And this man goes on to say that "99 per cent. of the practicing physicians of the country belong to this genuine class."
Members of the American Medical Association may think that such discussions are for the profession, and should be kept "in the family." Perhaps they should, and no doubt it would be much better for the profession if many of the things said by leading medical men never reached the thinking public. But the fact remains that the contradictory and inconsistent things said do reach the public, and usually in garbled and distorted form. The better and safer way is, if possible, to see to it that there is no cause to say such things, or if criticisms must be made let physicians be fair and frank with the people, and treat the public as a party deeply concerned in all therapeutic discussions and investigations. And here applies the utterance of the editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association that I wanted to commend:
"The time has passed when we can wrap ourselves in a cloak of professional dignity and assume an attitude of infallibility toward the public. The more intelligent of the laity have opinions on medical subjects, often bizarre, it must be admitted, but frequently well grounded, and a fair discussion of such opinions can result only in a greater measure of confidence in and respect for the medical profession."
Such honest, fair-minded declarations, together with expressions of similar import from scores of brainy physicians and surgeons in active practice, are
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