RT Journal
A1 Juchhoff F
T1 THe degree of doctor
JF Journal of the American Medical Association
JO Journal of the American Medical Association
YR 1939
FD August 26
VO 113
IS 9
SP 876
OP 876
DO 10.1001/jama.1939.02800340146023
UL http://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jama.1939.02800340146023
AB To the Editor:— 
    I am a member of that most insignificant class of human beings which in the technical language of the medical profession is known as "the laity." Whatever meager medical knowledge I may have absorbed from a course in a nonapproved evening medical school some thirty years ago has long ago faded into oblivion, leaving me only a rather unusual understanding of the place of medicine in the modern social order. As a layman I am interested in some of the problems of medical economics as far as they relate to providing adequate and scientific medical service to the public (protecting the public from quacks and impostors) and as certain threats to the medical profession threaten equally my own vested interests. As a doctor of philosophy I am very much alarmed by a recent tendency to lower the dignity of and public respect for not only the degree