Medical advertising: The Family Encyclopaedia of Medicine scandal of 1914

Abstract

The past 100 years have seen a transition from a total ban in Britain on all advertising by doctors to the laity to almost total freedom of medical information, with probable benefit to public health but also a risk of loss of privacy. The Family Encyclopaedia of Medicine, written by Dr Hugh Howard Riddle and published by Lord Northcliffe’s Daily Mail in 1914, started a flood of medical journalism in the press and the newer media. The lavishly advertised misattribution of its authorship to ‘thirty eminent specialists’, including Clifford Allbutt and William Osler, caused a major rumpus in the London Royal College of Physicians, but the fortnightly publication continued and became a four-volume book, popular with a public avid for more and more medical information.

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