Medicine's Journal

The annual report which the officers of the American Medical Association submitted to their 101,754 members last week demonstrated that that high-minded body is a profitable publishing concern. It publishes the semi-learned Journal of the American Medical Association, popular Hygeia, eight learned special journals, a Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus and the American Medical Directory. The A. M. A. also operates a co-operative medical advertising bureau for 32 State medical journals.

Commissions from the advertising bureau earned the A. M. A. $26,224 last year. The Directory sold 8,280 copies at $15 each since it was issued in 1934. A new edition is being prepared, and the profit or loss of the old is ignored. The Index, a frankly philanthropic publication, cost the A. M. A. $44,439 last year.

Hygeia, which the A. M. A. founded in 1923 as a sideline to promote doctoring and health among laymen and educators, had a circulation of 86,745 at the end of last year and lost $31,311. At the same time Hygeia's competitive publication, Parents' Magazine, which was founded in 1925 by laymen who paid keen attention to their business, had a circulation of 365,197 and a substantial profit.

Overshadowing all this was last year's business done by the A. M. A. Journal, edited by Dr. Morris Fishbein, managed by Will C. Braun. The Journal's circulation revenue was $601,559, its advertising revenue (at $340 a page) $767,231. Miscellaneous publication activities brought gross earnings to $1,493,472.

Operating expenses, including $428,213 for salaries, totaled $880,077. Other expenses reduced the net earnings to $604,672. This was $111,386 more than enough to pay for all the other professional, sociological and political activities of the A. M. A.'s trustees, officers and employes.

Most of the advertising revenue of the profitable A. M. A. Journal comes from advertisements of drugs, therapeutic machines (x-rays, diatherms, sunlamps), corsets, books. Since the establishment of a Committee on Foods, which under Dr. Fishbein's control passes on the health claims of food processors, food advertising in the Journal mounted. Current users of full pages include General Foods (Postum, Post's Whole Bran), Corn Products (Karo Syrup), Knox Sparkling Gelatine, Best Foods (Nucoa Oleomargarine), Dole Hawaiian Pineapple Juice. Chevrolet and Buick are the only motor cars bidding for doctors' business. By advertisements, demonstrations at medical meetings and by packages sent to doctors' offices, Philip Morris has almost succeeded in identifying its brand as the doctors' cigaret. Chesterfield is the only other cigaret that has belatedly rushed into this influential field of smokers.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.