Chicago Fuss

Chicago, like other U. S. metropoles, has more than its per capita share of U. S. venereal disease. U. S. Public Health Surgeon Hugh S. Cumming stated last week that at the beginning of this year the U. S. had 176,502 cases of syphilis and 143,490 of gonorrhea reported. That averages one venereal case for every 400 men, women and children in the U. S. So Chicago, with some 3,000,000 population, should normally have 7,500 cases. It has considerably more.

Chicago would have more than it now has were it not for the activities of the Illinois Social Hygiene League and the Public Health Institute. The League has as president Dr. Louis Ernst Schmidt, 60, able genitourinary surgeon, for 30 years professor in that specialty at Northwestern University Medical School. /-

The Institute conducts free venereal examination clinics, which Chicago's wanton females and lickerish men have learned to visit when uneasy. Institute examiners send the diseased to their family urologists or, if poor, to Dr. Schmidt's Social Hygiene League where fees are low and where invalids can get expert treatment from him, Dr. Rachel Yarros (Hull House) and others. The League gets $12,000 yearly support from the Institute.

Supporters of the institute include Marshall Field III, Colonel Albert Arnold Sprague, Harold Fowler McCormick. They are businessmen and know the inducements of advertising. Hence in Chicago newspapers have appeared full page advertisements warning of the dangers of sexual promiscuities and of the ravages of venereal diseases, urging the afflicted to hasten to their doctors or to Institute clinics. President-Elect Malcolm La Salle Harris of the American Medical Association has recommended that Chicago take over the Institute as a social activity.

Chicago doctors pay $15,000 to $20,000 for their education. They expect good income after that investment. Public or semi-public institutions hurt business for private practitioners. Hence Chicago doctors have long yammered against the Public Health Institute. Last week the

Chicago men struck at the Institute by attacking Dr. Schmidt. While Chicago quacks continued unharassed, the Chicago Medical Society expelled Dr. Schmidt from membership. At once, his associate Dr. Yarros resigned; also his colleague, Dr. Herman Niels Bundesen, Chicago's onetime strident but able health commissioner, now Cook County's coroner.

* Dr. Schmidt is a brother of able Hospital-Architect Richard Ernest Schmidt.