To the Editor:—
In The Journal, Dec. 24, 1955, page 1619, Drs. Robert C. Batterman and Arthur J. Grossman present evidence from which they draw three conclusions: one, that salicylamide is not an effective analgesic or antirheumatic; two, that the double blindfold technique as applied to an evaluation of analgesic and antirheumatic drugs does not show any differentiation between placebo therapy or effective medicaments; and, three, that each investigation group studying such drugs should determine the responsiveness to placebo medication for its particular type of patients and use these data as a control for evaluation of unknown analgesic or antirheumatic drugs. Their first conclusion, that salicylamide is ineffective, is contrary to widely accepted authority. It is reasonable to expect, under these circumstances, that their evidence should be more convincing than the data heretofore available concerning the analgesic and antirheumatic effectiveness of salicylamide; however, this is not the case. The series