Macfadden Attacked

Just as a surgeon will whip out his scalpel to whittle away proud flesh, so the American Medical Association has whetted the policy of Hygeia, its monthly instrument for the interpretation of modern medicine to the lay public, and begun whittling at an unhealthy protuberance in the publishing field, namely, Physical Culture, a monthly magazine published by one Bernarr Macfadden (TIME, June 4, 1923; July 14, Sept. 22). The November issue of Hygeia carried “the first of a series of articles . . . discussing the manner in which the hope of relief from suffering and disease is exploited by the promoters of peculiar cults and fads.”

Said Hygeia: “Modern quackery as an industry has grown to the point where it is able to support numerous subsidiary businesses that cater to its needs. Especially is this true in that particular field of quackery commonly designated as drugless.

“The publication known as Physical Culture … is an outstanding example of the money that is to be made from catering to ignorance and furnishing a contact between the quack and his victims. . . .

“Physical Culture has ‘been put forward as a magazine for those who think.

“The student of journalism is always suspicious of a slogan of this type, .whether applied to magazines or newspapers,* for he knows that usually those publications that boast that they are prepared for people who think are actually edited for morons.

“Editorially, Physical Culture is devoted to fantastic and bizarre fads and the exploitation of Bernarr Macfadden. Every issue reeks with sex appeal. The Detroit Saturday Night has described Macfadden as ‘the bare torso king and the description is apropos.

“The usual cover design is that of a woman in as little clothing as the law allows, so disporting herself as to show a maximum amount of nudity compatible with retention of second-class mailing privileges. Within the cover one finds the same theme played up. … Nor is the male neglected. Macfadden himself in various stages of undress, and various other supermen with little on but a surcingle doubtless attract many quarters†from girls and women who feel the biologic urge.”

Physical Culture and other Macfadden publications are abhorred in many quarters for their execrable taste and blatant hypocrisy. But the prime motive of the attack upon Physical Culture by the American Medical Association was to prevent the dissemination of what the Association feels to be outrageously fallacious and dangerous medical misinformation. Hygcia’s article, to which the attention of the medical profession was called editorially in the Oct. 25 issue of the Association’s Journal, concentrated chiefly upon the advertising pages of Physical Culture, citing numerous nostrums there offered which the Medical Association declared to be positively fraudulent. Hygeia reproduced, in reduced size, a pageful of these advertisements, commenting also on the fact that Physical Culture, while professing a violent antagonism to drugs, would accept displays for such substances as “Sargol,” “Sanatogen,” “Absorbine Jr., “Murine” and other patent medicines.

The article concluded: “The amount of harm that Physical Culture does is incalculable. Not only do its advertising pages inevitably tend to destroy public confidence in the printed word but its editorial pages pervert public intelligence . . . have a pernicious effect on public health.”

Significance. Bernarr Macfadden has millions of dollars, millions of subscribers. He has shrewd assistants. The reading matter that he vends is stuff that an easygoing, careless public will not hasten to put aside voluntarily. If serious war is made upon him by Medicine, it will be a long war. Macfadden has already entrenched himself by repeated digs at the medical profession, and can always rally hundreds of thousands of the gullible reading public by his apostolic battle cry: “The Truth, Nothing but the Truth!”

*Slogan of Publisher Hearst’s New York American: “A paper for people who think.”

†The price of Physical Culture is 25c a copy.