Yours is about the most encouraging letter that has come to this office in a long time. It shows so plainly what knowledge, courage, tact and perseverence will enable a health officer to do, that I am taking the liberty of publishing it with this reply in the next issue of the JOURNAL.

As an evidence of appreciation of your services, the Board is ordering sent to you a copy of McNutt's Manual for Health Officers, the best work of its kind which has appeared in our language. Am also sending you, under separate cover, one hundred copies of the privy bulletin which has just been received from the Public Printer, and the same numher of new bulletins on the Communicable Diseases.

Congratulating and thanking you for what you have accomplished in protecting the health and lives of the people of your county, I am Cordially yours, J. N. McCORMACK, Acting Secretary.

PLAN FOR THE BABY HEALTH CONTEST OF THE KENTUCKY STATE FAIR, LOUISVILLE, KY., SEPTEMBER 11-16, 1916.

The first Baby Health Contest held at the Kentucky State Fair was in 1913 with 136 entries, in 1914 there were 180 babies entered, and in 1915, 221.

The object of this contest is to improve the health of our people, beginning with the children by giving them a start in the right direction. It is to help parents, mothers especially, to better understand what their children need.

Thorough examination, mental and physical, notes both good points and bad. The good points are to be trained and emphasized, the bad ones are to be removed or remedied. What scientific care and common sense have done for horses and cattle, can surely do won

ders for the human being, as he has intelligence to respond.

A doctor scores a baby in just the same manner in which a stock judge scores horses, sheep and cattle. The card used is that prepared by the American Medical Association, and is a standard of excellence accepted througout the country.

We would like to have an entry from every county in the State, and call on county health officers, clubs, those interested in child welfare and progress generally to help us do this. Will you see that your county is represent

ed.

HOW EXAMINATIONS ARE CONDUCTED.

This general plan of holding the contest will be carried out, though some of the details may be changed if necessary.

Mother or guardian applies to Superintendent to enter contest. Entry card sent; when this is returned it will receive a number, and eard of appointment for examination will be sent. A register of appointments and entries will be kept in the office.

will be shown waiting room, clerk will take When baby is brought to the contest mother appointment card: mother will wait at desk while clerk fills in history on front page of score card. The baby's attendant should have the score card on string tied to her writs so it will not be lost. Everything may be done in the scoring, except weighing, measuring, examination of symmetry, skin, muscle, etc., before undressing the baby.

Mothers will bring pillow slip with them into which baby's clothes may be put and carried along, so as not to become confused with clothes of others.

When the first page of score card is made out by clerk, mothers will pass to doctors in order of appointment; mother will hand card to first doctor, who fills in his part, mother carries card to next doctor until all is filled in. The card is then given to chief clerk, who counts up the score; mother then leaves the

room.

Every mother should bring towel and baby blanket.

It will not be possible to announce results of contest on the day when examination is inade.

Every child in contest is expected to appear Friday, September 15th, at State Fair. Result of contest will be announced, prizes awarded at 3 p. m., in the Pavilion. For further information address,

MRS. CHARLOTTA O. WOODBURY,
State Fair, Louisville, Ky.

VOL. XIV.

EDITORIAL

THE ANNUAL MEETING.

The annual meeting of the Kentucky State Medical Association for 1916 will be held at the Christian Church in Hopkinsville on October 25, 26 and 27. The first session of the House of Delegates will be on October 24. Those who have been in attendance at our annual meetings for the past several years will need no appeal to be present. The profession and people of Hopkinsville are making such social arrangements as will insure a delightful vacation for everyone. They expect every doctor in Kentucky to come this time and they ask us to especially invite those who have not heretofore been coming, as they feel sure that they can start the habit of attendance at the State meeting, in every physician who will come to Hopkinsville. The scientific program has been largely arranged by Dr. J. G. Gaither of Hopkinsville. It will be noted that there are fewer papers than usual and ample time will he given for discussions. The medical profession of Hopkinsville and Christian County is a unit in making such preparations for this meeting as will insure success. They deserve and ought to receive the support of not only every county society, but of every physician in Kentucky, in their efforts to break the records for meetings held away from Louisville. It is especially important that every member who attends secure a certificate from his local agent when he purchases his railroad ticket, and, if it is necessary for him to come over more than one line, that he secure a certificate from each agent, and in this way he can se cure his return ticket for one-half fare plus fifty cents.

Hopkinsville has several good hotels. The Hotel Latham is one of the finest in the State. Reservations for rooms should be made at once. Those desiring to go to the other ho

No. 9

tels or private homes should write Dr. J. W. Harned of Hopkinsville, the secretary.

It is of interest that the people of Hopkinsville are as much alive to the entertainment of the doctors of the State as are the members of our own profession. Special committees of Pitizens have been appointed and everything is being done to make the meeting a pleasant and profitable one for every physician who attends.

RAILROAD RATES FOR THE HOPKINSVILLE MEETING.

The Kentucky State Medical Association will meet in Hopkinsville October 24, 25, 26, and 27. The House of Delegates alone will meet on the 24th. The scientific session will members

begin on the 25th. Delegates or coming from Cincinnati, Ohio, Jellico. Tennessee, and all points in Kentucky, except on the O. & M., railroad, will be granted a reduction in their return fare from the meeting of one-half regular fare plus fifty cents, on the same route by which they go to Hopkinsville. In order to secure the reduction rate, it is necessary to get a certificate receipt from the agent when you leave your home station. If you do not get this certiticate from your ticket agent you will not get a reduced fare for your return. If it is necessary for you to travel over more than one line of railroad to Hopkinsville, get a certificate receipt from each agent from whom you purchase a ticket, and you will get the re duced fare home. Certificate receipts can be procured three days before the meeting and can be secured on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, October 24, 25, and 26. It is advised that all members arrange to leave for Hopkinsville so as to be there on Tuesday morning, and that the delegates arrange to ar rive by noon on Monday.

BE SURE TO SECURE CERTIFICATE RECEIPT FROM THE TICKET AGENT

WHEN YOU PURCHASE YOUR TICKET TO HOPKINSVILLE. YOU CANNOT GET REDUCED RATE FOR YOUR RETURN TRIP WITHOUT DOING SO.

BUSINESS.

As has been the custom for many years, we publish in great detail the affairs of the Association as reflected in the reports of its officers, especially giving every item of expense and every step taken by them during the year. Have your resolutions, speeches and reports all ready for the House of Delegates. Ample time is given for any county society to instruct its delegates on any subject, and the delegate from any county society should confer with his fellows as to what should be done at this meeting. Every member is urged to read all of the reports. If anything is going wrong, the House of Delegates is the place to right it. The JOURNAL urges the membership to read every page of this issue so that they can take the intelligent interest in the Association's affairs that is essential to its continued success. You are all stock-holders in this great organization. It is in better shape in every way this year than ever before; but remember that it is your money that is being spent, your work being done, and if you are not familiar with every detail it is your fault and not the JOURNAL'S, because everything that is going on is printed in it.

THE DISCUSSIONS.

The Kentucky State Medical Association is a democratic association where every man is his fellow's equal in opportunity, anyway. If you are interested in any subject on the program, which is printed in this issue, for the Hopkinsville session, and don't discuss it, it will be your own fault. When you have looked over the program, pick out the subject in which you are interested and write the secretary at once. Every paper on the proEvery paper on the program is, or soon will be, in print. A galley proof will be sent any member of any one paper. This will give you an opportunity of finding the views of the essayist and of deliberately and carefully preparing your discus sion from your own experience and knowledge. If you prefer, write your discussion out and hand it to the stenographer just as you want it to appear in the JOURNAL. This plan has worked so well for the past several years that it is continued. Write to-day for the paper you wish to discuss.

OUR ADVERTISERS.

By this mail we are sending the following letter to one hundred selected firms:

"Twenty-five hundred members of this Association own and edit the KENTUCKY MEDICAL JOURNAL. It pays no salaries nor profits. Every cent of its income goes to make a bigger and better JOURNAL. For this reason, we can make a special appeal to advertisers. Our members know that the advertisers furnish the money which makes the JOURNAL a sucThey know, furthermore, that the Association gives a positive guarantee of every advertisement in the JOURNAL and stands the financial loss by the subscribers on any advertised product or institution. Twenty-five hundred doctors get the JOURNAL and it is sometimes said to us that only medical supplies and similar articles should be advertised. More than seventeen hundred of these doctors have wives and children, however, and the whole family is interested in the KENTUCKY MEDICAL JOURNAL in a way that it is not in any other publication. We cordially invite you to try a few months and if it is not a success, we will be glad to square accounts without it costing you a cent. We do not want. your money unless we can give you an adequate return for it, and we can only accept it for such of your wares as you are willing to absolutely guarantee as worth the money. You understand that we will not ask our readers to buy from you unless you furnish the best at the best price. But if you advertise with us, we will ask them to give you a fair chance to secure their patronage and you can rest assured that they will do it.

"The Cooperative Medical Advertising Bureau, 535 North Dearborn Street, Chicago, handles our advertising. Under separate cover, we are mailing you our September 1st JOURNAL and we are confident it will be worth your while to look into it."

It is up to you as to whether we make a success of the proposition. This is your JOURNAL and it will publish anything you have to say on any subject and if there is anything in its advertising or reading columns that you disagree with, it will publish your criticism, reasons or argument, and it cordially invites the attention of everyone of its readers and owners to every page it prints. You are one of the editors and are as much responsible for the articles published in it as anyone else save the man who writes them. The JOURNAL will be delighted to hear from you frequently. Our advertisers are anxious to know your wants and to satisfy your needs, and we can all help each other if we will all work heartily and work together.

THE COMMERCIAL EXHIBIT.

As a matter of course, the commercial exhibit will be better this year than it has been heretofore. Our members have responded so generously to our efforts to encourage our ex hibitors that we have found this year that the exhibitors are responding even more gladly than they have ever done before. We are confident that if there were nothing else to be seen or heard in Hopkinsville except the commercial exhibits it would be worth the time and while to attend for their value alone. Only those firms can exhibit that are reputable and have something worth exhibiting. Instrument men, pharmacists, and everyone else having things of interest for physicians, including the long distance telephone, will be on hands to show you the very latest. Save your orders until you can see what you want.

THE CARDUI TRIAL.

The suit of the Chattanooga Medicine Company, the manufacturers of Wine of Cardui, against the American Medical Association resulted in a verdict of one cent and costs for the former. The controlling authorities of the American Medical Association consider this a moral victory although it was a technical defeat.

It is difficult to explain to those of our membership who were not present throughout the trial how it was possible for the jury to be in doubt as to the merits of the question involved in this suit. It was definitely shown that Wine of Cardui is composed of such of the extractives of thirty grains of thistle, or weed, known as carduus benedictus, or blessed thistle, and three grains of the black haw, or riburnum prunifolium, as would be withdrawn by a tablespoonful of a twenty per cent. solution of alcohol. Expressed in plain English and brushing aside the technicalities with which lawyers befuddle juries, this juries, this means that the only medicinal elements in this widely vaunted nostrum are the extractives from a worthless weed plus the slight valerianie odor obtained from the black haw, plus the forty-eight drops of alcohol in four times as much water. There can be no controversy amongst those who know as to the cflects of such a preparation. Excluding alcol.ol, it is absolutely worthless for any purpose. Including alcohol, its only effect is the of a small high ball containing a teaspoonful and a half of whiskey and a dash of bitters. It is difficult to explain why this could not be made sufficiently clear for the jury to understand it. We trust that an appeal may be taken so that the matter may be presented in the higher courts before trained judges in such a way as to bring these facts out clearly Nothing

more will be necessary to win the case, and nothing less will be satisfactory to the members of the American Medical Association. This JOURNAL insists that no stone shall be left unturned to secure a reversal of a verdict that was in violation of all facts of the case. Such a reversal can be secured if the case is handled by competent lawyers who are thoroughly acquainted with its merits.

We realize that the above statement rather gives the reason why we should have won a distinct verdict than why we were technically defeated. Had it been possible to hold the issue clearly to the above statements, and, in so far as the medical profession and the pub.. lic health are concerned, these are all that

amount to anything, it seems that we could not have helped winning. But the original article in the Journal of the American Medical Association went farther than this. They alleged a personal knowledge and guilt on the part of the manufacturers of Wine of Cardui, in regard to which no proof was submitted at the trial. Whether their allegations were true or false could not interest the court unless an attempt was made to prove them. This was the fundamental error which finally lost the case. There could not have been any question, or not much question, about the worthlessness of the medicine in the minds of the jury; but, from a careful investigation of all the evidence submitted, we feel that no evidence was submitted to sustain many of the most damaging statements in the original articles. The profession must understand that the cause of this defeat is here. In the future our investigations must be more complete before we make statements that will damage any man, or any man's business; we must be sure of our facts, and that we can prove them, or, at least, that we can submit such facts that the necessary inferences from them will prove our case. In the next place it is essential that all articles of controversial nature shall be submitted to competent lawyers. One has to sit throughout a trial of a case like this to realize how much, in the ordinary affairs of life, we must be guided by legal advice. It seems a natural inference to a doctor that a worthless medicine, advertised to cure a thing that no medicine will cure, is fraudulent. In common parlance this may be true, but in law only that is fraudulent which is done with the intent to deceive. If the man selling the medicine is so ignorant as to believe the things he says about it regardless of the truth or possibility, he is not committing a fraud, unless his claims are so extreme that every person in his natural mind would know they were untrue. This construction of the law would have been made clear to those in authority in Chicago by a competent law

yer, if we had had one when the original articles were written. It is not fraudulent for a man to claim that a little high-ball with a dash of bitters could cure all degrees of prolapse or other displacements of the uterus and the same medicine would cure gonorrhoea in women and a number of other things which any competent doctor knows would be impossible; because, forsooth, the man is able to present depositions, however ridiculous, from a few hundred women and letters from a few

thousand others, corroborated by the depo-.

sitions of a hundred or more ignorant or venal doctors, who state that they believe the claims. The difficulty is that in court facts are only of value if they can be proven by an overwhelming preponderance of the evidence. In the Chicago case, extracts from several medical text books were read which were quite as absurd and far-fetched as the most exaggerated claim made by any patent medicine man.

To sum it all up, it is our opinion that the articles should not have been published as written and they would not have been so published had the Association submitted them to a lawyer who had any knowledge or comprehension of either the law or facts in the case. Regardless of the facts the proof was of a nature which could well confuse an even better jury than we had in Chicago. In parenthesis we will say that this was by far the best jury we have ever seen empaneled in a law suit. The facts, however, stood out so clearly through the evidence that the jury wrote its verdict for one cent and costs with the idea, unexpressed and probably unthought, that this would be a moral victory for honesty while a technical defeat for a poorly handled proposition, however honest.

Another phase of this question merits consideration by the profession and the public. At a considerable expense the people of the United States maintain in Washington the Bureau of Chemistry of the Department of Agriculture. Until within the past few years the activity of this Bureau had been such that many of the worthless class of patent medicines were excluded from interstate commerce, and this was beginning to make serious inroads into the income of the American Proprietary Association. During the past few years, however, the activities of this Bureau seem to have been guided by so timid a hand as to keep it from attacking anything but the little fellows. It is inexplicable that a Government Bureau presided over by competent men would permit such preparations as Wine

of Cardui and Tanlac and Lydia Pinkham's preparation and dozens of other similar ones that could be named to continue to be sold to

credulous sick people or their anxious relatives. The officers of the Bureau know as well as we do the contents of these preparations. They know as well as we do their worthlessness for the purposes for which they are advertised, and yet, rather than incur the displeasure of the powerful forces which manufacture them, and do their duty by the people, they sit silently piling up page after page of investigations and are doing little else. If the law needs to be amended, let them say so, and the Congress will do it. However, every feature of the law has been upheld by the Federal Courts and it is high time that the profession and people of the United States awake to the fact that the Bureau of Chemistry is doing very much less of good than it should be doing and we should demand of our representatives in Congress that positive action be taken not only by the Chief of the Bureau but by the Solicitor of the Department and by such others as are charged with the responsibility for its work.

DR. J. H. LACKEY.

The sudden death in Nashville of Dr. J. H. Lackey recently was a shock to all who knew and loved him. Dr. Lackey spent the most of his busy life as a general practitioner at Canton in Trigg county. He was a sucessful physician. He made enough money to live well and to educate and train his family well; but far away and beyond this, he was a leader in his community. He always looked forward to better things for his people. Part of this he accomplished by keeping abreast of the times as their family physician. He not only led them at home, but as their representative in the General Assembly he showed that he was a natural leader of men. To him is due a large part of the organization and campaign which led to the creation of a modern State Board of Health in 1910. We feel that we are within the bounds in saying that this modest, quiet, country gentleman had saved the lives of thousands of people all over Kentucky and the profession and people all over the State will do well to honor and revere his memory now that he is gone.

To his devoted family and the thousands of friends who loved him the JOURNAL extends its sincere sympathy; and at the same time we desire to congratulate them that he stayed with them for so long a time.