BOGUS DOCTORS

Evening Post, Volume CVI, Issue 127, 26 November 1923, Page 7

BOGUS DOCTORS

THOUSANDS OF VICTIMS

ALARMING RESULT OF INQUIRY.

NEW YORK, 25th November. As the authorities . widen the intensity of their investigations into the operations of bogus physicians, deporable details are revealed.

The Connecticut State Health Department, after examining recent death certificates and investigating the circumstances of the deaths, declares that at least 200 patients of impostor physicians in this State alone died most suspiciously. One practitioner had six deaths in a few months, killing one patient with an overdose of ether when attempting a minor operation. The authorities estimate- that possibly 12,000 patients of bogus doctors have died in the past five years throughout the country. Three such practitioners, in Hartford and New York, for whom warrants charging them with manslaughter have been listed, have fled, it is believed to Canada.

The ownere of the Kansas City College and the College of Missouri sold diplomas on an organised wide-reaching bribery system, by which many officials in many States received large sums of money for issuing illegally the documents necessary to enable the impostors to practice medicine. '

A scandal involving physicians in nearly every State of the Union was disclosed early this month as the result cf an investigation of a medical college operating in Kansas City, which sold diplomas for cash instead of granting them after the completion of a fixed course of study^ Graduates numbering probably 25,000 thereupon assumed residence in various States.

Many cases aro reported' of sendin" substitutes tp. Jake, ike State giamina-

tions which are necessary before a physician can obtain a license to practise. lii i this way men are able to becoma accredited physicians.