The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1910-12-06
Topeka Doctors Given Insight
into Lazy Sickness.
President Menninger's Address
at Annual Meeting.
JUDGE DANA TALKS,
Says Medical Experts Have Lit.
tie Weight With Juries.
Says Law Should Allow Court to
Appoint.

Diversity of entertainment, study and
criticism marked the annual meeting
and banquet of the Shawnee County
Medical society at the Throop hotel last
night. From the pathological pictures
of Pellagra patients and election of Of
ficers to an excellent banquet, and from
the serious legal problems of Judge A.
w. Dana and the oratorical flights of
Rev. F. L. Loveland to the humor of
Tom McNeal. the convention OF doctors
and their wives was held. Then it was
nearly o'clock when the last toast
was finished and the Rev. Mr.. Love-
land told the doctors. that, as medical
men. they ought to know better.
DR.. c. F. Menninger. the retiring
president, gave his study of Pellagra.
little known scourge of the old world
which in the past two years has be-
come prevalent in the United States
and more particularly in the insane
asylums. Slides were used to show the
outward manifestations of the disease
Rough skim as the word Pellagra
is translated is of the nature of lepro-
sly, eczema and other diseases which
show upon the skin. It's attacks are
hands and wrists, the girdle and the
insteps. The accompanying extreme
nervous conditions, however, produce
death. The patient at first seems to
have been burned or scalded on the
parts affected. Then discoloration be-
to green and finally black as death
comes. The sloughing off of tissues
and fetid odors mark the disease.
Anesthesia is a later symptom and the
patient apparently drifts into death I'M
caring.
Among the first cases discovered in
America were those in the insane hos
pital at Peoria, Ill. Many cases pre-
vail throughout the south in Tennes-
see, Alabama and South Carolina. The
he oct q
causes are due so far as can be de-
termined to the eating of diseased corn
or corn meal-a sort of smut in the
kernel. Poor food in general with I'M
sanitary conditions provides an OPEN
ing for the Scourge as it has been
known to run in epidemics in parts Of
Europe and Asia among the peasant
class. In the insane aSylumS of this
country where conditions are not the
best and where patients are idle, the
disease has found a place.
Dana Talks of Medical Experts.
AT the banquet in the dining hall,
Judge A. W. Dana. of the Shawnee dis
trict court, who was asked to touch
upon the medical profession from a le-
gal standpoint, launched unexpectedly
into the subject of medical experts and
their testimony on the witness chair.
Many of the leading physicians Of
this city have discussed the apparent
effect of expert medical testimony be-
fore jury. A prominent railroad at
torney and corporation attorneys have
done the same. This railroad attorney
says he has stopped calling in the ex-
perts in civil damage cases because,
he says, fairly educated farmer who
knows something of the case will give
more satisfaction to a jury.
I'm these cases of a great corporation
on the one side and a poor man on the
other, or a rich defendant on one side
and poor man on the other, where
do we find the balance of expert testi-
mony? On the one hand a great array
of the greatest medical men of the
community will be lined up and on the
other few, of course, but less promi
nent. l fancy that it strikes the jury
that an unequal contest is being waged.
l fancy the jury knows it is not get
ting the unbiased judgments of these
expert witnesses. I need but refer to
the Thaw trial-which, in my mind,
debauched the public morals in a
greater degree than anything which
has happened in the past so years. And
| say that nothing in half century
has done SO much to discredit your pro-
fession on the witness stand.
But we need the medical testimony
in arriving at a just conclusion. We
can not discard it. What should be-
done, gentlemen, is for you to go be-
fore the legislature and get an act to
empower the judge on the bench to
appoint experts to take the stand and
testify impartially without pay by
either side. Let the fees for these men
be charged with the costs of the case
We will then be able to obtain the
benefits of impartial testimony
Tom McNeal's Humor.
Tom McNeal appealed to the profess
sional body from a newspaper view,
theoretically. What he did was to
convulse them with the story of his
first blue mass pill rolled by a raw
physician who knew not the ways of
antiseptics and chucked them down his
throat in spite of the size of a walnut.
Incidentally, he referred to the wind
as seen at Medicine Lodge when he
was blazing a trail out there. He said
as they travelled one day over the two
old trails forty feet apart, he tried to
whistle ''The Girl I Left Behind Me-"
But he couldn't hear a sound. That
night when they camped a man who
had travelled on the other road COM
plimented him upon his whistling and
he woke up to the fact that the wind
had blown his whistle off his lips and
carried it away. When women and
children were seen flying through the
air, an fasteners solicitation for their
safety was Gained by the pretty theory
that the wind would change by sup
per time and blow them back again.
Microbes, 10000 of them, were seen