Medicine: On the Seaboard Menu

A notable feature of Florida, and one which last week threw important, bone-mending Dr. Fred Houdlett Albee into trouble with Manhattan doctors, is the shuffle of decrepit northerners through the State. St. Petersburg is full of garrulous oldsters who all day long wander from bench to bench recounting their symptoms. Miami streets are punctuated with the homes of colonic irrigators. Open air evangelists place ramps at curbs so that the palsied and the gouty can comfortably trundle their wheelchairs towards sanctity and health.

Dr. Albee, who honed his native shrewdness on hard Manhattan medical competition, noted the excellent medical prospects of Florida, where he goes to treat recurrent attacks of gout. As a likely location for a high-grade hospital Dr. Albee and medical friends selected Venice, 60 mi. south of Tampa. There they opened the Florida Medical Center last November, as a sumptuous, thoroughly-equipped hospital of 300 beds. Among its consultants are some of the nation’s ablest doctors — Professor John Frederick Erdmann, surgeon; Professor Harlow Brooks, diagnostician; Professor Marvin Fisher Jones, nose & throat expert. Venice, southwestern terminus of Sea board Airline Railway, had not been important enough for de luxe train service. But the invalids who now began to travel the Seaboard to Venice could afford to pay for the finest service. Dr. Albee spoke to his good old friend Sam Murdock, Sea board passenger agent in Manhattan. Shrewd Sam Murdock counted the in creasing traffic toward Venice. Result : the Seaboard ran a section of its luxurious air-conditioned “Orange Blossom” special to Venice. Here, observed Passenger Agent Murdock, was a new Florida landmark, which might well attract more travel business for the Seaboard. The Seaboard advertising department sent handbills to travel agents throughout the land. Seaboard dining car menus echoed the handbill’s message: “The Florida Medical Center has been organized and will be directed by Dr. Fred H. Albee, Professor of Orthopedic Surgery, Columbia University,* and internationally known bone specialist. . . . Why seek foreign shores when within 34 to 48 hours from New York or Chicago cases can be in the Paradise of Venice with its wealth of sunshine to offer the renewal of health. . . . You may take this menu with you.” It was all good, straightforward publicity for the railroad and for Dr. Albee’s Florida Medical Center. But not for Dr. Albee. As soon as he saw the advertising he whooped with consternation, telephoned Friend Murdock to “kill” everything. Some of the advertising was withdrawn, but too late for Dr. Albee’s professional good. The Medical Code of Ethics roared. In Manhattan Dr. Albee’s basic medical organization, the New York County Medical Society, accused him of fostering publicity for the Venice hospital. He snorted denial, demanded judgment by the whole society. Last week the Society met. Angry were the members, bitter their denunciations. “Giving medical information to Sam Murdock was like giving matches and gasoline to a pyromaniac,” cried Reed Dawson, lawyer for Dr. Albee’s critics. Fist fights threatened. Finally the Society decided that Dr. Albee must be suspended from Organized Medicine for a full year. Dr. Albee immediately appealed to the New York State Medical Society and threatened, if damned there, to go to court. Expulsion or suspension from his county society is very serious for any reputable doctor. Upon that basic membership depends his membership in his state society and in the American Medical Association. And upon those interlocked memberships depend his relations with other doctors and with medical institutions. It is professionally and economically disastrous for any doctor—a famed Dr. Albee or an obscure ambulance chaser—to offend Organized Medicine, a stern, tightly girdled, decorous dame, who when vexed turns into a shrill gossipy termagant.

*Subsequently Professor Albee resigned his teaching appointments.