DEADLY DOPES AND THE MEDICAL PROFESSION


There would, perhaps, be no objection to the medical professions obtaining a monopoly of treatment if the orthodox treatments were safe and reliable. They are nothing of the kind, and Parliament and the nation will probably once more oppose with scorn and determination the attempts of the great medical trade union to destroy every alternative of treatment by means of a Bill with a cunningly worded and misleading title.


THE Medical World of December 7th, 1934, contained an article as follows:-.

CINCHOPHEN (ATOPHAN) POISONING.

“Cinchophen, under the trade name of Atophan has been extensively advertised and sold in England as a remedy for gout and rheumatism. The liability to the production of toxic jaundice, sometimes fatal, has been noticed for some years, hence intermittent administration of the drug, to avoid dangerous accumulation, is recommended. Yet, even when this method has been followed and small quantities taken, fatalities still occur.

“The latest fatality was the subject of an inquest at Birmingham. An electrician, aged 31, was given atophan for sciatica and gout. Jaundice developed and caused death. At the necropsy acute yellow atrophy of the liver was found. His physician said that he had never known ill effects from the use of the drug.

“Dr. K. Douglas Wilkinson, Professor of Pharmacology, Birmingham University, gave evidence. He said that he used the drug fairly frequently, but with considerable caution. There had been more than fifty recorded deaths, but there must have been other cases. He considered that the drug should be scheduled as a poison”.

According to the writer, the drug named, which has been “extensively advertised and sold in England as a remedy for gout and rheumatism”, is an exceedingly dangerous, and often a deadly, drug. It has been advertised in the medical journals, in which it has been re commended as a specific, and doctors have prescribed it largely, on the strength of these dangerous recommendations emanating from the vendors or producers of the drug. Thus fearful mischief has, no doubt, been done, by registered and fully-qualified practitioners, to the great injury of their patients.

A few months ago, at a meeting at the Cutlers Hall, reported in the January issue of this Journal, Sir Ernest Graham-Little, M.P., the parliamentary representative and spokesman of the organized medical profession, condemned, with eloquence and indignation, the “quack remedies” advertised in the popular press.

The organized medical profession is waging war on the patient medicine vendors, although it is most improbable that any layman had died from taking Beechams Pills, Kruschen Salts or other preparations of this kind. Sir Ernest Graham-Little would be very much better occupied if he would employ his undoubted ability and energy in exposing the quackery of those registered medical men who prescribe recklessly dangerous and deadly drugs, and the criminal levity with which advertisements recommending them are printed in the professional journals to the danger of patients.

The patients of medical orthodoxy are poisoned not only with the particular drug mentioned in the Medical World, but by numerous other equally dangerous substances. Sir William Willcox, the famous poison expert at the Home Office, has condemned more than once the terribly dangerous drugs of the Barbituric group, which are rapidly prescribed by thousands of medical men, because they take away pain and give sleep, and the victims of Bromide and Luminal fill the lunatic asylums.

Morphia maniacs are frequently created by orthodox doctors, and they are particularly frequently found among medical men and nurses. Yet Sir Ernest Graham-Little has never, to my knowledge, protested against the use of these and other dangerous drugs, which have created thousands of drug addicts and have been responsible for countless deaths and suicides. His condemnation of relatively innocent patent medicines and of the osteopaths, herbalists and other lay healers, seems to emanate largely from an understandable desire to secure the monopoly of treatment to the organized orthodox medical profession, who are at liberty to dope their patients.

There is a Bill in preparation entitled “The Medicines and Surgical Appliance (Advertisement) Bill”. If it should become law, the medical monopoly will become complete, and no unregistered practitioner, medical herbalist, osteopath, or other nature curer will be allowed to diagnose or treat disease of any kind, however trivial.

There would, perhaps, be no objection to the medical professions obtaining a monopoly of treatment if the orthodox treatments were safe and reliable. They are nothing of the kind, and Parliament and the nation will probably once more oppose with scorn and determination the attempts of the great medical trade union to destroy every alternative of treatment by means of a Bill with a cunningly worded and misleading title.

Meyer