Even the AMA throughout the last half of the 19^th century, though concerned with the public health threat posed by the wide spread use of patent medicines, was unable to even stop the marketing of these nostrums in medical journals. Out of some 250 medical journals in 1905 only a few refused to accept patent medicine ads. Obviously if the medical profession could not clean up its own journals there was no way it could call on the popular press to reject this type of advertising.