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in the war with Germany, I find Dr. Arthur Steindler who served in the United States Army Corps from October, 1918 to 1919, Iowa City and at Fort Des Moines for five months. First in Student Army Training Corps, then in Des Moines with Major John L. Porter in Soldiers' Disability Service.

Lieut. G. S. Westley says that his name is Gabriel S. Westley and not Gabriel S. Westeley and that his address is Manly and not Fort Dodge.

We are endeavoring to get our list of medical officers who served in the war, corrected as to rank, name, address and promotions. The list will be worth referring to some day.

Lieut. Aaron Conaway of Marshalltown commissioned Major September 21, 1919. Lieut. Colonel in Medical Reserve Corps December 21, 1919.

Dr. Howard H. Johnson has located in Hampton to take the place occupied by Dr. A. C. Rhine who has entered the United States medical service.

Dr. Clifford Barborka, a graduate of Simpson College and of Rush Medical College; an interne of Presbyterian Hospital, Chicago, has entered the Mayo Clinic, Dr. Barborka formerly lived in Denison, He began life in Clinton.

Dr. Nellie Noble of Des Moines attended the National Congress of Internal Medicine at Baltimore, Maryland.

MARRIAGES

Dr. W. L. McConkie of Cedar Rapids and Miss Edna E. Johnson of Spencer, July 25, 1920.

Dr. Frank B. Dorsey of Keokuk and Miss Martha J. Brookshire of Chillicothe, Missouri, February 26, 1921.

Dr. A. H. Humiston of Cedar Rapids and Miss Dorothy Schreyer of West Union, February 22, 1921.

OBITUARY

Dr. William J. Hierstein of Dyersville died in Dubuque on January 12, 1921, after an illness of two or three days' duration. Dr. Hierstein was born in Keokuk, Iowa, on July 19, 1882. He received his early education in the public schools of Keokuk. He graduated from the medical department of Valparaiso University, Indiana, about 1910. He practiced as a railroad physician at Mazatlan, Mexico, for two years. He practiced medicine at Hamilton, Illinois, later at Nauvoo, Illinois, and in 1913 he came to Dyersville, Iowa, where he practiced up to the time of his death. He was a member of Dubuque County Medical Society and of the Iowa State Society. He was buried in Nauvoo, Illinois.

Thomas Mathews Hedges, physician and druggist in Grinnell for forty-four years, was born at Bellville, Pennsylvania, on January 15, 1838. He received his education at Waynesburg College at Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. Dr. Hedges medical education began at Chariton, Iowa, and was finished at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Keokuk in the Spring of

1865. He then moved to Grinnell where he began and continued the practice of his profession until 1909 when he found it necessary to retire and he moved to Glendale, California, where he died February 5, 1921.

In August, 1861, he enlisted in Company B of the Sixth Iowa Infantry and served for three years until he received his honorable discharge in 1864, having taken part in the battle of Shiloh and other important engagements.

Daniel Winfield Wheelwright was born in Wisconsin, September 26, 1861 and died at his home in Woodward, February 6, 1921, at the age of fifty-nine years, four months, eleven days. He came to Iowa when nineteen years of age and took up the study of medicine. He graduated from the Rush Medical College in Chicago in 1886. He was married July 6, 1895 to Miss Clara Stevens and to this union was born. three sons, Robert, Milan and Burton. His wife died February 20, 1916. His son Burton was lost at sea, January 6, 1920. He practiced medicine at Lake View, Wall Lake and Monroe and came to Woodward and engaged in the same profession in 1913.

Dr. N. P. Summers, seventy-five, Civil War veteran and for thirty years a practicing physician at Van Meter, died Saturday, February 5, after a three months' illness.

Dr. L. Brown died at Pensacola, Florida, January 19, 1921.

Dr. Brown was born January 10, 1938, in Ellsworth, Ohio, and moved with his parents to Patch Grove, Wisconsin, when a small boy. He served three years in the Civil War, most of the time as a hospital steward. After the close of the war he finished his medical course, which he began before the war, at Rush Medical College, Chicago, and in the spring of 1866 he began the practice of his profession at Postville, łowa. He was married in 1868 to Miss Ella A. Lyons, and one daughter was born to this union, who is the wife of Dr. J. O. Thrush of River Falls, Wisconsin. In 1876 Dr. Brown was sent to the legislature from Allamakee county. In 1884 he took a post-graduate course at Rush Medical College. He served three years on the McGregor pension board examiners and in 1890 moved to Rockford, Iowa. In 1900 he went abroad for the purpose of taking post-graduate work in the London hospitals. He and Mrs. Brown visited many of the principal cities of Europe.

Dr. W. H. Archer died January 29, 1921, in Fort Worth, Texas, where he had gone with his wife to spend the winter. His death was caused by influenza. At the time of his death he was seventy years, eleven months and twenty-one days. He came to Iowa with his parents from Michigan in 1853, settling in Oakfield township. He graduated from Iowa State University, M.D., in 1873. He then located in Bear Grove, where he practiced his profession until 1889, then moved to Adair, residing there until 1912. He with his family then moved to Austin, Minnesota, his home at the time of his death.

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BOOK REVIEWS

THE MEDICAL CLINICS OF NORTH
AMERICA

Boston Number. Published Bi-Monthly
by W. B. Saunders Company, 1920. Price
Per Year $12.00.

This number contains contributions from nineteen clinics. Three from Massachusetts General Hospital, nine from Boston City Hospital, six from the Children's Hospital, and one Boston Dispensary.

The first is a medical-social clinic by Ida M. Cannon who considers the general trend of medical treatment during the past twenty years away from pills and powders, and substitutes hygienic living and diet and proceeds to enlarge on the subject and give illustrations. The diagnosis of mitral stenosis is the subject of a clinic by Drs. White and Reed at the Massachusetts General. About one-half of the clinics relate to children, one, spastic paralysis, Massachusetts General, Dr. Stanly Cobb, one vomiting as a symptom in children, Boston dispensary by Dr. Maynard Ladd, and six from children's hospital covering as many different subjects.

A LABORATORY MANUAL OF PHYSIOLOGICAL CHEMISTRY

By E. W. Rockwood, M.D., Ph.D., Professor of Chemistry and Toxicology, the State University of Iowa, Iowa City. Fourth Edition, Revised and Enlarged, 316 Pages, Illustracted with 1 Colored Plate, 3 Plates of Microscopic Preparations and Seventeen Engravings. F. A. Davis Company, 1919.

Cloth, $2.00. Undergraduate biochemical courses in our universities are now taken by students of home economics, veterinary medicine, animal nutrition, medicine and occasionally chemistry. Often two or more groups are thrown together for the same laboratory period. Professor Rockwood's manual, with its some 600 laboratory experiments, offers a wide choice to the capable instructor in setting exercises adapted for the several student groups, or for individual students who may be interested in special topics. The explanatory text is briefly and simply presented. The inclusion of more recent blood and urine analytical methods should make the manual of use to the clinician.

THE AMERICAN JOURNAL OF MEDICAL SCIENCES

Places at the Top of the Cover for January, 1921, These Words: "A Century of Service." We feel an affection for this journal. Looking back over our file we find that we began our subscription in 1869; the first medical journal we ever read. Medical literature was not very accessible then in small towns, and few pages escaped us, as it appeared only quarterly, we had time to read each number over two or three times. We lost nothing by it, for then as now, everything it contained was worth reading. The book reviews ere particularly valu

able, from ten to fifteen pages were given to all im portant books, and we beleve that we learned better how to read medical books from these reviews. They were not commercial reviews but analytical reviews. Isaac Hays was editor, and Henry C. Lea, publisher.

AN INVITATION

All Iowa Medical Officers of the World War are invited to be the guests of the Military Surgeons' Club at a dinner to be given May 12, 1921, Des Moines, Iowa.

R. Fred Throckmorton, M.D., Chairman,
A. S. Price, M.D.,

J. A. Downing, M.D.,

C. F. Smith, M.D.,

G. W. McCreight, M.D.,

Committee of Arrangements.

OUR ADVERTISERS

The present issue of the Journal contains a larger amount of advertising, both local and general, than any other issue published since the Society assumed ownership of the official organ in 1911. For a long time the policy of the Journal has been to accept no advertising copy that could not stand the acid test formulated by the Advertising Department of the Journal of the American Medical Association; hence, it is with natural pride that the advertising pages of the April issue are given to your personal consideration as an example of what advertisers will do when an opportunity is given them to display honest goods through the pages of an honest medium. That it pays to advertise honest goods is evident from the number of firms carrying space in the Journal from year to year. Also it is a source of gratification to point to the space alloted our local firms as an evidence of confidence that the Journal's ideals are high and worthy of their consideration. As a mere matter of courtesy, it is no less obligatory on your part to patronize these firms when in Des Moines, as well as the regular advertisers of your Journal when in need of their products, as the Journal stands ready to vouch for the integrity of its advertisers.

Tom B. Throckmorton, M.D.,
Business Manager.

POST-GRADUATE COURSES FOR PRACTITIONERS Offered by

WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE St. Louis, Mo.

Post-graduate instruction will be offered, beginning April 4, 1921, in internal medicine, general surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, orthopedic surgery, genitourinary surgery, neurology, dermatology, ophthalmology, laryngology and rhinology, otology, anatomy, and current medical literature. Courses run from four weeks to one year; fees range from $25 to $500. For full information, address

THE DEAN, WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE St. Louis, Missouri

Jowa State Medical Society

VOL. XI

DES MOINES, IOWA, MAY 15, 1921

THE MEDICAL PROFESSION SAFEGUARDING AMERICANISM*

CHARLES J. WHALEN, M.A., M.D., LL.B.
Chicago, Illinois

The wolf at the doctor's door is about to leap across the threshold and catch by the throat the entire profession.

A long way, and an unimpeded one has been tracked by this lupine rascal. Hidden under the cloaks of compulsory health insurance, national socialization of medicine, state medicine, and sun

dry other acknowledged offspring of radicalisin and cheap politics, only a small percentage of physicians have guessed the evil for what it is. The majority of the profession has been as gullible and unsuspecting as a thousand gross lot of Red Riding Hoods, made in Germany before the war. And at the outset I wish to remark to those men who champion the workings of compulsory health insurance as tried out in Germany, that the most beneficial act that they can perform will be to scan the results upon the profession devolving in Germany as a result of this same compulsory health insurance. England too, can tell a tale of woe, in this respect.

Those doctors who are out of the Red Riding Hood class, the men who are awake to the dangers threatening the profession-realize that unless radical action, is accomplished speedily, before very long, too, the doctor will find himself deprived of the privilege of continuing his present occupation.

In recent years the economic status of medicine has been practically turned inside out. Figuratively speaking the physician has become a civic non-entity. Politicians have arrived at the state. where with their business eyes, they regard a phy

sician as "being in the world, but not of it," and neither politics nor "big business" has hesitated to take advantage of this condition. Through our own apathy to our own welfare, and to that of the science we serve, the medical profession

is threatened with economic destruction.

*Read before the Tri-State Medical Association, October 4-7, 1920, at Waterloo, Iowa.

No. 5

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Here is the time and the place again for the many to follow in the footsteps of the few. The whole profession must awaken. Stock must be taken of present conditions and note made of the

changes fermenting in social, economic and political worlds all about the subsequent effect of these new orders upon the medical profession.

It will be found that the social conditions con

fronting us are super-imposed upon our shoulders

by interests wholly outside our own ranks. It is high time that the physicians of the country pause in which the science and the men of medicine are being exploited by big business and by scheming politicians. Considered an “easy mark” to begin with, these interests proceed to make us the "goat," and endeavor to classify us as the cheapest of cheap labor. For years past, the medical profession has furnished the most servile of hired men for the great insurance companies. Now the profession is in a fair way to enter serfdom as a vassal of the state!

for official observation of the shameless manner

This is not an arbitrary statement. It is more than possible or plausible or even probable. The condition is actually on its way, and almost ready to be delivered f. o. b., on the very steps of our universities. To dissolve your doubts, review recent occurrences in politics and in commerce and their relative effect upon the doctor and his tasks. Reflect upon the compensation recived from insurance companies for "services rendered." Study the wages of contract doctors, industrial physicians and other bondsmen of that ilk. Inquire about the salaries paid office-holding physicians through our municipal and state political machinery. In each of these instances the physician as an individual, or as an organization, is without voice as to the valuation of medical ser

vices. He has simply nothing to say. What a contrast to the relations between organized labor and politics! If my sight and hearing are to be believed in the latter instance, the rule is for the unions to suggest and for the politicians to comply. Here is where politics grows husky and swallows its own medicine.

Grim as comment must be upon this enslaving of the profession, these examples are but the handwriting on the wall. They record merely the beginning of the servitude of the doctor and his art. Current conditions reflect certainly upon the commercial sagacity of the medical profession and may be said to indicate a lack of ability on the part of the profession to take care of itself. Yet, in the face of the dangers that menace us in the future, present abuses are insignificant.

Current conditions corrode the profession in its individual units. The impending peril will eat into the profession as a whole. As a matter of fact, it is nobody's lookout but that of the man himself, when a member of the profession is willing to become a mere chattel on the payroll of industrial corporations, insurance companies, newspapers or similar organizations and to serve his master for a meager salary. Such action lowers the status of physicians collectively, but vitally it does not affect the mass of physicians as individuals. What is going to cut us down as individuals, what is going to be the master annihilator of the profession itself, is the purposed socialization of the physician's calling.

As I remarked at the beginning, this menace has many names-call it what you will, you do not lessen its perniciousness nor kill its venom.

Be not deceived. These socializing schemes are not confined to Russia. They are not an intangible fancy; nor the ravings of some theoretical litterateur; they are being drafted into bills to be submitted to a score of state legislatures before this very year is out. Even the Declaration of Independence hasn't kept these demoralizing conspiracies from gaining a foothold in America. California, New York and Ohio have barely escaped the bane of compulsory health insurance. Most assuredly these states will have to contend with it when their legislatures convene this winter. In Illinois, it will be introduced into general assembly, if the powerful interests are not defeated that are now working overtime to prepare a proper debut for their scheme. Why? Well, of course, politicians must have new issues. slight value as a vote-getter is offered through these socializing bolsheviki ideas.

Compulsory health insurance has a bad past to live down. Experience shows that the physicians

were not called into consultation as to their wishes in the matter either in England or in Germany. The politicians did it without medical aid. The fate of the profession was settled beforehand. Although the profession was the organization that would be affected most vitally by the law involved, yet it was not allowed a word of assent, dissent, or protest.

Although riding under the banner of socialism, the very creed of the cult was disdained before ever the wires were lowered. It is a good example of an altruism that works only one way. Under the socializing schemes planned, the doctor is asked merely to pay the increased taxes and to render the services required at pauper prices. Physicians in the United States have a last chance to profit by the experiences of the confraternity in Germany and in England. If we pass by this chance, we will find that the only alternative will be to accept whatever conditions of slavery the politicians and the radicals prefer to impose upon

us.

Those physicians who fail to come forward and rally to the cry of the clan, should be made to share the blame with the politicians of the country if the menace falls upon us. The politician cannot be held to be entirely at fault. Why should politicians and near statesmen grant the profession serious consideration, when, as a matter of fact, from a political viewpoint, the medical profession is a non-entity?

In Illinois, speaking in round numbers, there are about twelve thousand physicians. Politically, the doctors amount to less than a labor union with a membership of five hundred. Our great membership wields less influence at Springfield than do the three hundred osteopaths in Illinois.

Lack of unity and weak organization explains the scant consideration given the medical profession by big business, by labor unions, and by officials of the city, county, state, and yea, even the nation.

What the medical profession needs most is a compact, workable organization that will grapple with the economic, as well as with the scientific problems, of our fraternity. When we possess such a buckler, and not until we do, will we be able to dictate the price that should be paid for services rendered to the public through any of the agencies mentioned.

The time is at hand when we must have such an organization as this. It will be the speaking tube from the profession as a whole, to the individual physician, and through each doctor to his patients, and through the patients we will acquire the language of votes. We must make it our business to

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