The Propaganda for Reform in Proprietary Medicines, Vol. 2 of 2Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry (American Medical Association)
Science
The Propaganda for Reform in Proprietary Medicines, Vol. 2 of 2
Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry (American Medical Association)
Patent medicines
The G. W. Carnrick Company has replied to the publication of this
report in the letter printed below. (A portion of this letter, which
consists of a communication from an unnamed correspondent of the G. W.
Carnrick Company and the company’s comment thereon, has been omitted.)
The Council offered to publish this if the Carnrick Company would
furnish the name of the writer. This it has not done. As will be seen,
the company now shifts ground, abandoning entirely the claim that
Secretogen contains secretin. The Council has authorized publication
of the letter (omitting the part just mentioned), together with the
comment that follows.
W. A. PUCKNER, Secretary.
“_The Council on Pharmacy and Chemistry of the American Medical
Association._
“Gentlemen:--The opinion of the Council and the contribution by
Professor Carlson which appeared in The Journal of the American Medical
Association for Jan. 15, 1916, have been read by us with interest.
The column of Current Comment dealing with ‘Tiger-Bone Therapy and
Clinical Experience’ has appealed to our good nature and, under the
circumstances, our sense of humor.
“Professor Carlson seems to have quite well established that the
so-called secretin preparations do not contain secretin to any
appreciable extent, and that they are inert in laboratory experiments
on normal animals. At the same time, to do away with an apparent
discrimination on the part of the management of the Council, it would
have been well if Professor Carlson had included the so-called secretin
preparations belonging to another well-known firm which markets such a
product. This discrimination has already been referred to by us.
“Had Professor Carlson stopped at the determination of the therapeutic
availability of secretin given by mouth, his work might have been
accepted without comment, even if we should have thought it advisable
to object to the matter published by the Council. But the professor
went beyond his province entirely when, in commenting on the findings
obtained by using Secretogen clinically, he said: ‘It is, perhaps,
impertinent for laboratory men to comment on these clinical results.’
It is. His point was well taken and it is a profound pity that
Professor Carlson did not observe his own ruling.
“In the words of a correspondent of The Journal of the American Medical
Association, in discussing Professor Carlson’s criticism of Dr. Crile’s
‘Kinetic Drive,’ ‘it behooves the laboratory man to be circumspect in
his criticism of clinical theories, since going beyond the bounds of
well-established things weakens his position, not merely with reference
to the particular subject under discussion, but with reference to
clinical phenomena in general.’ Clinical results have definitely
established the value of Secretogen. As the matter now stands this
statement is beyond criticism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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