Life — May 21, 1914 — page 20: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

a TL TAPE ® For Those Who are Helpless Te i practice of inoculating infants in hospitals with tuberculin is universal. This practice is defended by the doctors on the ground that it is harmless. Dr. Emmett Holt, a prominent doctor of New York and a charming man personally, has recently declared, in effect, that it is of benefit. . We differ with Dr. Holt about this. We believe that it should be made a criminal offense to treat babies as Dr Holt admits they have been treated daily in public hospitals We have said this before, and have aroused the bitter enmity of the friends of special medical privileges—all of which means in effect that any doctor with a passion for experiment can tamper with the life of any human being at will, and be protected by the law in doing so. We shall say it again. When Koch's tuberculin was first discovered, was not the claim made for it by a respectable portion of the medical profession that it was a cure for tuberculosis? Was it not, (after many disastrous experiments were made, the dis- graceful history of which will never be written) finally abandoned as a cure, and used only as a diagnostic agent? Does Dr. Holt assert now that it is anything more than this? We think not. Yesterday tuberculin was loudly proclaimed as a cure. If we had ridiculed its claims then, as we ridiculed its claims now, the same papers who defend the doctors to-day would have defended them then, and for the same reason To-day tuberculin is not a cure, it is only an indicator. To- morrow, what will it be? Probably superseded by another fad. Is it not true that the history of the medical profession in this country has been the history of a succession of pro- phylactic hopes, abandoned one after another? Meanwhile, human being: e the medium, the dumping ground for experiments. Serum succeeds serum, but enough deluded humans still remain to be hypnotized by the fraudulent claims made. Merely An Exception ET us not lose our equanimity over the case of the poor woman who had to take her unweaned baby to jail in New York because she could not pay a sum oi money that she owed. We do not understand that there is to be a general revival of imprisonment for debt which Dickens and others exposed so effectively. It is merely one of those cases where the law pays no attention to justice provided the victim is ignorant enough and friend- less enough. Some persons have expressed the fear that iegel and Vogel, our frenzied department-store might be jailed in the same way. It is true that these gentlemen owe a large amount of money to depo: tors and other creditors which they can’t pay, but it is absurd to think that they will be hauled off to Ludlow Street jail. These gentlemen are in an entirely different category. Better Late Than Never V has taken Governor O'Neal a long time to get ac- quainted with his own State of Alabama, but his revela- tions are none the less valuable on that account. He said recently : “ The State of Alaboma, through the agency of seli ish lobbics, has allowed thousands of our little chil- dren, her most valuable asset, to work at a period forbidden by the humane laws of almost every State in the Union; to work until their physical and mental natures are dwarfed and deformed, their lives short- ened, prematurely aged and wrecked to satisfy the greed of their task-masters.” How about, it, Alabama? Doesn't it make you wish sometimes that some other State occupied this proud pin- nacle? A Real Need FRENCHMAN named Delamoy has invented an ap- paratus whereby you can wind your clock by openin:: and shutting a door, the winding machine doing its worl by the action of the door. What is really needed, however, is an invention that, at- tached to a door, will get rid of people inside of the room. No known method has yet been invented to accomplish this purpose. Yet is there anything which would promote greater efficiency and comfort and give more lasting satis- faction? “HAVE YOU SEEN MY WIFE? I CAN’T FIND HER AND I'VE FORGOTTEN WHAT COLOR WIG SHE'S WEARING.” comichooks.4 Om}