The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1914-12-15
PUBLICITY FOR
 MEDICAL MEN
How Mendel's Discovery Was.
 Lost For Over 20 Years.

Even though physician discovered te method to prevent blcnlorlde or E1nArcury poisoning and published It Tn line public press and not through fxnedical journal, of perhaps few hundred circulation, he would be cen Esured or expelled from the medical lrorfeties said Dr. Leonard K Hrsh- berg president of the American As lsociation of Clinical Research, at the Iopenfng session of the convention of ltI1es organization at Loyola College.
 Tn line with his belief in the free tpublicity Of medical matters, Dr. II1trshberg, in illustrating his views lsaid:
 ..rGhis is the way that Mende1s great sfdiscovery was lost for over 20 years EsS It was, indeed, and for good deal lower 20 years-for B to be exact For kdt was in 1885 that Mendel wrote the fesaay on hybrid peas, which now kranks among the greatest three or kHour contributions ever made by one k7nan to science In the most orthonox land ethical manner it was first printA led---a year Iater-in the transactions hof the society in Brunn for the study Sof the natural sciences to which he Ebe3onged. There. if it had a single kreadeF, not one of them even ghmpsed Hts frnportance, and it remained buried tfrom the world until 1900, when some tstranse chance brought it at about tho fearoe time to the attention of three kxnen who could appreciate it's worth sand meaning.
 Had Menders paper, or an intelli-s kkent abstract of it, appeared first in krea1 newspaper, with a real circula- k&ion 1t certainly would have come to E8he notice of the group headed by Darwin, the theory of evolution would thave been at once modified work in f&tis field would have been done in a EcKear light, not 8 confusing fog of terror as to the exact nature of cross imatings
 A small press despatch which states sbfieK1y that pr. simon Flexner. of the Fa7ockefeller Institute, has perfected a kaneningftis serum or that Dr. Rufus tEc1e has made a successful pneu- bznonias serum will reach the eyes of knaiIlions of sufferers and no doubt, knearly 200. GOO physicians, nurses, hos fpital authorities and scientific inves- ktigators.
 Save only for infrequent minor. err srors. nota sane Justification exists kother than seIfishness, clannishness land insuIarism for aged authorities land slowly moving medical men to kObject to the newspapers rather than; E&he class Journal of insignificant cir kculatlon inparting the fact universal f1y.
 The press does more good when it sspreads forthwith and at first hand ;al1 medical announcements, good, bad land indifferent, than when it with ERolds news by virtue of d secret agree
 
 cal committee or society. Even when an announcement with glaring errors Sfs this sent broadcast by the press. frather than before the$ eyes Of only 60. 900 busy physicians- most of fwhom neglect to read the articles, to,
 understand them or to have layInan Ixub 1t under their noses--it does only
 good.
 Some of the most noteworthy blows :agadnst surgical superstition have sbeen able to reach the vitals of the sriedRcaI Profession only through the Hay press.
 Indeed. if some of the persistent s1- Sperstfaons Of physicians, such as calling 57 different disord CTS, from Lf1at feet to curvature of the spine, by fthe defasdve misnomer ssrhe hellmatism''; tkhE wrong use Of alcohol as a stimu- liant, the mistaken treatment of shemorrnages with ergot, the curious belief that asafoet1da and valerfan fhave medical values; if all of these k1actB were exploded in newspapers with their millions of req ders, instead of in medical periodicals rarely read
 even by their few busy subscribers, fthe errors and exaggerati ions-vvhieh Eara as common and less often correct led in medical a1s-w41i oh fnevit-. kably creep into all printed pages EwouId be more than overbaIaAced by Fthe accuracies-