The Press: Quackery

Bob Paine—Robert Findlay Paine—is going back again for a brief period to edit the Cleveland Press, and his returning is of sentimental importance to this daily of largest local circulation,*—the first of the chain newspapers that the late Edward Wyllis Scripps (TIME, March 22) founded. Earle E. Martin sat at the Press editorial desk from 1905 until he became publisher of the Cleveland Times last summer (TIME, June 14). Ted O. Thackrey is editor now. But Bob Paine has been the editor emeritus of the Press from the day he left 24 years ago.

Last week Editor Thackrey published in the Press a two-column story—half art work, half text— about Bob Paine and his return. It was an excellent piece of newspaper writing—brief, specific. It quoted Bob Paine’s autobiographic “obit,” the “morgue” story to be printed at his death: “Bob Paine has passed on—he was damned well entitled to it.” It recounted the enthusiastic, hard work he is still able to perform at 70 (he was born in 1856). Most of all it emphasized an injunction Mr. Scripps had once given him: “I want you to clean the questionable and dirty medical ads out of my papers. Clean ’em out, no matter who yells, understand?” Then the Press comment: “There were yells but the objectionable ads were removed.”

Then on the very next page, backing up this article which implied continuing advertising ideals on the part of the Press, appeared a full page advertisement of one of the most notorious medical quacks in the U. S.—Dr. William Oakley Coffee of Davenport, Iowa.

Quack Coffee, now 67 years old, has been “practicing” for 44 years. The Keokuk (Iowa) College of Physicians & Surgeons gave him his diploma in 1881. He was licensed to practice medicine in 1897, 29 years ago. His first “game” was the curing of eye diseases by mail. At Des Moines, he built himself a $100,000 stone home with turrets, porte-cochère and all conveniences. This established business Samuel Hopkins Adams wrecked for him by the “Great American Fraud” articles in Collier’s of 1905-07. Exposer Adams called Quack Coffee “an Eminent Thief and Pre-eminent Liar.” He was not refuted.

But, soon after, Quack Coffee set himself up at Davenport as an “eye, ear, nose and throat” specialist and began a new technique of gull-baiting. He bought full page space in newspapers and thereby gold-knuckled editorial prudence. He called himself a specialist and offered to treat “deafness, head noises from nasal catarrh,” and only the American Medical Association objected. Such full page advertisements have become his chief means, with his “sucker list,” of exploitation.* Quick flipping of newspaper files show that from January to April of this year he used full page spreads in at least the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, New Haven Evening Register, Boston Sunday Advertiser, Peoria (Ill.) Star, Denver Rocky Mountain News, Cleveland Press, Topeka (Kans.) Daily State Journal, New York Evening Journal, Los Angeles Examiner, and Newark (N. J.) Evening News.†

Newspaper editors, a comparatively intelligent lot, know that no disease condition can be cured by mail. All cure depends on accurate, personal diagnosis of the patient. Publisher Scripps was yet alive, Editor Martin yet in charge when the Press published the full page Quack Coffee advertisement in March. Editor Thackrey followed Scripps-Howard precedent in permitting the similar spread last week. Nor did he blush editorially because such a predatory advertisement backed up his “moral” story on Bob Paine. The combination was but another instance of newspapermen’s almost universal contempt for the public’s mentality.

Newspapermen assume that not 2% of the readers of the Press—or of any other newspaper of large circulation—have wits enough to detect the most glaring inconsistency between highmindedness on Page 12 and corrupt quackery on Page 13.

*222,637. The Cleveland Sunday Plain Dealer has 266,578 circulation.

*His son, W. E. Coffee, with the father’s complicity, is now selling “wonderful Zylo shell frames with torie lenses that are scientifically ground” for $4.65. He will “make you a present of a handsome spring-back, felt-lined spectacle case which you will be proud to own.”

†Most of these papers pretend to censor fake medical advertising.