Practicing Medicine in Print

Dr. William Brady, a spry, 84-year old resident of Beverly Hills, takes great pride in his health. Brady is deaf in one ear, and a few months ago he had to give up daily somersaulting after cracking a vertebra in a dizzy spell following a spin. But his eyes are bright, 16 of his teeth are his own, and his arteries are no harder than those of a man of 45. All told, Brady makes a lively exhibit for the efficacy of his own advice, which he has dispensed daily through his syndicated column " Personal Health Service," for the past 50 years.

Brady's 5,000,000 outpatients-- a figure reflecting the combined circulation of his 80 papers--get a solid dose of oldfangled, no-nonsense medical advice. He is against TV patent-medicine commercials, toothpaste (he uses soap and a birch toothpick), cigarettes, alcohol and hypochondria. "What is my blood pressure advice?" he once asked his readers, and capitalized his answer "NEVER MIND YOUR BLOOD PRESSURE." In a column on the benefits of exercise, he scolded sloths: "Don't just sit on your ischial tuberosities, watching hired professionals play "

Down to the Tegument. "Temperance, correct breathing, nudity and conservation of the teeth" stand high on his list of good health habits. Brady himself often peels down to the tegument-- in some sequestered corner, to be sure.

"A certain amount of nakedness is good for the body," he says, "for it gives all the cells a chance to breathe freely."

If his homespun counsel smacks of medicine's horse-and &buggy days, this is only because Brady himself is a product of that departed time. After graduating from the University of Buffalo medical school in 1901, he set up a practice and in 1914 began writing a column for the Elmira N.Y. Star Gazette. So far as Brady knows he was then the only M.D in newspaper practice.

Today some 30 physicians syndicate medical columns, touching on just about every medical specialty but do-it -yourself surgery. Hundreds more, such as the New York Time's Dr. Howark A Rusk a practicing authority on rehabilitation of the handicapped, confined their practice to the home-town paper. Readers response can be impressive. Dr. Joseph G Molner, who writes for 383 U.S and Canadian papers, gets up to 100,000 letters a month. After Montreal French-language La Presse, which carries Dr. Brady in translation, dropped him tor a week, the managing editor "heard from almost every old-age pensioner in the Dominion."

No End of Somersaults. The American Medical Association takes a tolerant position on newspaper medical practice perhaps because Morris Fishbein, longtime editor of the A.M.A Journal (1924-49), wrote a column himself for 27 years. Fishbein's column, as a matter of fact, survived his newspaper career; after he left it, the syndicate kept it going with three other physicians

Brady's syndicate, the National Newspaper Syndicate of Chicago, is not at all concerned about finding a successor for him. Tucked away in N.N.S. files is half a century's worth of Brady columns that, because of their basic approach to medicine, are not likely to go out of style. By tapping this reservoir, N.N.S. can keep Dr. Brady somersaulting in print for countless years after his death--and intends doing so.

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