My attention has been called by several disgusted doctors to one
Jay Jay Lawrence who tacks A.M., M.D. to his patronymic,
evidently as an anchor to hold it to the earth. Jay Jay and his
vestibule-train title are conducting a sickly concern at St.
Louis, sporting the euphonious cognomen of The Medical Brief, a
monthly devoted to patent medicine and politics, blue ointment
and economics, vermifuge and philosophy. Although Jay Jay finds
it necessary to mix display ads with his reading matter to make
the latter palatable, he declares that his painful monthly
emission has "the largest circulation of any medical magazine in
the world"--thereby indicating that while his mentality may be
atrophied, his imagination is intumescent. I have long noticed
that journals having large bonafide circulations do little
tooting of their own horns on the house-tops--they don't have to.
It is a species of journalistic quackery which every
thorough-bred publisher regards with contemptuous pity. Brains
win, in the journalistic world as elsewhere, and "blowing" a
circulation were equivalent to employing a brass band to call
attention to the abnormal size of the editorial encephalon. Still
I wouldn't be without Jay Jay's truly remarkable magazine for ten
times the money. I haven't a very high opinion of it as a medical
authority, as it has "Cagliostro" written on it from cover to
cover; but as a humorous journal it is 'way ahead of anything
since the "Wax Wurx" of Artemus Ward. When I weary of the
professional fun-makers, when I tire of laughing at Brer.
Rockefeller's heroic attempt to suppress the ICONOCLAST by
excluding it from his little gate-system railroad; when the
senatorial candidacy of Chollie-Boy Culberson becomes a weariness
to the spirit, and the Texas Baptist convention, with its stage
accessories of snuffles and snot develops into nux vomica, I can
turn to Jay Jay's flamboyant cyclopedia of misinformation and
observe with ever increasing interest the attempts of ye able
editor to diagnose the disease of the body politic and steer it
clear of the funeral director. Jay Jay is evidently not a
progressive practitioner, for he is trying to save the country
exactly as Gulliver's Lagado Galen tried to cure a dog of
wind-colic. I note with unalloyed pleasure that the Brief has
contributors to its medical department, at Purdon, Cove and
Dilworth, Texas, Jones, Switch and Burnsville, Ala., Nassawadox,
Va., Salt Springs, Mo., Claypool, Ky. and other great centers of
therapeutical information indicating that it spares no pains to
give its patrons the worth of their money without adding any
tea-store chromos or electric belly-bands by way of rebate. But
it is not the startling discoveries of these doctors, not the
sophomoric essays of new-fledged Hippocrati now struggling
manfully with buck-ague, snake bite and new babies at Nassawadox,
Jones' Switch and elsewhere that constitute the chief charm of
Jay Jay's versatile journal. The feature of most interest to the
lay reader is the political homilies of the editor himself. Not
only are they deeply interesting to the hoi polloi, but
invaluable from a therapeutical standpoint, being successfully
employed in cases of itch, smallpox, etc. as a counter irritant.
I opine that one of these read in a loud voice to an Egyptian
mummy would result in its immediate resurrection. If it had the
faintest conception of humor it would wake up long enough to
laugh, and if it hadn't it would come to life for the express
purpose of hitting Jay Jay Lawrence, A.M., M.D., across the
sterno cleidomastoidens with a well-seasoned obelisk. It is
impossible to reproduce the flavor of this intellectual
hippocampus' politico-economic emulsions, they being evidently
compounded with thaumaturgis incantations while he is surrounded
with jars of jalap, pile remedies, aphrodisiacs and patent liver
pills. They should be labelled allopathic purgatives and kept
tightly corked. In the copy before me Jay Jay assured his
readers--who are supposed to be numerous as the sands of the sea,
but are probably confined to himself and his country
contributors--that there is a Russo-Franco-Germanic alliance
against England and that it is the sacred duty of America to come
to the rescue of her muchly-beloved "mother country," lest the
'orrid bawbawians make 'way with the old woman, overturn the
civilization of all the centuries and rip human liberty up by the
roots. What my contemporary seems to need is a mild cathartic
that will move his brain--say about a tablespoonful of Theodorus'
Anticyrian hellebore. The continental powers will not harm
England so long as the old harlot behaves herself, but there's no
denying that they are becoming dead-tired of her predacity and
impudence. If the senescent old British lion attempts any funny
business with the Russian bear it is liable to lose its
umbilicus, and the surgical operation will be performed without
the use of anaesthetics. If John Bull gets his proboscis
ingloriously bumped it will be none of Uncle Sam's
business--unless the gentleman in the Star-spangled cut-a-way
happens to be the party of the first part in the bumping
business. Just why we should expend blood and treasure fighting
the battles of the old buccaneer only an Anglomaniacal doctor
enervated by his own dope could possibly imagine. Russia has ever
been our friend, England our foe. The sympathies of Russia are
with Republican France, with Republican America--the hand of
England has ever been against the world. She has ruthlessly
despoiled wherever and whenever she possessed the power, while
slavishly obsequious when confronted by equal force. "Human
liberty," your gran-dam! How long has it been since England
repealed the Test Act?--since she granted political equality to
Jews?--to Catholics? In this respect she even legged behind the
Ottoman Empire. She is the only "Christian" nation on earth
to-day that sanctions human slavery. There are still fools extant
who imagine that all the liberties enjoyed by Americans were
inherited from "dear old England"; while the fact remains that in
the matter of liberty England has been following 50 to 75 years
behind the United States ever since the Flag o' Freedom first
adorned the atmosphere. But it is when Jay Jay ribs himself up
with a powerful nervine and tackles government by injunction that
he really rises into the realm of pure humor--becomes serious, so
to speak. He inadvertently leaks the information that labor
organizations "are animated by anarchistic impulses, their chief
desire is to force property owners to divide with them or lose
their property"; and naively adds: "the injunction is really a
guarantee of individual liberty." Sure! It guarantees to
employers the right to combine to lower wages below the
starvation point, while preventing those who are thus despoiled
seeking the cooperation of their fellows in an attempt to right
the wrong by the simple expedient of taking leave of their tools.
It guarantees to workmen the liberty to be shot down like dogs
for peaceably assembling and walking unarmed on the public
highway--for asking other men to cease work until there is a
better adjustment of wages. Of course a man who isn't willing to
work in a coal mine for 90 cents a day, who lays down his pick
and asks better pay, is an anarchist who is trying to drive other
people to divide with him their property. Jay Jay is so much
wiser than all the labor organizations in the land, than the
framers of our fundamental law, than a majority of the American
judiciary, a--veritable Daniel come to judgment. Give him a crown
as large as that of King Midas, which was designed to hide the
ears of an ass. It is, however, when he assails W. J. Bryan that
he becomes intensely interesting. According to this learned
Theban, Bryan is a Populist and Populists are people who do not
pay their doctor bills. They call the M.D. out of his comfortable
bed at 2 g.m., and after he has frozen his nose and toes to puke
or purge 'em they refuse to even haul him a cord o' slippery-elm
firewood or a load o' pumpkins in payment, but, accuse him of
incompetence! 'Ow 'orrible! Jay Jay must have obtained his
information from those forks of the creek medicos who constitute
the chief contributors to his columns--and who would probably
encounter fewer charges of incompetence if they expended less
time in scribbling "rot" and more in careful reading. Still I can
scarce refrain from weeping over such a tale o' woe. In the
terse vernacular of the "mother country," hit touches me
'eart--so much so that I hereby authorize anybody to whom W. J.
Bryan owes a doctor bill to draw on me for the amount. If he
doesn't owe anybody a doctor bill it follows, according to Jay
Jay's diagnosis, that he is not a Populist--may be a
dyed-in-the-wool Democrat. Classing Bryan and his followers as
Populists, then denouncing all Populists as chronic dead-beats,
must be very soothing to a majority of the medical men of the
West and South, but it is about what might be expected of a man
so infamously ignorant that he calls England our mother country,
so idiotic that he would have us take up arms for the
international pirate in the name of human liberty. The best thing
Jay Jay Lawrence, A.M., M.D., can do is to apply a ten-horse
power poultice to his head and see if he cannot draw a few brains
into that resounding hollow. In the meantime he should eschew
politics and confine himself to the publication of essays by
village doctors and the exploitation of patent medicines. When he
next feels an impulse creeping on to invade the realm of
economics he should chloroform it, or hit it with a club.
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BEHIND THE SCENES IN ST. LOUIS.