Newspaper Medicine: Medical Journals Attack the Press, 1898-1909

Abstract

This research examines the fierce criticism of newspapers voiced in American medical journals from the mid-1890s until 1910. Primarily published to inform readers about new discoveries, successful treatments, technological innovations, and accomplishments of colleagues, the journals did, during the era discussed here, find it necessary to bring up what they saw as problems within the press. One of their primary concerns was the multitude of advertisements for patent medicines and other medical matters, and medical editors frequently claimed that the dependence of newspaper publishers on this kind of advertising corrupted their entire publishing enterprise and went against the greater public good. However, advertising was not the only problem area when it came to the press. News coverage of medical matters was ill-informed and intrusive, and it was conveyed to the public by reporters who lacked knowledge of medicine and were not above inventing facts and by editors who sought sensational angles to boost readership. To some extent, medical journals sought to make the case for their press criticism by referring to similar concerns voiced elsewhere in society at the time, for instance in muckraking magazines, but the criticism in the journals was also rooted in peculiar issues facing the medical profession. Chief among these was the relatively low social standing of physicians in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century. Doctors worried that the public held them in low esteem, and newspapers, the “powerful enemy,” were one of the reasons for that. The outcome of the criticism of newspapers by the profession was a policy that urged doctors to shun publicity and avoid contact with reporters. Toward the end of the 1900–1910 decade, some physicians began to question that policy. They pointed out that, as public health and preventive medicine rose in prominence among the tasks of the typical doctor, a way needed to be found to reach the public. Newspapers were “the greatest educational medium for the masses,” and doctors should come to terms with that.