Now I am not a scientist; nor am I a professional humorist.
T. Swann Harding, “How Scientific Are Our Doctors?”
In this article Mr. Harding does not content himself with attacking the medical profession. Although he believes the average doctor is rather more scientific than a chiropractor, he thinks the cure and prevention of disease must be raised to the status of a true science; and his remedy is state medicine. This is not a new idea. State medicine has already been largely adopted in England and several other European countries, and the American Medical Association has already committed itself to fight such a program with all the prestige and influence it can muster. Nevertheless, the movement is gaining ground and is taking its most practical form in the State of Washington, where proposals are even now being drafted for the consideration of the state legislature.
There are men — William M. Wheeler is one of them - who manage to combine a considerable knowledge of science with a genuine sense of humor. And there are others who are rather “men of measured merriment.” Now I am not a scientist, for I do not consider that puttering around in several branches of chemistry, including the pharmaceutical, allows me to claim that title. Nor am I a professional humorist. Nevertheless I do know something about science and something about humor.
I know, for instance, when I am amused. When the cause of my amusement is of a scientific nature, my enjoyment is doubly keen. [346] Imagine, then, my pleasure at the spectacle of the American Medical Association posing as a scientific avenger and working itself into a perfectly self-righteous wrath to “debunk” quack healing. The amusement lies in the fact that approximately half of the drug therapy invoked by the ordinary doctor and advertised in his most erudite journals is of the quack quacky in so far as it involves the dosage of human beings, after very imperfect diagnoses, with simple or compound medicines or agencies of unknown physiological effects (or perhaps lacking any at all) upon human organisms.
This is not to defend charlatanism...
T. Swann Harding, “How Scientific Are Our Doctors?” in The Forum 81:6 (June 1929) : 345-351 (345) : link
A note follows the above essay, thus —
“Next month Mr. Harding will be answered by Dr. F. Gl Crookshank —
‘The Doctors and the Public’”
in the July 1929 number, pp 22-28 : link
T. Swann Harding (1890-1963) worked in various capacities in (and around) the Department of Agriculture. He was something of a debunker and skeptic. He wrote several books, including
- T. Swann Harding, Two Blades of Grass : A History of Scientific Development in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (1947)
archive.org : link - T. Swann Harding, The Joy of Ignorance (1932)
archive.org : link - and a few titles in the Little Blue Book series published by the Haldeman-Julius Publishing Company.
The only profile I have found is by Joshua Blu Buhs in his blog At an Oblique Angle : “T. Swann Harding as a Fortean” (January 27, 2016) : link
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The Forum ran from 1875 until 1950. The magazine was known for publishing opposing views on various issues, in debates that (according to wikipedia) might go on for several issues, and even decades.
wikipedia : link
27 March 2025