ABSTRACT
The eminent surgeon James Peter Warbasse should not have been surprised when in April 1918—with Great War jingoism drowning out rationale debate—he was abruptly expelled from his county medical society (which also, for good measure, took the liberty of forwarding some materials on the good doctor to the US Department of Justice). 1 Apart from Warbasse’s affiliations with various left-wing political groups, his involvement in the labor movement, and his provocative social medicine-themed writings, he had now offended the society with a letter to the editor of a New York newspaper that was deemed insufficiently patriotic. 2 Perhaps he hoped that his prominent academic standing might have offered some protection: having trained with the best in Germany, Warbasse had authored scores of scientific papers as well as a multi-volume surgical text. 3 His views on healthcare, however, may have been working against him within his rather conservative medical society. Several years prior, for instance, Warbasse had forcefully argued for healthcare equity and rights in the pages of the preeminent Journal of the American Medical Association:
Among the wealthy there now is a surfeit of doctors; among the poor, too few. … I believe that the wives of coal-miners and iron-workers are as worthy of the best scientific attention and the tenderest care in the hours of their need as are the wives of the rich. I believe that they should have it, not as a charity or welfare enterprise, but as a matter of social justice. It is their right. 4
