482 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
as to grant this important privilege to any individual or eorpo- 
ration does not speak well for the intelligence of the American 
people ; and that these laws should be changed at once none 
will deny, so as to prevent in the future any monopoly, either 
home or foreign, from levying extortion on the people of this 
country for using medical discoveries which may be considered 
the common property of the medical sciences. 
It would appear from the patenting of the diphtheritic 
serum that the high professional dignity which has hitherto 
marked the course of the medical profession in Germany is fast 
being pushed into the background by grasping commercialism, 
when Behring, who has always been a recognized leader in 
that profession, can be induced to engage in the patent medicine 
business. 
Behring cannot with consistency lay claim to being the 
original discoverer of diphtheria antitoxin serum, because his 
labors in that direction were largely supplemented by, and in 
many instances preceded by, the researches of Pasteur, Roux, 
Nocard, Chaurveau, Kitasato and a number of other investigat¬ 
ors in the field of bacteriology and biology, equally as eminent, 
if not superior to Behring. 
A ridiculous feature of our patent laws is that they have 
granted to Behring and his commercial co-partners absolute 
rights in this country which had been denied them in their 
country, Germany. The patent laws of Germany refuse with¬ 
out any exceptions a patent on any medicinal preparation. The 
American people have long felt the heavy hand of foreign 
chemical corporations who unscrupulously have exacted enor¬ 
mous sums of money yearly from them for such chemicals as anti- 
pyrine, salol, etc., which in the country of their manufacture 
sold at merely nominal prices, owing to the absence of protect¬ 
ing patent laws. 
It would appear as if we are to have this patent extortion 
further fastened upon us, by this granting of a patent on the 
production of diphtheria serum, although I understand that 
several of the leading producers of antitoxin serum in this 
country have decided to contest the legality of Behring’s patent 
in the courts. 
Laws which grant patents on medicinal substances are an 
unmitigated evil, and it should be the duty of ever}^ physician 
and veterinarian in this country to see to it that such laws, so 
inimical to their interests, should be removed from the statute 
t>ooks. W. J. Martin. 
