Gifts of millions of dollars offered by philanthropists to establish hospitals and medical clinics at which Chicago’s citizens may receive treatment at low cost are being attacked by members of the Chicago Medical Society. Threats are being made that if these clinics are opened “they will be branded unethical by the Society,” and that members of their medical staffs will be expelled from the Society. The aroused physicians complain that if pay clinics are formed to care for the sick in this low-priced manner, regular practitioners will lose patients and suffer financially.
Leading instances of these philanthropic offers which are under attack by a faction of the Medical Society are the Rosenwald Foundation, the offer of Edward N. Hurley to make a similar endowment, and the present operation of the Public Health Institute, by a board of trustees composed of leading men of wealth in Chicago.
Linked up with the physicians’ battle against the pay clinics is the trial by the Society of Dr. Louis Schmidt on a charge of unethical activities. Dr. Schmidt is a noted urological authority and is connected with many philanthropic medical activities. The attitude of some leading members of the Society is friendly toward Dr. Schmidt and to the Rosenwald and Hurley plans, but indications of hostility manifested by other members, as made public yesterday, is shown in the following resolution adopted by a branch of the Society and submitted at a meeting of the General Council.
The resolution says in part: “It has been announced that a fund of two million dollars has been donated by Julius Rosenwald for the purpose of providing cheaper medical service to the middle class of our population, and that Edward N. Hurley is contemplating giving a large sum of money for a similar purpose. The Northwest Branch of the Chicago Medical Society recognizes in these moves a tendency toward the socialization of medicine, the pauperizing of the public and a lowering of the medical standards. Therefore the Northwest Branch of the Chicago Medical Society opposes these dangerous tendencies. The Council of the Chicago Medical Society is requested to direct the full-time executive secretary to devote his whole energy toward combating these evil measures.”
In an official issue of the Bulletin of the Chicago Medical Society, Dr. James H. Hutton, its secretary, writes that “many complaints are heard regarding the economic situation of the doctor, especially as regards unfair competition.”
“The Rosenwald Foundation proposes to rescue the man of moderate means from the grasp of the ignorant
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and inefficient practitioner. Yesterday it was the poor man who needed the assistance of the philanthropist, today it is the man of moderate means, tomorrow even the rich man may need this assistance. The private practitioner will have become entirely incompetent when he shines in the reflected light of some Foundation.”
In the latest Bulletin of the Society, received by physicians yesterday, the details of a meeting of the Council on March 19, when the Rosenwald Foundation plan was discussed, are made public. The Liason Committee of the Society has held meetings with Mr. Rosenwald’s representatives, it is revealed.
Dr. William Allen Pusey, chairman of the committee, said there had been conference with Edwin R. Embree, president of the Rosenwald Foundation and Dr. Michael M. Davis, medical director of the Foundation. Some reports of these meetings had it that Mr. Embree and Dr. Davis were informed that if they persisted in their plans, the Medical Society would take action against any physician who joined the staffs of the clinics or hospitals. These reports were denied by Dr. Frank R. Morton, president of the Society.
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