Doctors, Attention!

The average general practitioner is not necessarily careless when, after a long day of rounds and "office hours, he dozes over the medical journals which are supposed to keep him up to date on his profession. Even the widely read (circ. 130,000) Journal of the American-Medical Association is printed in forbiddingly long columns and crammed with purposefully dull medical jargon, often in small type. Its illustrations are hard-to-read charts or muddy photographs.

This week a medical magazine of a different kind was on its way to national circulation. The National Cancer Institute had granted $19,600 to help the Texas Cancer Bulletin, just renamed Cancer Bulletin, to reach out to every doctor in the land. When he picks up this gaudy piece of jazzy journalism, the most exhausted country doctor can hardly fall asleep. In fact, he may be so upset that he will need a sedative.

The Texas Cancer Bulletin was started early in 1948 by Dr. Randolph Lee Clark Jr., director of Texas University's M.D. Anderson Hospital for Cancer Research, in Houston. He had a sound idea: most cancer patients are seen first by general practitioners who cannot cull all the journals for specialized articles; therefore they should be taught, through short, snappy, easy-to-read articles, how to spot the disease quickly.

Clark had had a hand in getting out the Air Forces' high-flying Air Surgeons' Bulletin, and knew what he wanted. As editor he hired a fellow Texan, Russell Walters Cumley, a Ph.D. (biology) jack of all trades. They talked the state's Department of Health and the Texas Division of the American Cancer Society into buying one-year subscriptions for all the state's 7,300 doctors. Their small staff threw off all restraint in writing about cancer.

The results were astonishing to both readers and editors. Every page was laid out in punchy, advertising style. Each issue bloomed with color printing. Weird symbols of internal organs caught the eye. Among the standing features: "Tumor Topics" and "Cancer Quiz." The Bulletin could say anything with enthusiasm. Inch-high type clarioned: "EVERY PERSON HAS A RECTUM . . . Any Doctor Can Examine It." An article on digital examination to detect cancer of the breast was briskly headed "Stop, Look and Feel," and decked with 17 drawings in color. The editors and artists even hit on a way to make a cover design for castration (a palliative for cancer of the prostate). They used a three-color cartoon of a topi-topped explorer cutting off an orchid, laboriously explained that orchis is Greek for testicle.

Doctors have welcomed the change--or Clark and Cumley have proved themselves topnotch promoters. Circulation has already jumped to 61,000 in 13 states which are following Texas' lead. Public funds from state health departments, as well as Cancer Society donations, will be used still more widely if the sponsors reach their goal of 100,000 circulation by year's end.

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