Baltimore Evening Sun (20 February 1913): 6.

Dr. A. L. Blessing, of Gapland, Md., successor to the lamented McMains as pope of the Maryland Medical Freedomists:

Where does he [the Hon. H. L. M.] get his warrant for his recent statement that “no competent authority argues that vaccination produces complete and certain immunity against smallpox”? Would he not call Dr. Edward Jenner, the originator of vaccination, competent authority? Yet Jenner claimed that, once vaccinated, you were forever exempt from smallpox.

An almost perfect example of that sonorous bosh which passes for argument among medical freedomists. Dr. Edward Jenner died 90 years ago. He gave the race the great boon of vaccination, but his personal experience of its effects was necessarily limited. Long and elaborate investigation was needed to establish its value and its limitations. Is it intelligent, or even sane, to argue that where Dr. Jenner stopped, all knowledge must stop? Would it be sane to set up James Watt as the final authority upon the steam engine, or Michael Faraday as the final authority upon the electric motor, or John Hunter as the ultimate and infallible surgeon?

Meanwhile, let us hear from Dr. Blessing something about his own qualifications as an expert. On what ground does he hold that he knows more about immunity than Dr. Welsh and Dr. Ehrlich? From what institution of learning does he hold his degree of doctor of medicine? What contribution has he made to medical knowledge?

THE WOMAN HUNT

After 23 years’ experience as a police officer, I am fully convinced that the proper way to handle such women is to have a segregated district, and to put them where they will not come in contact with respectable women and children.—Charles H. Bodeker, Chief of Police of Birmingham, Ala.

Additional list of scoundrels who smoke cigarettes:

The Hon. Satan Anderson devotes half a page in the current issue of his weekly paper to announcing, with barbarous gusto, my death at the hands of the Rev. Dr. John Roach Straton. News to me, and also, I dare say, to the Rev. Dr. Straton. But if the Hon. Mr. Anderson will come forward with proofs, I hereby promise and engage to go out to Loudon Park by swift taxicab, break into the crematorium and turn on the Bunsen burners. The dead should be disposed of promptly and in some sanitary manner.

However, I admit nothing. On the contrary, I insist that I am still alive, though undoubtedly somewhat shaken up by the reverend doctor’s slugging, and even more by his war cries. He is a two-handed gladiator and has my full respect Engaged constantly with leading bravos of virtue and wholly familiar with their varying talents for torture, I certify with pleasure that he is one of the strongest and nimblest of them. It is stimulating to meet such an antagonist on the mat. It would be an honor to be murdered by him.

But, as I have said, I deny categorically that he has done me to death. And in earnest of my aliveness I hereby warn the Hon. Mr. Anderson that I am massing artillery for a savage and sanguinary attack upon his own fortress. My whole force of statisticians is hard at work manufacturing bogus statistics. I have spies at work in every cold-water State. I have invented 260 new and appalling slanders against the Hon. Mr. Anderson himself. And my proposal is that the combat be conducted without rules—that butting, biting, hair-pulling, lying, whooping, gouging, caterwauling, gnawing, gumming, yelping, screaming and ear-pulling be permitted.

Moralists who wish to see the swimming-pool scene in “Kismet” at the Academy of Music are advised that it begins at 9.50 o’clock. At 9.53 the First Bather enters from the right, slips off her raincoat and plunges into the pool in all the shameless glory of her pink union suit. Various other characters obstruct the free view of the spectator down stairs, but by buying a gallery seat toward the left and employing a reliable telescope the immorality of the scene may be very comfortably deplored.

Incidentally, this play of “Kismet” offers a lot of civilized entertainment to persons who are not moralists. It is the first successful attempt to get the magic and mystery, the color and glamour, of “The Arabian Nights” upon the stage, and it is superbly acted by Otis Skinner and his company. Not for many moons, indeed, has a Baltimore theatre offered anything more worthy of patronage. The Academy of Music should be crowded at every performance.

Standing of the clubs in the National Tuberculosis League for the week ended January 25:

Baltimore.................448 Pittsburgh.......................262
New York.................377 Boston............................253
Chicago....................265 Cleveland.......................231
St. Louis...................262

Still on the lookout sheet at police headquarters:

The super-Mahon’s hand-picked League of Maryland Municipalities. The super-Mahon’s bottle-fed Kosher Charter Commission.

Still no word from Dr. Guy L. Hunner! Not a syllable in defense of his charge that I am a slanderer of college presidents! What is worse, not a syllable of apology! Such is the moral ethic. Such is the controversial technique of the chemically pure.

The boomers! The boomers! They linger with us yet! Performing sweet cadenzas on the eloquent cornet!

Forget your drinking water! Neglect your garbage can! All hands on deck for the Vice Crusade!