"Borderline Medicine"

During the last week of September the Koch Cancer Foundation and the American Association for Medico-Physical Research are to hold a joint meeting in Chicago, headquarters of the American Medical Association. This organization holds the other two in active detestation. It finds that they do not come up to its own standards of medical and scientific probity, effectiveness.

Last week the Journal of the A. M. A. in announcing the joint Chicago meeting of those "outlaw" groups condensed all its scorn and contempt into a single paragraph. Under the headline "BIRDS OF A FEATHER" it shouted out names: "No doubt Chicago merits this visitation as a return for its sins. In 1925, the Journal spoke briefly relative to the American Association for Medico-Physical Research, a society organized in 1911 by the outstanding quack of the century, Albert Abrams. The organization was an outgrowth of the American Association for Spondylo-therapy, the term 'spondylo' referring to the spine and not to the good old American word 'spondulix.' In this peculiar organization are assembled some of the conspicuous exploiters of borderline medicine in this benighted land. For example, in 1925 the chairman of the section on radiology was Mr. George S. Foden, a practitioner of electronic medicine, who read a paper on 'The Eye as an Index Factor to Personality'; Osteopath Francis A. Cave, an honorary vice-president of the Medical Liberty League, also devoted himself to electronic practice; William Howard Hay, chairman of the section on advanced medicine, had a diabetic cure and one for hay-fever; A. C. Geyser is a promoter of the 'tricho system'; George E. Harter is the founder and director of the Defensive Diet League; E. M. Perdue has a cancer cure. And then there is Koch--William F. Koch, M.D., Detroit, Mich.-- inventor of the Koch synthetic antitoxin for the cure of cancer. According to his bulletin, some 300 physicians will gather to discuss the use of the Koch remedy in cancer. But one meeting is to be a joint meeting with the distinguished members of the American Association for Medico-Physical research. The Koch representatives should add tone to this remarkable assemblage."