate to inoculate 500 and not in­

oculate 500 other children in order to prove a point.



Mr. J.:

I ran across that particular episode in De Kruif's memoirs.       What

was Sinclair Lewis doing in Chicago at this time?



Dr. F.:

He had become my friend from the time when I wrote the first re­

views of Main Street before it appeared and was distributed.           The
                                                                 31




copy was sent to me by Harry Hansen for the Chicago Daily~

and I wrote a half-page review o f ~ Street.     Then I was asked

by Wilbur Cross to write a review of it for the Yale Review and

I wrote another review of it for the Journal AMA and that really

helped to put it pretty well on the map ••• a big starter, you see?

Sinclair Lewis then came down to Chicago and said he'd like to

see me.   He wanted to see the fellow who wrote these reviews.

That's when I first met him.   He was frequently my guest after

that and we were friends.   It's in a lot of detail in my auto­

biography there because it makes a good story.   It's in Mark

Schorer's book, Life of Sinclair Lewis, in condensed form.



Mr. J.:

I got the impression from De Kruif's memoirs that he thought you

and Sinclair Lewis were going to do this book.



Dr. F.:

I couldn't.   I couldn't leave my work and run away with Sinclair

Lewis.



Mr. J.:

He seemed somewhat concerned in the book as to whether he had

taken this venture away from you.
                                                                    32




Dr. F.:

His book is called I believe~ the Shore, Distant Shore, De Kruif's

memoirs.     It's a funny book, his memoirs, because by this time, he'd

become much annoyed with me also and he wouldn't mention my name in

the whole book.    He keeps on referring to me as the Prolocutor.



Mr. J.:

I noticed that.



Dr. F.:

This is a temperament of De Kruif.    He's very sick right now.

He's up in Holland, Michigan.



Mr. J.:

Let me go back to the matter of Arrowsmith just a minute.     De

Kruif talks about a meeting.     I wonder if you would go through

your recollections of this meeting between Sinclair Lewis and

De Kruif and yourself at the AMA.



Dr. F.:

All right.    It ties in with the quackery story to some extent.

A lot of the detail is superfluous.    I've read all the books about

Sinclair Lewis, his wife's book, Schorer's and his own letters.

He wrote a preface to the serial publication of Arrowsmith in The

Designer magazine which bears no semblance to truth whatever•••
                                                                           33




Lewis, himself ••• because he was told to write that kind of a

story.    His view is nothing like what De Kruif and I say.       I

was in my office at the AMA.        De Kruif arrived in the morning,

and he said he had been sent out by Hearst International Maza­

zine to do some true stories on the alcoholic nostrums ••• this

being Prohibition time ••• that he wanted to study these things and

do a story.    I 1 m sure the story was published, too.    I sent him

up to Cramp.    He went up to Cramp's department and Cramp showed

him all the information he had and he showed him all the samples

and De Kruif began sampling the samples.        He began sampling.     I

didn't take De Kruif to lunch.        I'm sure Cramp took him to lunch.

In the afternoon, Sinclair Lewis dropped by to see me, just as

a casual visitor, because we had been visiting together often.

He often came out to my house.        I've got many stories of big par­

ties.    He came to see me at the office and I talked to him a

little while and I said to him, "By the way, what are you doing

here?"   And he said, "I'm going out to see Eugene Debs."       And I

said, "Why?"   He said,   1
                              "Well, he's in the Elmhurst Sanitorium

and I am in mind to do a labor novel with Debs as the protagon­

ist."    He said, "I'm going out to see him."      I said, "That's

wonderful."    I said, "By the way, there's a man here visiting

from New York that you'd love to meet.       He's a very interesting

person and he '11 be down in a minute."       De Kru if came down and I

introduced De Kruif to Lewis.        I couldn't set aside all my editorial

work and gossip around.        I said to these fellows, "Why don't you
                                                                  34




come out to my apartment and we can have dinner out there and then

we can ••• "   Well, Lewis kept on saying he wanted to go out and see

Debs.   So they came out to my apartment.    When we got to the apart­

ment-(! drove them out in my car••• to my apartment) ••• my brother

was there ••• my wife was about to leave for Indianapolis, which is

our home town ••• my brother, Harold, was there, so he remembers

this well because it was a big excitement for him.       De Kruif got

sick from all this stuff and he went into the bathroom and lay

down with his head in the toilet and got rid of all this accumu­

lated mixture of herbs and alcoholics.      Then we suggested, sort

of talking about Debs and what Lewis was going to do:       "Why don't

we come out there with him?"     As long as my wife was leaving

anyway, I said, "All right, we'll go out there."       I said, "I'm

not going to drive that far.     It's a long way to go out there to

Elmhurst."     I said, "Why don't we drive out?"    So I called a cab •••

a Checker Cab came and we were going to drive to Elmhurst.       Now that

trip is a complicated trip because enroute we passed a lot of men

walking along the road at night.     It was already dark by this time.

We stopped the cab and Sinclair Lewis said to these men, "Come here."

One of them came over and he said, "Where are you men going?"          They

said, "We are strikers from a street car strike in Buffalo and we

are beating our way to St. Louis to get jobs."      Well, this was meat

for his Debs book.    So he said, "Do you men know where you are?"

One of them said, "Why, no.    What do you mean?"     He said, "Do you

know where you are near?"     The man said "no."    Lewis said, "Do you
                                                                      35




know that you are near Eugene Debs?"     Whereupon almost with one

voice they said, "Who's he?"     They didn't know Eugene Debs.

Lewis said, "Do you mean to say that you don't know Eugene Debs?"

One of them said, "I think I wore a button of his one time."

Lewis pointed out to them that Debs had been a candidate for

president; that he was now down in the sanitorium, and he said,

turned to us, De Kruif and me, and he said, "Give these men some

money."     This amuses me because he didn't take out money from his

pockets.     He said, "Let's give these men some money."     So we

gave them some money.     Then we went on.     There was lots more to

the travels.     In any event, we stopped a while in a tavern, and

then we went on to see Debs, and I telephoned him from the tavern

to know if he was still up because a big tornado came up.        We got

involved in that.     We didn't get to Debs until past eleven at

night.     He gets up in the sanitorium, comes down and sits on

the steps, brings along a pint of whiskey, and we sat there and

talked until four in the morning, with the cab driver, the same

cab driver.     In any event, I think that was the experience.       As

we went back from there, I said to Lewis, "Why in the world don't

you write a medical novel?     Your father's a doctor; your brother's

a doctor.     You've got doctor background."    He said to me, "Will

you go with me?"     I said, "No, I can't go.    Why don't you take

De Kruif?"     Well, that's it capsulated.     It makes 18 typewritten

pages in my book.
                                                                        36




Mr. J.:
I will certainly be interested in reading that book.



Dr. F.:
All the detail is there, with quotes from various places to

establish my point••• quotes from Sinclair Lewis' letters to Mrs.

Lewis ••• Sinclair Lewis' letter to Harrison Smith••• Sinclair

Lewis' letter to Harcourt,Alfred Harcourt.         Harcourt's reply

to   De   Kruif.     All of that is in my book.



Mr. J.:
That's such a fascinating story.



Dr. F.:
And the quotes from the Pictorial Review and Sinclair Lewis'

letter to me.         All of that is in it.



Mr. J.:
Those were just some general questions that I wanted to ask you.

I was interested in your impression of these men.         Now perhaps

we can move on to some specific questions in regard to New Deal

drug law.re~orm.



Dr. F.:
All right.         Shall I read the question and then tell it to you?
                                                               37




Do you want to take them in order?



Mr. J.:

Well, I'll just start with number one and we can move along by

natural direction.



Dr. F.:

All right.   You work it out.



Mr. J.:
The first question that I have is this.    How did the AMA feel

about the 1906 drug law by the early 1930 1 s?    Did they see it

as adequate or inadequate?



Dr. F.:

The law was clearly inadequate by the 1930 1 s.    In fact, I wrote

some editorials to that effect and we had reports to that effect.

Mainly, the 1906 lrug law simply controlled the package and the

label on the package ••• on the container in: the bottle.   It did not

control any advertising of any kind in relationship to the product.

Obviously, it's the advertising that sells the product.     Unless

you are in some control, voluntary or compulsory over the advertis­

ing, you get no results.   Now, by the 1930 1 s, many people had

realized this fact, not only us.    By the 1930 1 s, the Chicago Daily

!!!.!!!. had established an advertising code; the Tribune had a code;
                                                                      38



several syndicates had codes.     Codes were in the process of being

developed to control advertising, and it was out of that that the

second Food and Drug Act began to develop.



Mr. J.:

It's been suggested by a number of people that this whole business

of health quackery became much worse in the deparession years than

in the '20s.     Would you go along with this view?



Dr. F.:

This is a peculiar kind of a socislogic argument.     Actually, in

times of depression, doctors suffer as well as everybody else.

And possibly more because they depend as a third party on the

earnings of their patrons to pay them.     Doctors do not get paid

in the depression.     Their books accumulate immense amounts.    This,

however, does not cause people to seek charlatans.     Charlatans •••

they're a perennial.     It feeds on the will to believe and on

this natural human credulity.     The will to believe is based

sometimes on fear, sometimes on anxiety, on various other reasons

which cause a man to say, "Is there no help?     Then I must try•••

I'll feel guilty if I don't try this."     So to avoid his own feeling

of guilt at not trying it, for the person who's sick, he tries it.

I have had people of the greatest intellect, in time of great

anxiety or distress, seek••• try anything.    I know that that is

the situation.     I do not believe a depression causes resort to
                                                                         39




quackery.   We are organized for medical service in time of de­

pression.   Chicago was fully organized to provide medical service

during the time of the first big depression in the 29's ••• 30 1 s •••

because we had set up a system where 2,000 doctors had put their

names on a list and said they would make a call for 25 or 50

cents, or whatever anybody wanted to pay.     The doctors had no

practice because the people couldn't pay doctors; they couldn't

pay anybody.   If you've been through some depressions ••• until

you've been through a real one, you have no     idea what it's like.



Mr. J.:
You don't feel then that there was any particular relationship

between quackery and the depression?



Dr. F.:
No, I do not believe people go to charlatans for economic reasons.

They go :to quacks, not because the quack is cheap, for, in the

long run, the quack is more expensive.     They go to quacks because

they have an anxiety or they have been sold.     I sit sometimes and

argue with good doctors who have been thoroughly sold on something

that is completely off-beat, but they have been sold on it.        You

can sell doctors like you sell other people.     A certain percentage

of them are credulous.   They haven't learned to evaluate anything;

they will not respect authority.    The doctor who respects authority

wouldn't go to a charlatan.    He respects authority.    But the fellow
                                                                        40




who believes, "I can figure this out for myself ••• "    Henry Ford

fell for Percy Lemon Clarke with the funny diets that he had.

Sanitology, it was called.    Temken fell for Orville Miller,

I think his name was, who had that big tank for high-pressure

treatments.   The famous Dr. Coffey in San Francisco fell for

Humber treatment with sheep's adrenals.    A   half a dozen••• dozens

of doctors fell for Krebiozen because Ivy was involved.      It's not

for economical causes.



Mr. J.:

That, incidentally, is an intriguing thing•••



Dr. F.:

That's a great story.    Have you seen my chapter on the evolution of

cancer quackery?



Mr. J.:

No.



Dr. F.:

That was published in the magazine called Perspectives and I no

longer have auy reprints, but you can refer to the magazine in

your own files.
                                                                      41




Mr. J.:

Since this has come up, to me it's fantastic that a man of Ivy's

background and esteem could get so involved with Krebiozen?



Dr. F.:
This is a sort of a form of senile arteriosclerosis.



Mr. J.:

This is your opinion?



Dr. F.:
This was Carlson's belief.     Carlson knew him better than anybody

else.     He was his great teacher, he pushed him, and he developed

him.     Ivy had a sudden change of character.     Up to the time when

he fell for Krebiozen, there was a series of events that indicated

it.     He had always called me up since he was personally very close

to me.     He bad always called me up before undertaking any new

venture.     One day he called me ap and said, "Morris, I've been

offered the chairmanship of the National Council on Cancer and I

wonder if I should take it.•     I said, "Ivy, I don't think you

should."     I said, "You're not trained in that field.     You're not

a pathologist and itls clear out of your area."        He argued with me.

I said, "Ivy, have you already taken it?"        He said, "Yes."   I said,

"Then why did you call me?"    When he got down there, he ~egan writing

to me, asking my advice about various things.        I suggested to him
                                                                       42




that be follow the principles established by the Council on Pharmacy

and Chemistry; that he prepare a list of requirements that any pro­

duct must meet before the Council on Cancer would give it considera­

tion.     They were receiving a thousand to two thousand offers a year

of things that would cure cancer.        Most of them utterly no good.

And they did prepare that.     That was, in a way, part of his down­

fall because when he finally did get into Krebiozen, it couldn't

meet his own standards of what a product must be before you could

examine it.     He began slipping.     The general impression was he had

developed some arteriosclerotic changes and had lost his ability

for rational thinking.     He was a little optimistic.       And then the

Durovics were super-salesmen.        There's no question.    He was exposed

to a large dose.



Mr. J.:

He still believes in this, doesn't be?



Dr. F.:

Oh, I don't know.     Now, I wouldn't want to venture an opinion.

When does a man suddenly realize that he's on a wrong tack2         Hard

to judge.     You see, he may have locked himself in.       Suppose you get

locked in a pocket from which there's no retreat?



Mr. J.:

Well, it's amazing.     To go back to the 1920s and 30s, did the AMA
                                                                      43




push for new Food and Drug legislation in the 1920s?



Dr. F.:

Not beyond the extent of publishing resolutions and writing

editorials and articles.   How do you push for legislation?      If

you are really serious about getting some new legislation, you go

to Washington and you tell a congressman that you'd like to have

him introduce this legislation••• or a senator••• or you could get

sixteen senators at one time to sign a bill or sixteen congress­

men or more and then they hold bearings and so you start the

movement.   I don't think the AMA. went that far at that time.



Mr. J.:
Some people have suggested that one of the reasons why there

didn't seem to be a great push for legislation in the 1920s was

simply that the socio-economic environment just was not suitable.



Dr. F.:

This is the basic aphorism in the whole field of socio-economic

consideration:   that every profession, medicine, law, the teaching

profession, live within the environment of its time.   A combination

of circumstances must develop in order to produce a reaction that

leads to a result.   There has always been crime on the streets

since anybody can remember, since history records, but when crime

on the streets reaches a certain saturation, you get a tremendous
                                                                         44




public reaction.     Politicians, statesmen, sociologists, criminol­

ogists, doctors, everybody starts thinking there's too much crime

in the streets.     Now the same way when the advertising reaches

an area of boldness that goes beyond what most people consider

reasonable advertising license.     Reaction starts.   It starts

some people to say as Rexfor-0 Tugwell did one time, "We should

abolish advertising."     That's what he maintained, but that wouldn't

cure it.   So it goes to the other extent which says we should con­

trol advertising.    Then, how much shall we control advertising?

Who wants to make the decisions about controlling advertising?

Who is to make the decisions is the big factor; therefore, you

create the Federal Trade Commission with the Wheeler-Lea Act at

the same time that you pass a new Food and Drug act.



Mr. J.:
I gather you feel that the greatest weakness of the 1906 law was

the failure to control advertising?



Dr. F.:

Failure to recognize that the label doesn't sell the goods.        Ad­

vertising doesn't sell either necessarily because there is a firmly

established principle in the book publishing business that adver­

tising alone will not sell a bad book.     It can sell some bad books,

but it will not sell a lot of bad books.     They stop them at some

point or other; the public stops them.     The book isn't worth it.
                                                                   45




So advertising alone cannot sell a bad book.      All authors think

that the publisher ought to spend more money advertising, but the

publisher knows that advertising alone will not sell a book.           It

takes acceptance.     Now the same thing applies to drugs.     You see,

neither will criticism alone stop the sale of a book.        All the

critic can say is that the book is not worth reading; all the

publishers can tum it down.      Finally, one publisher works on it,

thinks it's a great book, then it outsells any other book that's

ever been sold, l i k e ~ With the~•         It was turned down by

twenty publishers before finally one went to work on it.



Mr. J.:
I had never heard that.



Dr. F.:

Oh, sure.     A lot of good books have been tumed down by twenty

publishers.     David Haren was turned down by more publishers than

any other book has ever been turned down by publishers in the way

of a novel.    This is the history of literature; that's another

story.    The title alone will not sell a book.   The title will

start people, but it won't make them read it.     If they start to

read after the title has caught them, then the book doesn't

measure up to the title ••• boom, it goes down the sewer.      I

mentioned books because I know just about as much about books as

I know about quackery.    Those books on that third shelf from the
                                                                     46




top are all my books and they are in about seven or eight

languages.



Mr. J.:
Um.   Do you speak several languages?



Dr. F.:

No.   They are translated.   They're in Dutch; they're in Afrikans,

Portuguese, Spanish, German, French, Swedish.     Some of those

books ••• all of those different languages.



Mr. J.:
In regard to the 1920s and this business about advertising, do

you feel that the AMA would have been receptive to a revision

of the law so as to better control advertising?



Dr. F.:

Oh, the AMA was receptive.   We wrote pieces urging that control;

furthermore, we formed some independent relationships.     I   was

asked by this time by various newspapers to advise them about

their advertising.   Cramp was asked and our department was asked-­

to look things up for newspapers that didn't want to accept bad

advertising and many magazines.   Furthermore, we had already

brought influence on the state medical journals, even before

that,--not to accept advertising that was.not acceptable to the
                                                                 47




Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry.    So, it was an action that was

stirring, that was in the mill, that was bound to develop.



Mr. J.:
Yes.   I remember the ergot affair in the 1920s.



Dr. F.:
Oh, that was a very interesting story, because that was strictly
in the medical area.    That was not in the public area.   There are

two definitely demarcated areas, the ethical and the proprietary,

you see.   They are different.


Mr. J.:
What brought that to my mind is that I remember Armbruster 1 s

attempt to get•••



Dr. F.:
That's in my history.    That's all mentioned.



Mr. J.:
His attempt to get some advertising into various state medical

journals•••



Dr. F.:
Oh, yes.   And they wouldn't go along.
                                                                      48




Mr. J.:

Of course, the first effort at revision of the 1906 law began in

1933.      Do you recall what the reaction of the AMA was when the

bill was introduced?



Dr. F.:
Well, then by that time, we began meeting with the people who

were involved and suggesting certain restrictions, certain changes.

It's all in the editorials.      We published regularly editorials

which I wrote for the most part myself or else they were written

in combination with the Bureau of Investigation or with our Bureau

of Legislation.      By this time, we had grown considerably over wha:t

we were in 1913 up to 1924.      We had grown a great deal, so that

by the tiae this came out there were many other agencies concerned

in this picture and they had formed advertising groups to control

advertising, develop principles of ethics in the advertising field

and   we   couldn't have done it alone.   Nobody could have done it

alone and it wouldn't have been done as quickly or as certainly

had it not been for the Elixir Sulfanilamide catastrophe.       That's

what forced the second Food and Dntg law.      And the forcing of the

law carried the Wheeler and Lea bill with it for the establish­

ment of the Federal Trade Coumission.       Now, the Federal Trade

Commission••• ! have worked with them a great deal at various

times and ••• tbey are amenable to seeing evidence, to discussing.

They do not work in the same way that the Food and Drug Administration
                                                                      49




works.     They work in a different area.     The old caveat emptor

rule will always apply, but you overcome the rule of "let the

buyer beware" by giving information.        Now, when you give vast

amounts of information to the public what happens--sometime they

pay attention, sometimes they don't.        And it's a very interesting

thing as to what makes them pay attention.        In order to pay

attention, it requires sometimes a catastrophe; sometimes a

general experience; sometimes popular education through women's

clubs, consumers' groups, etc.; sometimes, education that begins

in the nursery school and goes on through life so that you

gradually acquire more and more awareness and ability to judge

before purchasing.     Now, bow many people in the United States

think when they look at a package "How much is in this package?"

You buy a tube of toothpaste ••• ! can remember once buying a

package of toothpaste that looked that big; inside was a little,

skinny tube that came two inches from the top of the paper

package.     Well, it was obvious to me that somebody was selling

a package.     They weren't selling what was in the package, you

see.     The psychologists today know that certain colors attract

and other colors don't attract.     The psychologists know today

that the container makes a big difference, not only what's in

the package, but kind of packages.     So, then, how far can you

go in educating people?     You can't go around all your life being

beware of everything you buy and look at.       When you go to buy a

pair of socks or a woman goes to buy a pair of stockings; why
                                                                    50



does she buy those particular stockings?     Because they look nice.

Does she say, "Will they run?"     Does she say, "What mesh are

these?"   No.   Those are a lot of questions.   The vast majority

of them buy them because the label makes them think that "These

are the ones that Suzy bought and Mother bought these and so will

I buy these."   These are the things ••• I've given a lot of thought

to what makes people buy what they buy, and it's very important

as to what makes a doctor prescribe remedies.     That's a very bot

subject right this minute.    I've written a big piece on it.      I'm

going to speak tomorrow night for the Pharmaceutical Travelers

Organization, fellows that sell the drugs to the druggists.        And

it's interesting to me why doctors prescribe certain drugs.



Mr. J.:

How do you feel about it?


Dr. F.:

Well, there are many causes, not just one cause.     The main cause

is probably doctor to doctor--not the advertising, necessarily.

The advertising reminds him, but, let us say that I say to a

doctor as I frequently do, "Why don't you use this?"     It might

be a good idea, and he uses it.     He don't look••• go to look the

whole thing up and the background and who discovered it and

what's the molecular formula.     Then, let's say it comes to be a

question of, well, there are 28 to 30 tranquillizers.     Why do
                                                                   51




you use one tranquillizer rather than another?     You probably used

the one that you saw somebody else use or that you beard somebody

recommend in a meeting or you may have read an article in a maga­

zine or conceivably, you saw an ad and you said, "That reminds

me.   I was going to try that."



Mr. J:

You think this personal relationship, doctor to doctor, would have

much more weight than, say, the impact of the detail men?



Dr. F.:
Much more.   But the detail man has impact because he knows more

about it than you do.   In order to be a successful detail man,

you have to know a lot about what you are talking about.     You

can't get by with just coming in and giving the doctor a free

fountain pen and say, "I want you to try this remedy."     Or you

can give him samples.   He still wouldn't try it unless he's got

time to listen to your story.     Then if you listen to the story,

you'll discover that he has been trained to answer questions

like I'm answering your questions.     If I didn't know the answers,

I wouldn't try to answer.   I'd say, "I'm sorry.    I don't know

that."



Mr. J.:

In regard to this attempt at revision of the old law, did the
                                                                        52



AMA have any role in the drafting of any of these several bills

 from 1933 to 1938?



 Dr. F.:

Not the drug acts that I know of--not that I know of.         There may

have been men who were associated with us who bad part in the

 drafting.     We didn't.   It's quite conceivable that there were

men on the Council of Pharmacy and Chemistry who were associated

with, as consultants, with the Food and Drug Administration.            It

 is quite conceivable that there were men who were a part of our

 setup who knew personally one of the people who were drafting

 the bill.     This is the way it works, you know.     Bills are not

written; they are rewritten.      This is classic among the aphorisms

 referring to legislation.      I have helped, myself, to write cer­

 tain bills; the original Hill-Burton Act--I had some part in

 developing that.     And some others at various times.     I have cer­

 tainly given suggestions to some of the men behind the Medicare

 Bill as to certain things that should be and should not be.

Everybody takes a band and then the people who draft the bill

 are not the men whose names are on the bill.        They are drafted

 by experts in drafting bills.     We get a lot of give and take in

. this area.



Mr. J.:

 It seems sort of peculiar to me that in undertaking a measure of
                                                                   53



this type which would so much touch the field of medicine that

the FDA wouldn't consult with the American Medical Association.



Dr. F.:
They draft the bill.     The FDA don't write the bill.   The FDA

makes its suggestions to the men who are going to introduce the

bill.     They get expert draftsmen to draft the bill and they confer

with a lot of people and then the bill is drafted and then come

the hearings and now it's in the bearings that we present our

view and that may result in modifying the bill.     Because there's

no piece of legislation that goes through the Congress today that

isn't subject to amendments, rewriting, unless it's a bill to

build a bridge across Podunk or something like that.



Mr. J.:
Well, you don't have any recollection that the AMA felt left out

in this drafting process?



Dr. F.:
No.     We were quite satisfied with the way it was going.   We had

great satisfaction in the fact in the second bill that we stimu­

lated and we were the ones that pushed that bill because •••



Mr. J.:
Now this is which one?
                                                                        54




Dr. F.:

The Elixir Sulfanilamide •••which brought in the second amended

Food and Drug Act, because, you see, I was not in the AMA for

the first Food and Drug Act, but I'm sure that we had a great

part to play in that.       There are other factors that enter into

that first Food and Drug Act that you don't hear very much about

on the surface., but which I have in my time investigated.       I

think the number one ••• some of the points were about the adoption

of the    u. s.   Pharmacopeia as a standard; the definition of whis­

key was very hot stuff, whether it should be aged in the wood for

four years or corn whiskey bottled in••• all those different sort

of things entered in and Theodore Roosevelt and Taft had differ­

ences of opinion as to which kind of whiskey they wanted.        Very

few people know that.       I studied all of that.   I was asked to

study it.     I read the entire hearings on that whiskey considera­

tion--in those days it was hot stuff.       I didn't let them publish

it.   So those factors have a great part to play.      Now the Elixir

Sulfanilamide thing was very odd because what happened there was

that the first we heard of sulfanilamide in the United States was

when Perrin Long broadcast from London about this great discovery.

Then it came before our view, and all the American manufacturers

got busy to study sulfanilam!des and improve on them and make

better preparations than we had had before and we did make better

preparations.~ The original prontisil sulfanilamide went by and

we got sulfadiazine, sulfathiazole, sulfapyridine, sulfaquanidine,
                                                                         55



all these modifications.     Then came the question of what kind of

vehicle do you put it in.     How do you dissolve it?     Do   you put

it in tablets; do you put it in capsules?     Do   you put it in

liquids?     If you put it in liquids, what kind of liquids do you

put it in?     If you put it in spirits, spiritus frumenti--pepper­

mint water, do you put it in an elixir which is sweet and gooey?

How do you put it up?     So all these preparations were coming and

the Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry was considering which ones

were good and which ones were not good and which ones should be

permitted and which should not be permitted.       Then all of a sudden

comes the Elixir of Sulfanilamide.     And the chemist who was working

on it in the Massengill Company, being short of propylene glycol,

sees some dietbylene glycol, and be says "Glycol?        Diethylene

glycol?"     And 96 children were poisoned and died.    And that was

the catastrophe.     They said there's got to be some kind of control

over this.     This kind of thing shouldn't happen.     Now, in the period

between 1906 and 1920 to '24, if that: should have happened, pretty

soon a doctor would send a paper to the Journal:        "I gave this stuff

to some kids and they died."     And somebody would publish it••• some

other journal would publish it.     And then another report would come

in and they would publish that.     That reminds me of that famous old

story of the two guys walking along the railroad track, you see.

And a train comes by and they don't get off the track quick enough.

One of them does, and the other doesn't and the second one is de­

scribing what happened, and be said he was walking along the road
                                                                  56




and he saw a head, and then he saw a leg, he saw an arm, and he

said, "I begin to say to myself:     'Something must have happened

to Ollie.'"    You see.   So that pretty soon, they decide that this

is serious stuff.     But in ay case, the minute I began getting these

reports, I called down Austin Smith and I said, "We got to stop

this right away.     We can't wait for a constituted authority.        We

got to notify the world.     Beware of this product.   There's some­

thing wrong here."     So, I published an editorial; published an

article:   "Children are dying--bang."    And, as the vernacular

says, "The fat was in the fire," and away she goes.      It was

easy to pass a bill when everybody is so earnest.      So the new

regulations came out.



Mr. J.:

Now was the AMA consulted in regard to this amendment--the sulfa­

nilamide amendment?



Dr. F.:
Not as such.   There were already problems.    I should think••• this

is purely hypothesis ••• there were problems of public relations

that entered in, and this time the AMA is already a very important

and forceful organization and big.     We have the word of the press;

we have the word of the public.    And it gets to be a question of

saying, "Why should they consult the AMA?     Who are they that they

should be consulted about everything?"     There bas to be a 1 i ttle
                                                                    57



later yet that you get to that enlightened state where you can

start to consult, anymore than the British government began early

to consult the British Medical Association about things.     You can

always make your voice heard, you know.     Anybody can make his

voice heard, if he's got something really important to say.



Mr. J.:

Do you recall if the AMA felt that the provisions added here

after the elixir episode were adequate?



Dr. F.:

I could go back and look all this up.     You should really go to the

AMA to chase that up in the files.     I think unfortunately they've
destroyed a lot of files.     I tried to look up something the other

day and they said, "That's all gone.    We don't have that any more."



Mr. J.:

I just wondered whether you recall if the AMA felt that the pro­
visions put in at the time were adequate?



Dr. F.:

Well, that's a difficult question, because the word "adequate" is

a tough word to start with.    Now, let us say they were the best

you could get at that time.    That's the answer to that question.

Without, perhaps, having made a monumental effort.    Now, at one
                                                                         58




time I made a monumental effort in the Congress.     You might be

interested to hear it because I was, at that time, on the      u. s.
Pharmacopeia Conmission and the control over insulin was about to

run out.   The control was about to run out.     And I got information

that two shiploads of foreign-manufactured insulin of not too good

quality were on the way to be distributed in the United States as

soon as the patent ran out.   And the question arose in the Pharma­

copeia Commission about what could we do about this?     And I said,

"We've got to have some kind of an act that would stop this.

People should not be allowed to bring in that biologic drug without

adequate control through some kind ••• through some agency."    And

they said, "Well, it takes a long time to get an act like that

through Congress.   The ships are on the way."     I said, "In an

emergency, you can get an act through Congress even quickly."          And

we got that act through before those ships landed.



Mr. J.:
This was about when?



Dr. F.:
This was about the early••• in the late 1930s.



Mr. J.:
In the 1930s, as the drug bill moved or failed to move through Con­

gress, a number of supporters of the bill and revision in general
                                                                      59




felt that the American Medical Association had not taken as active

a role in standing behind this matter as they should.



Dr. F.:
I think they took about as much of a role as they were warranted

in taking.     You must bear in mind that at that time there was a

man in the Senate named Royal Copeland who was pretty hot in this

field.     He was a senator although he was a homeopath.   He had been

a health officer; he was an optbamologist primarily, and I knew

him quite well.     He was a brilliant talker, and I think the AMA

said at all times that they stood ready to help, and I'm sure that,

as I say, I'm sure that the men that worked with us in the Council

on Pharmacy and Chemistry were also in contact, but they were in

their other capacities, and looking back on us strategically, that

was better than if they came there representing the AMA.      It was

better that Reed Hunt, the professor of biochemistry at Harvard,

Torald Solmann, the professor of pharmacology in Cleveland, La­

fayette Mendel of Yale--people like that--should testify as them­

selves from their university, rather than to come in representing

the AMA.     The AMA had our man who was at that time William Wood­

ward.     And he unquestionably filed a statement.   I say "unques-

tionably," I'd have to check it to be sure.



Mr. J.:

He did.
                                                                       60




Dr. F.:
He must, I'm sure.



Mr. J.:

The reason I bring this up is I was reading a while back in •••



Dr. F.:
Well, that's quite different from going out to campaign.     I have
gone out to campaign.    Quite recently, Helen Taussig went out and

campaigned for the bill on account of the thalidomide.     She spoke

here, there and everywhere--this shouldn't happen again, you see.

So this is called campaigning.    But, otherwise, you belong to an

organization and you speak through the organization.     You use the

mechanisms of the organization.    The mechanism was Woodward who

presented a brief for the organization.     Now, if the Senate or

Congress then says, "Will you send down some people.     We'd like

to talk to them."    We'd send them down.



Mr. J.:

The reason I bring this up is that in reading, a while back, I

think it's Professor Burrow's book, AMA, Voice of American Medicine •••



Dr. F.:
Oh, yes.
                                                                          61




Mr. J.:

I got the impression that be feels that the issue of compulsary

health insurance, and also the c0111Dittee report in the early

30s on the cost of medical care, bad the effect of frightening the

AMA perhaps to the point that they were reluctant to become in­

volved in any governmental action touching the field of medicine.



Dr. F.:
Not a bit.     No, sir.   Nobody was frightened.   I know all the men

that were working with me at that time.      There was not a frightened

man in the whole lot.      The trouble was always to say "Hold me

back" rather than frightened.



Mr.   J.:
Well, ! ••• perhaps "frightened" is the wrong word.



Dr. F.:
No.    No.   They watched things very carefully.   Every legislative

committee ••• they watch these things ••• You've got to preserve

what you think is balance, reasonable balance.      There's got to be

a sort of tendency to belien, and this is honest.       But the AMA,

in general, was against things rather than being for them.         But

that had to do with legislation interfering with the nature of

medical practice.     It did not deal with such things as stopping

the sale of fireworks in cities; certainly, did not deal with
                                                                 62




sanitation and hygiene; did not deal with controls of many kinds.

One of the first courses I ever took in socio-ethnology was

"Primitive Social Controls," taught by Professor Thomas at the

University of Chicago, and I was greatly impressed by the way in

which any society establishes controls.   And there can be cases where

the controls are onerous and interfere with progress.



Mr.   J.:

Well, bow would you compare the efforts of the AMA, say in the

1930s, in attempting to ward off any kind of compulsory health

insurance versus their efforts in support of the drug bill?



Dr. F.:
I would say that if there had not been••• if there had been some

sort of a dramatization in the area of the social insurance legis­

lation equal to the terrible disaster of the sulfonamides, the

whole picture would have been different, you see.   Nobody was

going•••well, it comes down to this kind of a statement, that you

do not attack God or motherhood if you have any sense.   You let

those alone, you see.   So, this food and drug legislation and the

advertising controls were needed.   Everybody knew they were needed.

Those were the kind of things you knew were going to go through.



Mr. J.:

Oh, you felt that it was going through?
r

                                                                                  63




    Dr. F.:
    Ob, that food and drug act was definitely needed and had to go

    through.    Now, then you come to modify and amend the act to avoid

    its dangers and to increase its benefits.       The same way, in the

    last food and drug legislation, I fought bitterly as an individual

    against attempting to make the Food and Drug Administration pass

    on efficacy.     1 don't think they can.    1 don't think they are capable

    as a government••• as a political organization••• to pass_on a scienti­

    fic problem.     The British got around that by creating a group of

    scientists to make those decisions and pass them on to the Food

    and Drug••• to the British Food and Drug Control.          But we don't.

    We leave it in the Administration to do that.           They can consult

    or not as they please.      Now that was the reason, and I'm frank to

    say this, that when I was in that big meeting down in Boca Raton

    just before ••• after the act passed ••• I said to Commissioner God­

    dard, "How long do you think it's going to take you to pass on the

    efficacy of all those drugs?"      He said, "Ten years."       I said, "You

    can't wait ten years to pass on the drugs."        He said, "Well, how

    are you going to get it done?"      I said, "Well, in the war, we got

    it done through the National Research Council, Division of Medical

    Sciences.     Everything the Army, Navy wanted to know was it good,

    we passed on it right away.      We made the studies; we combed; we

    checked; we got the best people."       I said, "Why don't you contract

    with them?"     He said, "Tba t I s against the law."     I said, "Oh, no.

    If it was against the law, they wouldn't have done it during the
                                                                         64




war."     He then made that contract, and they got it all out now.

Inside of a year or two, they got the whole thing passed on.     And

it establishes a pattern as to how it should be done, even if they

don't continue it that way.     Nevertheless, the pattern is there

and there may be a demand eventually that efficacy be decided by a

scientific body, not by an enforcement body.



Mr. J.:

Have you read Professor Burrow's book, AMA:     Voice of American

Medicine?



Dr. F.:
Oh, yeah.     I'd let you have mine except that a fellow borrowed it

who is writing an article right now.     Aad I had the only copy that

was available, and I let him borrow it••• One of my own men on

Medical World!!!!!,!_ borrowed it.



Mr. J.:

I have a copy.



Dr. F.:
I know the book quite well.     I reviewed the book.   I also reviewed

Garcia's Political   1.!!!. o f ~ ~ which   was published back in the

30s.
r
                                                                                65




    Mr. J •:

    Do   you think Burrow overdoes this business about AMA fears in

    regard to compulsory health insurance?



    Dr. F.:
    Oh, I think he's not writing documented fact material.       He's

    voicing opinions and he's entitled to his opinions.        I don't happen

    to agree with him on a lot of this stuff.



    Mr. J.:
    That's what I was wondering.




    Oh, no.      I don't agree with him.   I think his interpretations are

    colored by his point of view.      Now, an action takes place.      I say

    to you, nWbat do you think of that?"      You follow it with your point

    of view.      You say to me, "What do I think about it?"   I color it

    with my point of view.      Now, let's take it down to a very simple

    level.      Somebody gets hurt and two or three people start running

    toward the scene of the accident, and a number of people walk to

    the scene of the accident and some people turn their beads away.

    Each decision is made according to the point of view of the indivi­

    dual.      The first individual says, "God, I've got to help him!"

    He runs.     The second individual says, •well, I've got to help him,

    but maybe there are people that ought to do this who are responsible
                                                                   66




for it," and the third man says, "11 m not going to get involved."

So, you see, you can color•••you can color by your point of view.

I know a very famous American writer, and I will not give the name

now.   But, still a very famous American writer•••novelist•••who

once wrote me a letter in behalf of complete government control,

compulsory sickness insurance, with the government controlling

medical appointments and everything.     It was the most bitter

letter I have ever seen, and I have that letter.    And twenty

years later, the point of view of that author who bas now be-

come wealthy and can buy anything he wants is exactly the op­

posite of what it was then, when the author was in poor circum­

stances and had difficulty getting access to certain things.

The same thing applies to the grave question of educating the

public.   Everything comes back now as to how much can you educate

the public, because, you see, I once proved that anybody in

Chicago that needed medical care could get it regardless of whether

they bad a penny or a million dollars.    I could prove that.     But

the weak link in the chain was first, inertia, apathy.    I don't

want to go look for it; it's too hard to find it.    And second,

lack of knowledge as to bow to look for it.    Where should I go to

get this thing?   First, you've got to want to go and look and then

second, you've got to go there.   So, it takes two positive actions,

and if you had not been educated to the fact that it's easy if you

know how, you just won't do it.
                                                                    67




Mr. J.:
In regard to this coumittee on the cost of medical care in the 30s,

did you feel their conclusions were accurate or inaccurate?



Dr. F.:
Well, I've got that written up in great extent in many places and

particularly in my new book--whole chapters on that, condensed,

really.    I have the nucleus of it over there.   In the first place,

I will not speak directly of that committee or of the people as­

sociated with it because I don't want to bring that in here.        It's

all in my book, and their names and each one of them described and

all of that.    But let us say now that we want to form a committee

to offer free transportation to all workers to the city.       They want

to go to the city, and we're going to offer it to them free.        So

whom do we select to be chairman of that committee?     Do   we select

the head of the ditch-digger's union to head up that coumittee to

get free transportation to the city or do we select the president

of the IC Railroad?    If you select the president of the IC Railroad

to bead up you conaittee, you know darn well he's not going to give

free transportation.    But if you select the guy in the ditch, he

wants free transportation for himself and all his family.       So this

is it.    Now, in selecting the commission••• in the first place,

they limited the AMA's representation on the committee to three

people in a committee with some thirty people.     In the second place,

they chose a very intelligent, earnest, capable, educator as chairman.
r
                                                                                    68




    That was Ray Lyman Wilbur.     A very honest, dependable man.         I don't

    think he had a selfish bone in his body.         But they select as the

    executive secretary a man whose conclusions anybody could know by

    reading what he had written previously.         He had written so much

    along the line that he felt that the only answer was nationwide,

    co■pulsory    sickness inaurance, that if ·.he was to have any influence

    whatever on the commission, you knew that was the answer that he

    would come out with.     And certainly, if anybody does have influ­

    ence, it's the executive director.       He's the fellow.    Now 1 I pointed

    out the weaknesses in the AMA in my book.         Nobody knows them

    better than I do because I have seen them in action and I have

    participated ill 1.them, so I know.    Let   us say 1 this is a question

    of whom do you appoint to decide what?         It's very simple.   Suppose

    you are the Speaker of the House of Delegates of any big organiza­

    tion, and you want to have a committee that is going to bring in

    a negative report on a field in which you have great interest.

    You don't select men who are for the report; you select for that

    committee men of known interest or related to known interest against

    the report.    And then when they bring in the report, you know in

    advance what the answer is going to be.         Now, how do you get the

    speaker who selects the reference cotllllittee to pick those men?

    You merely make him ex officio, a member of the dominating group,

    and you don't tell him to appoint these men but he hears all the

    discussions.    He gets the feeling.    Now this is not illegal.       It

    is not immoral.     It's political.    Now the AMA is a political
                                                                           69




    organization.     Every medical school, every hospital, every university

    is a political organization.    And they are more political today than

    they ever were.    The students demand the right to name the professors;

    they demand the right to discontinue certain classes altogether;

    they demand the right to hear any speaker they want to hear whether

    the faculty thinks it's good for them or not.    We have our own

    native revolutionist, Sol Alinsky, and he spoke at Ann Arbor night

    before last to all the students that wanted to hear him, and he is

    preaching revolution with destruction, aaarchy, in a sense.    He

    spoke just last night in a local Chicago Jewish Temple because the

    youth group wanted to hear him.    He can do them nothing but harm.

    So what are you going to do?    You've got free speech.



    Mr. J.:
    I gather then tlat you were not particularly surprised at the nature

    of the report?



    Dr. F.:
    Oh, no.   I said it was what I anticipated, and I said my editorial

    had one sentence which the opposition has seized upon.    There isn't

    a book published anywhere that doesn't repeat that sentence.    That

    sentence is that "This is an incitement to Socialism, if not Com­

    munism," period.    Now, I also said, "History proves" (because I

    rather flatter myself; I read a lot of history and study it)

    "History proves that once a nation embarks on this path, it pursues




l
                                                                         70




it to the bitter end."     And it's very hard to turn around and to go

back.     So we started with the old people, coming to the young people;

we'll move up to the middle-aged.     It will come in the United States,

and then when the abuses get sufficient, they will try to turn back,

and that's when the trouble is going to commence.     Like England, now,

is facing an economic revolution.     Now they are putting the price

back on the drugs; they are not going to provide free remedies.

And we're already in trouble with the drug bill in Medicare.      So,

sooner or later, somebody is going to reconmend that we don't provide

drugs.     Well, then, as you begin taking away benefits, pretty soon

the people will say, "What are we spending our money for?     They took

away all the benefits, and we're still paying the money."     You have

to fit your economic program and you have to fit your entire program

and it's a difficult deal.     But,   I don't think we're coming to
Communism.     But there have been countries whose first step towards

Connnunism was the step toward government-controlled medical care.

I suggest we go down and have some lunch and come back and do about

one hour more.



Mr. J.:

Fine.     That would be marvelous.



Mr. J.:

Did you ever personally differ with the general AMA position or lack

of position on drug law revision in the 1930s?
                                                                   71




Dr. F.:
I not only did not differ with that position, but I myself wrote

editorials and made public addresses and gave interviews to the

press and in every way encouraged the development of the neces­

sary legislation.   Furthermore, as I have already mentioned, when

it became necessary to establish additional controls for the regu­

lation of biologic products, I specifically urged the establish­

ment of the section on biologic standards and the controls that

were there established.



Mr. J •:

Would you say that as editor of the Journal ••• let me rephrase

tbat•••How instrumental is this position in setting the policy of

the organization?



Dr. F.:
The position, in my time, was highly effective in establishing

policy and in exercising leadership.   However, since that time,

since I left the AMA, in 1950, they have gradually evolved a series

of regulations which make it impossible for the editor of the

Journal to discuss controversial issues or to lead in establish­

ing policies, and that is all controlled now through special

aspects of the organization.   In my time, the editor sat ex

officio with all committees, councils and boards.
                                                                          72




A frequent cry or charge of the patent medicine lobbies in the 1930s

was that the drug law revision effort itself was, as they called it,

a plot of the American Medical Association.     I wonder in the light

of this charge, do you thin~ it would have been desirable on the

part of the AMA to participate more?   A while ago you mentioned

something about strategy, that strategically it was better to

have individuals speaking as individuals rather than for the AMA.



Dr. F.:
I don't think thought was given to that phase of it at that time,

simply because no strategy was necessary.     This was demanded by the

people, by the Congress, by the President and it was bound to go

through.   When you have that uniformity, little voices in the wild•

erness crying against it can accomplish nothing.     On the other hand,

whenever the predatory vested interests are attacked--! would empha­

size the two adjectives "predatory" and "vested" interests are at­

tacked, they must reply.   Their only reply then is to counter-charge

that you are a monopoly; that you wish to control every aspect of

the field; that you are constantly endeavoring to get rid of all

opposition; that you are trying to control every phase of the matter

even to the extent that you will not permit people to experiment with

new and other types of remedies.   When you expose the-, the obvious

answer is to file suit and you file suit for slander, for libel or

for civil damages, and in that way, the public, at once says, "Well,
                                                                         73




you saw what they said about him.      Now he sued them."   That seems

to be the answer.     The public never stops to inquire "Why did be

sue them?     What will be accomplished by the suit?"    The public

never stops to listen if you tell them that you have had 29 such

suits and that in not one of them have you ever suffered a loss, and,

in fact, the only time when the one dollar fine was made in the

Hoxsey case, that was the first thing that encouraged the govemment

to go in and actually investigate Hoxsey's activities and put him

out of business.     Previously, the government had not been able to

reach him.     Now one reason for that is that when a man sues you,

you take     him to court.   When you take him to court you can sub­

poena his records, his books, bis files, and you are able to show

exactly what kind of business he conducted or have him brought up

on charges of perjury.       Several charlatans have been destroyed

either by exposing themselves to charges of perjury, or for the

first time revealing income they bad not reported for income tax

purposes whereupon that department of the government moved in. -



Mr. J.:
One of the supposed facts that alienated trade groups from any

changes in the old drug law was that the revision efforts in the

1930s were sponsored by Rexford Tugwell whom they referred to as

a "dangerous left-winger" at best.       Did Tugwell's involvement in

the revision effort in any way effect the position of the Ameri­

can Medical Association?
                                                                      74




Dr. F.:
No.   For the reason that I believe I mentioned previously.         When

an extremist appears, who would abolish all advertising, and who

did not believe that advertising served any useful purpose--this

he says in his books--he is obviously to defeat his objective by

his extremism.     I have an idea that Tugwell didn't really accom­

plish very much in the picture.       On    the other hand, at all times,

the trade groups who are representated by the knowledgeable

leaders in their field can exercise taeir influence.          Obviously,

they have power.    Furthermore, they must know their field well or

they can not appear properly and often they are trying to find

moderation rather than   extremis■•        I have certain areas of this

in mind as I talk about it which indicate just bow this did develop.

Row, some of the rulings of the Federal Trade Conmission, for ex­

ample, which had gone on maybe ten, fifteen years, and then had

been reversed and then brought back again, indicated that in areas

where exact scientific evidence is not available in sufficient

amount there must always be government by opinion as to the value

of the evidence.    Now, 1 1 11 cite a few simple examples.      In the

case of the Federal Trade Conmission versus the product Listerine,

there was evidence massed on both sides.         The evidence produced by

the manufacturer was so massive in comparison to the amount of evi­

dence produced by the Federal Trade Commission that the Commission

finally decided that the mass of evidence on behalf of..the product

so tremendously outweighed the evidence offered by the Federal Trade
                                                                     75




Commission that they could only decide in favor of the manufacturer.

Now, this was an instance in which the manufacturer was willing to

spend roughly a million dollars to prove his point.     And the govern•

ment simply cannot spend a million dollars to prove a small point

of that kind.     Now, let us take another instance, however, where

the government was definitely wrong.     In the original case of the

Federal government before FTC, this was in food and drugs; this

was in 1913 about.     The Federal government brought suit against

the Coca Cola Company alleging that it was a habit-forming drug,

and the government endeavored to produce evidence that it con­

tained coca which was addictive and caffeine which was habit

forming.   Now, both sides produced evidence in good amounts, and

the decision was finally against the government because the govern­

ment was trying to push an area in answer to public attack and

public opinion, but I don't think the government's position was

defensible.     Therefore, they lost and they probably should have

lost.   In another instance, I was approached by a manufacturer

with a new baby food.    And I said to him when he came to see me,

••• he came to ask my advice about this baby food.    He wanted to

advertise it but be had not found a name for it and he said he

went to the Federal Trade Commission and be wanted to call it with

the word "milk" in the title, and the fellow with the Trade Com­

mission informed him that you could not name a product "milk"

unless it was milk.     It could not be any synthetic product, or modi­

fied product.     So I said to hi~, "What is the product like?"   He
                                                                          76




said, "It's like milk."     "Well," I said, "call it 'Similac'"•    So

he did and that's one of the greatest products in the field.        I'm

very proud to have just taken a part in that.



Mr. J.:

That's very interesting.



Dr. F.:
That's it--"Similac."     Now, in another instance, the Federal Trade

Commission called in a product called Petrolagar which was a

mixture of mineral oil with a very small percentage of agar agar

which was to give it thickening and bulk.     And the government called

them in and alleged that they didn't have enough agar to permit

them to use the word agar in the title and they had to get rid

of that.    Now they had built up a business valued at about twenty

million dollars, and they hated to give up;their name because they

felt the name was a large part of its success.     And I sat down

with a man named Denney for American Home Products which now owned

the product, and I said, "Well, all you have to do is get rid of

the word agar, call the product, "Petrolagar" and they did and

apparently, nobody has ever noticed that it was changed.      It

doesn't say agar though.    Now that's not a deceit; it's now a

fanciful name instead of a specifically chemical name.     Now,

there are many instances I can give you.    Another interesting

incident!    I was asked by the Marcelle Company which made
                                                                       77



cosmetics for some word which would describe the fact that their

cosmetics were less likely to produce allergic reactions than

were other cosmetics, because it was now established that you

could become sensitized to orris root in face powder and there

were a lot of cases.   So I suggested "Well, a simple name for

that in medicine is 'hypo.'     Therefore, your product is hypo­

allergic, less allergic than other products."     Well, they told

him at first that he could use that; then somebody gave them an

opinion that there was no such thing as less allergic or more

allergic.   You were either allergic or you were not allergic.

And they abolished the name, "hypo-allergic."     And just within the

last year they have restored "hypo-allergic."     Now you can use

it.   Now you can see that any industrial group dealing with a

government agency, you can expect them to change from time to

time, but when those changes involve immense costs that are after

all to establish a relatively trivial principle, they drive you

into the courts.   And the courts almost invariably would rule in

favor of the industry because the court sees the nonsense of some

of these trivial points.     I have many such examples where the de­

cision had to be eventually made by the courts.    Now, right now,

there's a crucial decision going to come up, and I have been

through that thing from the first day to the present and that

has to do with vitamins.     Now, the necessity for vitamins in human

nutrition is unquestioned.    You've got to have these vitamins,

otherwise you suffer with deficiency diseases.     It is already
                                                                        78




established that unless you have adequate amounts of those vitamins,

you will get a deficiency disease.    You will get a sub-acute defici­

ency disease.    Now, it is also established that you must not only

take the vitamin into the body, but that you must be able to ab­

sorb the vitamin, because if you take it in and it goes through

unchanged, you haven't accomplished anything.    Therefore, you

need a doctor really to tell you whether you are getting the

effect or you are not getting the effect.    At first, the Council

on Pharmacy and Chemistry of which I was a member ruled that

you could not mix two vitamins.    It had to be one vitamin and the

doctor prescribed each one separately.    Then the folly of that

soon became apparent because people who are under-nourished

usually suffer from a deficiency of a number of substances, pro­

tein, carbohydrate, fat, various mineral salts and vitamins.       So

that gradually we accepted the principle of mixed vitamins; then

mixed vitamins with minerals; then mixed vitamins with proteins,

amino acids.    Now there's about to be a battle over whether you

should take mixed vitamins, whether the people of the United States

need any such preparations unless they are prescribed by doctors.

And in a book I wrote recently on home remedies, I pointed out

that in the United States, there are now 200,000,000 people; they

average five colds a year; that's a billion colds a year, and that

we have in the whole country 200,000 practicing doctors.   And if

everybody who has a cold went to see a doctor, the doctors would

do nothing else but colds and still there wouldn't be enough doctors
                                                                         79




to treat the colds.    So you can argue that also in regard to moles

on the skin.   It has been proved by innumerable surveys that the

average person has five moles, and Bloodgood of Johns Hopkins once

argued that a mole is potentially cancer and therefore all moles

should be removed.    But the same thing applies.     Five moles on

the skin; some people have twenty moles on the skin.       Now if you

are going to start removing all of those, there aren't enough

doctors to take off those moles.     So, we get into areas of re-

ductio ad absurdum where the whole thing falls by its own weight.

When I came into medicine, the favorite prescription by a doctor

was elixir of iron, quinine and strychnine.     That was a tonic.

Since that time, strychnine has been removed.       They don't need to

prescribe that anymore at all.     Quinine is prescribed only in cases

of specific demonstrated need, malaria, prevention of malaria, and

certain other complaints like cramps in the legs, things li~e that.

Now, now we get back to iron.    Now there was a generally well estab­

lished study all over the country which shows that when women menstru­

ate, even normally, they lose a lot of iron.     They've got to have

extra iron; otherwise, they tend to be anemic and that the most

wide-spread deficiency in the United States today is iron.      On the

other hand, too much iron is very bad for you.      Well, now, there-

fore we have to establish what we call a safe limit of iron.



Mr. J.:

What do you think of remedies in that connection, such as Geritol
                                                                        80




they advertise for iron deficiency?



Dr. F.:
Well, Geritol is the Hadacol of today.     Hadacol had its vogue, you

may remember; you saw that story.     It's the attempt to prescribe a

sort of a universal tonic.   Now, if people eat reasonably well of

the usual foods, they don't need any of this.     I don't take any

vitamins and I'm well up into years, doing very well.     On the other

hand, if I were a widower or a bachelor and I lived alone in one

room and the only meals I got were either what I ordered in a

restaurant or tried to fix•m.yself, I would begin to suffer with

nutritional deficiencies and sooner or later, I would be safer

taking stuff that I didn't need to get the few that I did need,

rather than gambling, or of having to go to a doctor every time

to tell me I need it.



Mr. J.:
To go back to this revision effort in the 30s again, a little while

ago you mentioned Royal Copeland.   Do   you recall if the AMA had any

reservations about Senator Copeland's leading this revision effort?



Dr. F.:
Senator Copeland, to begin with, was a homeopath; he was under the

control of William Randolph Hearst because he was Hearst's writer;

he ran his column in the Hearst papers and Senator Copeland was sort
                                                               81




of a demagogue.    Yet he was in the Senate and therefore, when you

have to have a politician, you take the politician you can get, not

one you have to elect to the job; you take one that's there already.

For that reason, you have to deal with them as they are.     I have

not the slightest reservation, for instance, about the integrity,

the honesty, the sincerity of the old Senator Wagner.     He knew

what he was doing all the time and he was a good straight-shooter.

Dingell was an uninformed man who handled the thing in the Congress.

Murray of Montana, he was just a senator.     I don't think he knew
too much.    I've always had doubts about the sincerity of Wayne

Morse and his logic, his ability.     But you deal with them as they

are.   Claude Pepper was always a big question to me.    I think the

fact that he would go back into Congress after he had been a sena­

tor shows that here's a man who's got to feed at the trough, the

public trough.



Mr. J.:

Well, did you or the AMA believe that there was any substance to

the charges of groups like Consumers' Research that Copeland was

too financially involved with Hearst and patent medicine people to

handle this legislation?



Dr. F.:

No.    I don't think so at all.   I think that when it comes to the

showdown and a senator agrees to handle the legislation, be gives
                                                                82




it all he's got.     He is not going to destroy legislation that he is

handling.    I think Copeland did his very best.    I think his best

was none too good.     I have at various times worked for Mr. Hearst.
I   always attacked him at the same time because I did not have any

confidence in his anti-vivisection attitudes.      I thought he was

entirely controlled by two women and that's what did it.     Marion

Davies and Irene Castle controlled his views on anti-vivisection,

and all of his reporters, his writers all informed me there was

no use trying to bother with this.     This is the way he does it.

So you just kept on nevertheless, you kept on fighting your fight

and he kept on fighting his fight.     Eventually, he lost and we

won.   That was all there was to it.



Mr. J.:

Copeland was, as you mentioned earlier, homeopathic.



Dr. F.:

But he didn't know too much medicine altogether.     This is not the

angle, the angle that if you have to fight something in the United

States Senate, you don't have to be the expert in the field.     Now,

one time after a debate with Dingell, my wife and I were sitting

with Congressman and Mrs. DingeB. and my wife said to them, "Mr.

Dingle, doesn't it seem strange to you that here you are discuss­

ing issues of the care of the sick and surgery and hospitals in

which you should respect the opinions of great authorities in the
                                                                       83




field who are only trying for the public good, how can you know

this?"     And he said, "Mrs. Fishbein, in my job I have to know

everything."     Well, the man is obviously wild to make a remark

like that.     And so this goes on with many other people.   This is

the nature of politics, the way it works, and I think Copeland,

for his time, did an excellent job.     I don't by that say that he

knew all about what he was trying to do, but he led the fight

and he won it.    And he won it because the best people in the

field working for the good of the public were behind him.      If

they had been opposed to him, he couldn't have won that fight.



Mr. J.:

How did the AMA feel in the 1930s about homeopathic medicine in

general?



Dr. F.:
Well, it was on the way out.    It was already on the way out.

When you read my article on homeopathy in my American Mercury, in

my book, Medical Follies, you will see that homeopathy was already

on the way out.    Now, it left some disastrous relics behind.      They

are not really disastrous anymore, but before that time, they were

disastrous.    For instance, people were so impressed with homeo­

pathy which was itself a reaction against the tremendous doses of

powerful drugs the doctors were prescribing, that they gave great

sums of money to homeopathy and they established chairs as permanent
                                                                          84




endowments as long as lectures on homeopathy continued to be

given in those schools.     So you have lectures on homeopathy in

Michigan now.    They left so much money at the University of

Michigan for a homeopathic school that there are still lectures;

the same way at the Philadelphia College and the same way the

Fifth Avenue Homeopathic Hospital.      To bold the endowments, you

have to give a lecture.     You can tell the truth about it, but you

still have to lecture on it; so it's not totally lost.       The finest

monument in the great cemetery in Paris, Lachaise Cemetery, where

all the greats of Paris are buried, is the monument of Samuel

Christian Frederick Hahnemann; he's got the finest tombstone in

the whole place.



Mr. J.:

You don't feel then that the AMA had any qualms about Copeland

because he was a homeopath?



Dr. F.:
Oh, no.   No.   No.   The fact of the matter is •••what 1 s the present

state of osteopathy••• the same way.     The osteopaths are gradually

going to merge themselves into the mainstream of medicine.       They

will disappear as such.     Their schools will become medical schools.

Now, I've had many a battle on the field, but I went to speak two

years ago for the Atlantic Coast Osteopathic Association, and I

said to them in opening-, address:       "I'm glad to speak to you,
                                                                        85




gentlemen, while you are still here because you are educating your­

self out of this business."    I said, "The more medicine you learn,

the less osteopathy will you practise."



Mr. J.:

Well, the reason I brought that up is that at one point in the

course of this struggle for revision•••



Dr. F.:

Yeah, now you know that osteopaths were in the war authorized to

be commissioned as doctors in the Army provided they passed the

examination, but they never could pass the examination because

they didn't teach preventive medicine.    Then they began teaching

preventive medicine since the war, so they'll gradually become

doctors.    There are only five schools left, I think.



Mr. J.:

Well, the reason I brought that up is that at one point in this

struggle for the new law, Dr. Woodward told a Congressional hear­

ing in regard to drug law revision that the AMA favored a federal

pharmacopeia in lieu of the standards in the bill then, such as the

u. s.   Pharmacopeia and the National Formulary.   I wondered whether

his aim in this direction was because Copeland had put in the

Homeopathic Pharmacopeia as a standard?
                                                                        86



Dr. F.:

No, but you see, when you have laws passed, you cannot make them

retroactive; you can not go back and destroy things that you have

permitted; you have "grandfather clauses," you know, see?     So,

that naturally, Copeland would want the Homeopathic Pharmacopeia.

Now, at the present time, we have the United States Pharmacopeia

and the National Formulary in our legal standards.     The book that

the doctors probably refer to most is not the United States Pharma­

copeia and not the National Formulary; druggists refer to those,

pharmacists; the doctors usually refer to the Physician's Desk

Reference, PDR, or they refer to New and Non-Official Remedies

and more recently Acceptable Drugs, and then they refer to various

other books when they are going to look up drugs.     And this is one

of the big battles that is coming up now since the President recom­

mended in his last health message that the federal government pre­

pare a compendium of drugs.     This is going to be bitterly fought

and discussed back and forth because there are many issues involved.

It's not that simple.     I myself have worked on the epitome of the

u. s.   Pbarmacopeia, on Useful Drugs, New and Non-Official Remedies

and on many other works, lists of drugs of various kinds and on the

u. s.   Pharmacopeia.   And someday, perhaps, there may be a clarifi­

cation of this whole principle because there is also an International

Pharmacopeia prepared by the World Health Organization and each

country has its own pharmacopeia.     Now the International does not

become acceptable until each country adopts it separately.     Then,
                                                                      87



the names vary from country to country, and there are many other

factors involved so that I'm not surprised that they included the

Homeopathic Pharmacopeia any more than I would be surprised, am

surprised, today that they say MDs and osteopaths and leave out

the chiropractors.   The time will never come when they will include

the chiropractors, but the time will come when the osteopaths will

be included with doctors as doctors.



Mr. J.:

How would you evaluate the effect on the public in regard to a new

drug law and on the public in general, I suppose, of the so-called

"guinea pig" muckraking books like Schlink's and t(allet's 2!!_

Hundred Million Guinea Pigs?



Dr. F.:
The Hundred Million Guinea Pigs was an exaggerated book and ap­

proached with a wrong point of view.   The point of view was defi­

nitely to find something wrong with everything if you possibly

can, you see.   Look for the bad and avoid the good.   Now, similarly,

all Morton Mintz' articles are definitely written to capitalize on

the muckraking field.   Now, this is not the same as, let us say, a
                 ,
legitimate expose.   I believe that John Lear even in the Saturday

Review whom I read regularly is guided often by the fact that he

is not a doctor and he inclines to accept as his consultants the

fellows who think the way he does and therefore he comes out with
                                                                      88




a biased point of view.   Now, similarly, the opposition gets for

their experts the people who think the way they do.     And this is

the same thing as I referred to in influencing legislation, by put­

ting on your groups all people who believe along the same lines.



Mr. J.:
Well, do you feel that these works as a whole serve any useful

purpose?



Dr. F.:
They serve the same purpose as a gadfly.     I was once called by Glenn

Frank when he was President of the University of Wisconsin "gadfly

of American medicine" because when I saw evil, I took after it

whether it was doctors or who it was.     If I saw something that I

thought ought to be exposed or attacked, I went after it.     For

instance, when Thurman Arnold published that long list of doctors

who were taking rebates from opticians for prescribing eye glases,

I published all those doctors in the magazine including some mem­

bers of the House of Delegates.    This would be considered, in most

organizational groups, fatal to any kind of a leader to start ex­

posing some of his own representatives.    You are not supposed to do

that, but I had never hesitated.   And similarly when the government

insisted that doctors could prescribe whiskey, but they were limited

to so many prescriptions per year, per month, and if they were

caught to giving prescriptions for whiskey that were not warranted,
                                                                    89




they could have their right to prescribe removed, I printed the

name of every doctor who got his right to prescribe removed, in­

cluding several, many officers of the AMA, including my own

brother who was a doctor in a hotel and the hotel manager asked

him to get him a pint of whiskey and he got him a pint of whiskey,

therefore, he prescribed a pint of whiskey.     This is the kind of

game that you have to play straight across the board.     If you get

involved, you're gone.     I mean, if you start making exceptions,

political exceptions or any other kind, you might as well give up

and let somebody else do the job.



Mr. J.:

Well, this is a related matter••• How would you evaluate groups

like Consumers·• Research in the 1930s?



Dr. F.:
They had a place.     They had a place; they still have a place.     One

would wish that they could approach it in a perhaps a more scienti­

fic manner, that's the best word I can use.     I think they were

honest enough, but their point of view is wrong ••• and so many of

the statements they make, you see.     Now let us say, we're going

to buy a radio.     You and I are each going out to buy a radio.     I

see a radio that sells for $3.50; it's in a plastic case; it's no

ornament, certainly, but it plays pretty well for what a radio

should play like.    Another fellow goes out and he likes the radio,
                                                                         90



but he wants his in an aluminum case with silver trimmings and

that will cost him $21.00.    Now, who am I to say that if he

wants the $21.00 radio he shouldn't have it?          No.   They don't

say that.   They don't even say this one has extra values in the

cabinet, etc.    They don't say that.     They say, "You would be

foolish to spend $21.00 for this radio since the $3.50 radio

plays just as well."    Now, they go on the basis, therefore, that

all you buy that radio for is because it can play.          But that

isn't why you buy that.   Why have I got this TV here and a color

TV in that room and a little bit of a portable in the other room

for my secretaries to look at when there's a baseball game or

something they want to see?    They are all connected to the out­

side antennae.   This one operates by remote controls.         So I was

listening all yesterday afternoon to the Rusk bearings because

that was very invaluable to me to catch those points of view and

I buy this one because it's got a big screen••• very good for

watching football games, you see.       It's not color, though, be­

cause for that purpose, I don't need color.



Mr. J.:
Well, these organizations, particularly, the Consumers' Research,

were very critical all through the      1 30s   about the current status,

continuing status, of the drug bill.       I wonder if you think they

were overly critical?
                                                                                91




      Dr. F.:

      No.   They were defending their point of view.   Now, their point of

      view was over-critical, but that's their point of view.      Now,   my

      point of view was "You've got to live with this.      You can't de­

      stroy all the drug industry.    You can't destroy all the household

      remedy industry."   I still believe that household remedies are

      absolutely a necessity in our country today unless we are willing

      to start to raise a low class of doctors who will treat home

      cases and no others.   That's what the Russians do.     The Russians

      put a big mass of doctors in a central area, and they are not

      particularly well trained; they call them "feldhers•.      They are

      doctors that have had a year of medicine on top of a year of

      nursing, something like that.



      Mr. J.:

      What are your feelings about Franklin Roosevelt?      How seriously

      was he concerned with the food and drug reforms?



      Dr. F.:
      He wasn't too much concerned personally with food and drug reform•••

      No.   He was leaving that pretty well to the experts in the field

      who worked with him.   Franklin Roosevelt wasn't.     Theodore'!!!,, on

      account of the whiskey, and Taft was on account of getting bour­

      bon in as well as Scotch.   These are all factors that enter in

      but Taft came from Cincinnati where the bourbon was big, and it had




Iii
                                                                        92




been ignored by Wiley and Wiley's father made corn liquor.       It

was a very interesting thing.     When Wiley came in, they switched

their definition to include corn liquor.     Well, these are all

funny things; I don't think Wiley was dishonest.      He was a very

honest man.   These things are governed by personal factors as all

life is.   But Franklin Roosevelt••• Food and Drug legislation was

not his primary concern.     His primary concern ••• biologics maybe.

I was involved with Franklin Roosevelt on the poliomyelitis
thing because I was among the very first to be in the advisory

boards on polio, and I'm even now called Special Asststant to the

President on medical affairs, so that I've followed this all very

closely.   Franklin Roosevelt was not much more than casually in­

terested in the whole socialized medicine issue.      The backing

there was from Mrs. Roosevelt, Harry Hopkins, Anna Rosenberg, Ma

Perkins, Mrs. Perkins.     These were the people who had that issue

in hand.   Now they were welfare workers.    And the situation be­

tween welfare workers and doctors is still a situation; always

will be.   The approach is different.



Mr. J.:
Was there much continuing cooperation and communication between

the AMA and the Food and Drug Administration in the 1930s, and

20s for that matter?
                                                                        93



Dr. F.:

There always has been and always will be.         That we can say that•••

there's bound to be by the very nature of the mission of the Food

and Drug Administration and the mission of the medical profession.

There is bound to be.   Since the time when Percival wrote the

Principles of Ethics, back in 1803, in which he specified the

duties of the doctors, the duties of the pharmacists, he pointed

out that they must work together.   They have to work together.

And now, they've brought into that the physical therapists and

the devices and the cosmetics and each time that one of these

things developed, we improved the law to cover it.



Mr. J.:

Well, would you say that the AMA was generally satisfied with

the operation of FDA in the '20s and   1   30s?



Dr. F.:

We saw its weaknesses and we saw its strengths, I mean.        But it

was operating according to the law and the interpretations placed

upon the law and you could say that they weren't active enough•••

which you could say about every regulatory agency in the United

States.   When you take these regulatory agencies, and you do not

give them money enough to do the job that the law requires them

to do, you can expect that they will be weak in performance.

Now, we are supposed to have inspectors touring into every drug
                                                                    94




manufacturing plant and seizing all sub-standard products.   Why

just as no state in the Union yet has satisfactorily enforced

the Medical Practice Act--not one state--because what state is

going to give you enough money to enforce the Medical Practice

Act?   This requires a police force that's bigger than the police

force that tries to keep the streets safe.



Mr. J •:
Well, I think you have answered what I was asking.



Dr. F.:

I've written three editorials in the last two years pointing out

that unless you give money to the Food and Drug Administration,

it's folly to pass laws that they can't enforce simply because

they have no personnel.



Mr. J.:

I was thinking, I suppose, specifically of Walter Campbell •••Wiley
himself was very critical of Campbell's regime.



Dr. F.:
I know;·but, then Wiley was by that time working for a periodical

where he could make pot shots and that was his stock in trade.

Now, bear in mind, that it's always better to be able to say that

we do not comply with the law; our standards are far above govemment
                                                                     95




standards, and that was :1:aow Good Housekeeping made its reputation.

That's where I introduced the seals in the AMA and their reputation

was better, too.



Mr. J.:
But you would generally say he did a good job.



Dr. F.:
Oh, they do the best job they can under the circumstances.       The same

thing applies to Larrick.     Larrick was a good Food and Drug Admini­

strator; be got along with a minimum of trouble.      And so, finally,

he's out and in comes Goddard, and the first thing a new broom does

is sweep clean.     He gets bot and he starts to tear the world apart.

Suddenly, he discovers you can't do that.       You can't keep up that

pace.     You make too many enemies too fast.    If you make enemies one
at a time and knock them off as you make them, that's all right, but

when they begin coming in droves, you're in lots of trouble.



Mr. J.:
In regard to the legislative debate owr the location of power to

supervise medicine advertising, did the AMA have any preference be­

tween the Federal Trade Conmission and the Food and Drug Administration?



Dr. F.:
I don't know that as an official policy they did.      I don't think so.
                                                                 96




I think we work with whatever the government gives us to work with.



Mr. J.:

Did you have any personal preference?



Dr. F.:

I have, at times, taken pot shots at government officials and I

don't hesitate to do it now as well as in the past.     I once said

that••• I once went down to Washington to confer with two very high

officials and I said to one of them, ••• He wanted to know, "What can

I do to bring this particular department into line with the medical

profession so it will have the confidence to work with us?"     And I

said, "I will give you the names of thirty employees, and if you

get rid of them you'll be, at least, on the way, because these

are permanently and definitely opposed to whatever the medical

profession does.    They are antagonists; they are not serving the

medical profession and the public.     They are antagonists of the

medical profession."    So he said to me, this man, "I have 30,000

employees under me and I can't fire one of them.     They are all on

Civil Service and I have to bring charges, and I can't bring any

charges that will have any weight with the Civil Service Commis­

sion.     I can say this man differs with a lot of people but then

everybody differs with a lot."    Now, on another occasion, I was

asked by Mayor Kennely here in Chicago to clean up many great

abuses in the Municipal Tuberculosis Sanitorium, and I appointed
                                                                   97




a commission to work with me.    One thing you learn is don't try to

work alone.    Get at least a few more people with you.    And I

selected a commission and we went out there and inspected and I

brought back to Mayor Kennely the names of 90 people.      And I

said, "You've got to fire these whole 90.    They are corrupt;

they are doing a bad job and it's impossible to clean up the

situation.    You'd better get rid of these 90 people."    He

said, "If I do that, the aldermen will vote me out of office."

I said, "I'm very sorry, but that's where we stand."      So he

went and he fired the 90 of them and then the aldermen refused

to make the appropriation for the Municipal Tuberculosis Sani­

torium.   So he called on Ernest Irons and me to come down again

and we came down and be said, "What'll I do now?"   And I said,

"You go to the aldermen and tell them that unless they pass this

appropriation, there will be 2,000 open cases of tuberculosis on

the streets of Chicago tomorrow."   And he told them and they

passed his appropriation and gave him a million dollars extra.

So that shows you that if you have the guts and you're right,

you can fight it through.   But down in Washington that's very

hard to do.



Mr. J.:
Well, you or the AMA did not regard this issue as crucial as to

whether the advertising was located in one agency or the other?
                                                                         98



Dr. F.:
Not a particle.     Because actually, they are moving those agencies
all the time.     They just got through shuffling them all over again.

They shuffle them every once in a while, and I suppose you could

take it as a Washington aphorism that "When in trouble, move the

agencies around."    That's not too typical.



Mr. J.:
In the 1930's, it was rumored that the AMA would like the regula­

tion of food and drugs to be placed in a public health service •••



Dr. F.:
Well, part of it was and part of it wasn't.     The biologics, they

put in the Public Health Service, and the other things went into

the FDA.   You see and now there is a big move on to move the

biologics into the FDA and out of the Public Health Service.     So

that probably a special regulatory agency is better than part in

the Public Health Serrice.     It was felt that the FDA wasn't capable

of regulating biologics.     Now, they've just gotten through this

business where ••• they 1 have a big battle right now, as you no doubt

know, over the fact that they took boys who were coU1Bissioned in

the Public Health Service and loaned them to Goddard for the FDA

and now there's a big holler going on that he's got to give these

back to the Public Health Service and that'll cripple his agency.

He can't get the people to do his work.     You see, this is a very
                                                                      99



difficult••• I have the greatest sympathy with these people when

they're working under such a situation.



Mr. J.:

Well, in regard to this particular rumor, the assertion was that

if regulation of drugs was moved into the Public Health Service,

the American Medical Association would have more say-so.



Dr. F.:

AMA hasn't got anymore say-so with the Public Health Service that

it has with anybody else.   And they never did have.    I'll recite

an incident which I have recited once before.     I was down there

visiting Tom Parran with whom I worked very closely on many mat­

ters, and the telephone rang of Tom's and he said, after while,

he said, "Well, Senator, I have a man in the office who knows

more about that than anybody else.     I'll let him talk to you."

And a voice said, "This is Senator Connally of Texas."     And, he

said, "I've been trying to get the Food and Drug Administration

to release and take an interest in a project which is in my home

county and is known as 'Crazy Crystals'."    And he said, "Doctor,"

he said, "What can we do about that?    Would you like to come down

there and make some investigations?    Our county would bear the

expenses."   I said, "Senator, I've just published a complete ex­

pose of that product."   I said, "That's just mineral water forti­

fied with epsom salts--just like Pluto Water used to be.     We can't
                                                                       100




do anything with that kind of thing."      He said, "Well ••• ," bumble,

"why?"     He was just speechless and I finally hung up and Tom

Parran said, "I wouldn't have dared to say that to him."       Now,

that's a very important incident.     A   public official has got to

be reasonably congenial to the legislators.      Look what the Foun­

tain Committee is trying to do to the NIH.       Look at what each of

these agencies ••• ! will defend a public agency any time if it's

under fire and I think it's political.



Mr. J.:

Indeed it was asserted in the early 30 1 s that Congressional pres­

sure got this "Crazy Crystals" out of the FDA's old Chamber of

Horrors.



Dr. F.:

Yeah.     Well, that can be powerful pressure.   Tom Taggart who

owned Pluto Water was the head of the Democratic party in the state

of Indiana and was a neighbor of mine.      He used to buy votes from

the Negroes at a dollar apiece.     He was terrific, but be owned

Pluto Water.    Those are things that mix together, you know.



Mr. J.:

Now, we've talked a little bit about Elixir Sulfanilamide •••
                                                                101



Dr. F.:

That was the key thing just as thalidomide was in the current

bill.     You can't get away from it.



Mr. J.:

Do you feel this bill would have passed without the sulfanila­
mide incident?



Dr. F.:

Oh, it would have passed but not that quickly.       It wouldn't have

had as much force.    Without the thalidomide disaster the bill that

Kefauver forced through would never have been the bill that it is

now.    That's the thing that scared the p,ople.



Mr. J.:

How, as you remember, how did the AMA evaluate the new drug law

as it was finally passed in 1938?



Dr. F.:
Well, I think I said before that was the best law they could pass

at that time.    That's all.   You see, your laws are passed for the

times in which they occur.     Then they begin working on them; they

either amend them and make them better or amend them and cut out

their guts if they have too much.       The bills are not written,

they are rewritten and amended and, you know, they don't revoke
                                                                   102




laws.     They revoke a law once in a long time like it takes 33

states to revoke prohibition, for instance; things like that.

You've got to keep working at it.     This is a continuous process

and it is borne on by all the factors of life, economics, socio­

logical, religious.    Look at this difficulty we're having now

about the religious business with the prayers.     There's a joke I

read yesterday that I love.     Five little boys in the schoolroom

kneeling down in the comer and the teacher rushes over and says,

"What are you little boys doing?"    And a little boy looks up and

says, "We're shooting craps."     "Oh", ske says, "that's all right.

Don't pray."    That's just the way it goes.



Mr. J.:
As you phrased it, this was as good a law as was possible.



Dr. F.:
As good a law as you could get at that time.     We all bad ideas and

the same thing applies to the Hill-Burton Act.     The Hill-Burton

Act is continually being changed.    Right now, the Hill-Burton Act,

which was passed to build new hospitals in areas that didn't have

any, is now being pointed to to bring up-to-date the old hospitals

that are not good anymore.    You see, we are in a changing, con­

tinuously changing, world and changing with increasing rapidity

and scope.
                                                                   103




Mr. J.:

Do you feel that the AMA can take some credit for the passage of

this 1938 law?



Dr. F.:

Oh, yes.   Oh, we were out for it in a big way.       We supported it

in every way.     We had many ways of supporting something.    When we

want to support it, we can do it.     We can do it.    We can put a

lot of pressure behind it, the doctors I'm speaking about or the

AMA, because the doctors do this individually as well as in the
AMA.   Doctors in county societies, state societies, specialty

organizations, doctors in hospital groups ••• all sorts of groups.

Medicine is the most organized profession there is in the country

today, but it is not yet organized fully and satisfactorily for

the delivery of medical service.     I keep on harping on this in my
editorials.     But for organization, for maintenance of standards,

education, for extension of education, for ethical standards, all

that sort of stuff, we are very well-organized.



Mr. J.:

Let me ask you a general question.     Do you feel that the AMA has

ambivalent feelings about supporting regulatory legislation which

touches on the field of medicine?
                                                                     104




Dr. F.:
Not the AMA as such, but many doctors have ambivalent feelings

toward those things, and they don't hesitate to express them­

selves in or out of the AMA.     Let us say, there are certain num­

bers of doctors who have not yet given in to the Medicare Law.

They will not practice under Medicare; nobody can make them.

And they say to their patients, "When I treat you, you pay me.

I'm not going to get my money from the government."      And they

say, "When you go to the hospital, that's between you and the

hospital.     I won't have anything to do with it."   This goes on

and on this way.     Any doctor has a right, you know; he's given the

right to practice as be wishes.     For instance, he is given the

right in most of the states to practice medicine and surgery.

Well, in most of the states, 901 of them are incompetent to

practice surgery, but they've got the license to practice sur•

gery.     Now, why do they have the license?   Because if a rail-

road train had a wreck, any doctor that got there first would

have to practice surgery to save life even though he was not a

surgeon.     He wasn't qualified as a surgeon, he would still have

to practice surgery.     I've had them, myself, and I'm not in

practice.



Mr. J.:

But you don't feel the organization, the AMA as an organization,

has ambivalent feelings?
                                                                      105



Dr. F.:

The AMA is a law-abiding organization, and they say about a law

when it's passed, "If this is the law, we will obey the law.

That we will continue to work to amend the law, but we will

obey the law, even though we don't believe that it was a good

law."     Everybody has to say that.   You are either law-abiding

or you're not law-abiding.     Now if you are a law-abiding citi­

zen, you obey the law.     Incidently, the Constitution of the

United States says that all powers not specifically delegated

by this Constitution to the federal government shall adhere to

the individual states.     So in many areas, the states, that in­

cludes medicine; medicine is a part of the police power of the

individual states.     There is no federal license, no federal con­

trols on hospitals.     Federal controls come only when you cross

state lines.    This makes it a difficult country to work in for

law-makers and for police p011ers and regulations, but, let us

say that when you see all the rest of the governments in the

world, you figure that this was so far ahead of the rest of

them that you wouldn't have anything to do with those others.



Mr. J.:
Did the AMA have any reservations about the New Deal as a whole?

Roosevelt did a number of things that touched medicine.
                                                                        106




Dr. F.:

Oh, yes, you see.     It did have many reservations about Roosevelt

and the New Deal.     I've got a hundred books on Roosevelt, besides

all sorts of relationships to him that have come out in my book,

some of them.     We had reservations.     We considered Roosevelt a

terrific opportunist, a terrifically ambitious man.        You would

have to be the kind of man Roosevelt was to run for four terms

and knowing that you were dead on your feet when you ran for the

last one.     He knew, as well as anybody knows, his doctors knew it

too, that he wasn't going to       last, but he went right ahead just

the same.     I talked with his doctors, consulted hospital reports.

This was a man who was dying on1his feet.       Well, what are you

going to do?     Look at Woodrow Wilson.    He was dead for all prac­

tical purposes, and his wife and his secretary were running the

government.     We have not solved that particular question in any

field of life because how do you make a doctor stop working when

he's already incompetent?     Sauerbruch was incompetent and he

continued to do major surgery, and finally be had a boy on the

table and he cut him from here down to the bottom and looked at

it and said:     "Who did that?"   Well, he shouldn't have been prac­

ticing surgery.     Some one should have been able to stop him.

They finally did.     But I have seen doctors whom I knew were fail­

ing in their bearing take out a stethoscope and listen.       Well,

they couldn't hear anything.       I knew he couldn't hear because he

couldn't hear a bridge bid when I made it so he couldn't••• Ah,
                                                                      107



these are very delicate questions which as long as there are

people, there are going to remain these unsolved questions.      You're

dealing with the greatest variable there is and that's people.

And so you do the best you can.      And we make continuous progress.

Now, I point out in a little editorial I just wrote the other day

that we've just passed the law to control violence in the streets

which will demand an expenditure of roughly, let us say, two and

a half billion dollars.      And the President just brought in a health

message which has some wonderful reforms in it, and it will require

two and a half billion dollars.      "Now," I said, "what is the use of

spending two and a half billion to save a certain number of lives

and a certain number from pain and suffering when the violence in

the streets will destroy just about that same number of lives

and produce more pain and suffering.      Shouldn't we clean up the

violence in the streets before we try to print a new drug compen­

dium?"      This is a very delicate question.



Mr.   J.:

In asking about Roosevelt.      I wondered whether you felt that•••



Dr. F.:
Now, bear in mind I voted for Roosevelt, I don't mind saying.         I

felt his opposition wasn't very good.      We have to chose a man.

Who would have thought when we elected Johnson that he was going

to be what Johnson is doing now?
                                                                    108



Mr. J.:

I wondered whether you or the organization felt that Roosevelt •••



Dr. F.:
We don't come out for a candidate.



Mr. J.:

No.   I was wondering whether you felt that he would be susceptible

to moves toward more socialization of medicine?



Dr. F.:

We knew exactly what his ideas were and where he was going because,

you see, this is in my book, too.    I don't mind telling you.

Roosevelt's son married Harvey Cushing's daughter and during that

period, when they were still married, Harvey Cushing spent every

weekend in the White House with the President, and I have many

letters from Harvey Cushing.   I knew what the trends were.      Harvey

Cushing wrote an essay which I printed first in the Journal called

"Medicine at the Crossroads," in which he pointed out that he had

to recognize that there were movements going on.    He wrote me a

letter which I printed also in which he said, "You can do more

than anybody else in your position to fix this, that or the other."

We were aware of things.   But '-ear in mind one more thought and

that is tha·t an employee of an organization which I was ••• I was an

employee of the Board of Trustees.   The House of Delegates makes
                                                               109




the policies; the Board of Trustees implements the policies through

the employees whom they employ.    I always have the right to quit if

I didn't want to implement those policies.    But I can say, with all

honesty, that I believe that you can only go just so fast in social

legislation, otherwise, you have a revolution and a revolution is a

disastrous thing for a country.



Mr. J.:

Do   you think in the area of medicine that Dr. Cushing was a great

influence on Roosevelt?



Dr. F.:

He was one of the greatest men we've ever had and a tremendous

influence.   There's his picture over there, the lower one.



Mr. J.:

Do you think that Cushing may well have exercised some influence

on Roosevelt?



Dr. F.:

He did a great deal.   I believe that without Cushing there we might

have had compulsory sickness insurance included in the first Social

Security Act.
                                                                      110




    Mr. J.:
    Oh, really?



    Dr. F.:

    I think be was that strong.   If you want to read John Fulton's

    Life of Harvey Cushing, you'll see a lot of the correspondence

    and the interchange in that book which will show you that that

    was the case.



    Mr. J.:
    In 1938, I believe you attended a conference on national health

    problems.



    Dr. F.:

    National Health Conference.   You see.   I   was •••




    Mr. J.:
    Do you remember anything that might be of interest there?



    Dr. F.:

    Oh, lots of things.   The first thing that happened in that confer­
•   ence when I got down there was I discovered that Miss Josephine

    Roche who had called that conference had employed Emest Lindley

    as press release man for it, and he had very carefully prepared

    all the government speeches for press releases and he hadn't one
                                                                        111




speech prepared for a press release on the opposite side.        And I

went into the Press Room, and I began storming around and raising

hell, and as a result of which, we prepared our press releases and

we got them released by the same press release agency which released

the others.     And then they had a little meeting at dinner which

Josephine Roche gave just for me and she didn't have any of my

associates there, just me.     And she had about fifteen guys that

got up and made speeches to me asking me to change my point of

view, and all this and that and I got up and said, "Gentlemen and

ladies, regardless of whether I would change my point of view, I

cannot.   I speak for the Board of Trustees which in turn speaks

for the House of Delegates.     They make the policies.     I listen.

I listen to everything."     And I reminded them that a year before

I had been to a meeting of the American Public Health Association

in Indianapolis where they had a symposium on socialized medicine.

The speakers were Homer Nichols, of New York, Michael Davis,

Donald Armstrong and then I was the last speaker.     Three guys

for it and one against and I was the last speaker.        And they all

got up and gave me unshirted hell and I made my speech and then

they said, "Is there any discussion?"     They each got up and dis­

cussed it over again.    Then they said to me, "Do you have any

discussion?"    I said, "No special discussion.   I'm going to tell

you a story."    I said, "When I was raised here in Indianapolis,

there was a dog fancier who lived near us and a fellow came in

there and wanted to buy a rat terrier, and they picked him out a
                                                                         112



rat terrier and he said, "Can he catch rats?"         The dog fancier said,

"Oh, he's a great rat terrier."      Well, they took him around behind

a restaurant, and they were going to see if he could catch rats,

and a great big rat came out and began nibbling at the garbage,

and the dog took one look at him and turned his back, and the fel­

low said, ,well, what about that?"       The dog fancier said, "That's

one of our rats, but just let a strange rat come in here and

you 1 11 see what will happen to him."    And I said, "The strange

rat hasn't got a chance in an organization of this kind."



Mr.    J.:

Well, I gather that you were not too happy with the conclusions

or the recommendations of this commission in 1938 which we were

talking about.



Dr. F.:
Well, it wasn't the question of me ever being happy or unhappy there,

see.     I'm happy all the time.   I'm a happy guy.    I make do with what

I have to work with and then I do my job.      I am not a great believer

in either Socialism or Cormnunism.     I am strictly a private enter­

prise man, and I believe that the competitive system does more for

people than any other system and does more for any country.        And

the mere fact that most of these countries that have gone on these

plans are working toward our plan indicates that we have the greater

results.     Now, we may have ••• we may hurt a lot of people on the way
                                                                    113




up; we do that, but we shouldn't neglect them.



Mr. J.:

Well, you felt that the commission was moving toward Socialism?



Dr. F.:

Definitely.     Now you see the ••• you read both the majority report

and the various minority reports of the Conunittee on the Cost of

Medical Care in 1932.     That was the first one.   They were defin­

itely moving in that direction.     I have always said and I've said

it again and again, "It should be possible with American ingenuity

and wealth to develop a system peculiarly adapted to the American

way of life."     I think the Medicare Law comes nearest to that than

anything we have reached for yet.     It provides for the basic things

that we require:     free choice of doctor, free choice of hospital,

care of those financially unable to take care of themselves and

the recognition that whenever a situation gets too big to be

handled privately, the government steps in and helps.      That's the

basic system.     I'm still for that, you see.
                                    114


                            Index



Abrams, Albert, 10, 13-15

Abt, Isaac, 1-2

Alinsky, Saul, 69

Ambruster, Howard, 47

American Mercury, 19-21, 23-25

Armstrong, Donald, 111

Arnold Thurman, 88

Arrowsmith, 28-36



Baker, Norman, 10, 12

Bernstein, Maurice, 14-15

Billings, Frank, 1-2, 21

Brau, Will, 21

Brinkley, John R., 9-10, 16

Bruce, David, 29

Burrow, James, 60-66



Campbell, Walter, 94

Carlson, Anton J., 41

Castle, Irene, 82

Chain, Ernst B., 19

chiropractic, 14, 24, 87

Clark, Percy Lemen, 40
                                                               115



Coca Cola, 75

Connally, Thomas, 99-100

Consumer's Research, 87-91

Cooper, Snake Oil, 11

Copeland, Royals., 59, 80-82, 84-86

Cormack, Mart, 25

Cost of Medical Care, Coumittee on the, 67-70, 113

Cramp, Arthur, 7-8, 15-19, 26, 33, 46

Crazy Crystals, 99-100

Cross, Wilbur, 31

Cushing, Harvey, 108-10



Davies, Marion, 82

Davis, Michael, 111

Debs, Eugene, 30, 33-35

DeKruif, Paul, 25, 27-35

Dingell, John D., Jr., 81-83

Dodson, John M., 21

Dowling, Oscar, 8



Ehrlich, Paul, 28

Elixir Sulfanilamide, 48, 54-56, 100-101



Field, Oliver, 18

Fishbein, Mprris, education, l; early association with AMA, 1-5;
                                                              116



Fishbein, Morris, (cont.), campaign against quackery, 7-26;

  association with Mencken, 23-26; with Lewis and DeKruif,

  27-36; and food and drug law revision, 48-59, 70-74, 80-81,

  85-109; and Hill-Burton Act, 52, 102; on 1938 National Health

  Conference, 110-ll

Fleming, Alexander, 29

Florey, Howard W., 29

Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938, 48-59, 70-74, 80-81, 85-109

Ford, Henry, 40

Fulton, John, 110



Geritol, 79-80

Goddard, James L., 95, 98

Gorgas, William c., 6

Greene, Frederick R., 20-21



Hadacol, 80

Hahnemann, s.c.F., 84

Halling, Bliss O., 18

Hamilton, John B., 3

Hansen, Harry, 31

Harcourt, Alfred, 36

Hazelhurst, Franklin, 24

Hearst, William Randolph, 80-82

Hecht, Ben, 25-26
                                 117



Hektoen, Ludwig, 1, 3-4, 12-13

Hill-Burton Act, 52, 102

Hirschberger, Leonard K., 24

Holmes, Bayard, 3-4

homeopathy, 83-87

Hopkins, Harry, 92

Hoxsey, Harry, 9-12, 73

Hunt, Reed, 59

Hunter, John, 28

Hyde, E. E., 1

Hygeia, 19-23



Irons, Ernest, 97

Ivy, Andrew, 41-42



Jenner, Edward, 28-29



Kalle~, Arthur, 87

Kefauver, Estes, 101

Koch, Robert, 29

Krebiozen, 40-42



Larrick, George, 95

Lear, John, 87

Lewis, Sinclair, 25-26, 28-36
                                             118



Lindley, Ernest, 110-11

Lister, Joseph, 28

Listerine, 74

Long, Perrin, 54

Lydstrom, G. Frank, 3-4



~    Street, 30-31

Mankwitz, Herman, 26

McFadden, Bernar, 22

Mencken, H. L., 20, 23-26

Mendel, Lafayette, 59

Microbe Hunters, 28-29

Miller, Orville, 40

Millikan, Robert, 14

Mintz, Morton, 87

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley, 29

Jprse. Wayne, 81

Murray, James E., 81

Nabarrow, David N., 29

Nathan, George Jean, 26

National Health Conference of 1938, 110-13

Nichols, Homer, 111



osteopathy, 84-85
                                                        119



Palmer, B. J., 14

Parran, Thomas, 99-100

Pasteur, Louis, 28

Patten, John, 8-9

Pearl, Raymond, 24

Pepper, Claude, 81

Perkins, Frances, 92

Petrolagar, 76

Physical Culture, 22

Pluto Water, 101

Pure Food and Drugs Act of 1906, 37-38, 42, 54, 91-95



Reader's Digest, 22

Robertson, John Dill, 20

Roche, Josephine, 110

Roosevelt, Franklin D., 91-92, 105-10

Roosevelt, Mrs. Franklin D., 92

Roosevelt, Theodore, 54, 91

Rosenberg, Anna, 92

Rosenow, E.   c.,   12

Rush, Benjamin, 12



Samuels, Professor, 10

Schlink, F. J., 87

Similac, 76
                                               120


Simmons, George H., 1-4, 6, 8, 16-20

Smith, Harrison, 36

Solis Cohen, Solomon, 7

Solmann, Torald, 59

Sulfanilamide, Elixir of, 48, 54-56, 100-101



Taft, William H., 54, 91-92

Taggart, Tom, 100

Taussig, Helen, 60

Today's Health, 22

Tugwell, Rexford G., 44, 73-74

Turk, Fenton B., 13



Vaughan, Victor, 20-21



Wagner, Robert, 81

Wallace, DeWitt, 22

Welles, Orson, 15

Wheeler-Dea Act, 44, 48

Wilbur, Ray Lyman, 68

Wiley, Harvey   w.,   92, 94-95

Wilson, Woodrow, 5-7, 106

Wine of Cardui, 8-9

Woodward, William     c.,   60, 85