Medical Freedom. 
ARGUMENTS OK 
J. H. BENTON, JR., ESQ., 
PROF. C. W. EMERSON, 
DR. J. R. BUCHANAN, 
AGAINST 
Medical Legislation in Massachusetts, 
TOGETHER WITH 
Gov LONG'S VETO MESSAGE, /inti FCxtrnct from 
HERBERT SPENCER'S "Sociul bittitlos.” 
PUBLISHED BY 
THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL LIBERTY LEAGUE, 
BOSTON, MASS. Medical Freedom. 
ARGUMENTS OK 
J. H. BENTON, JR., ESQ., 
PROF. C. W. EMERSON, 
DR. J. R. BUCHANAN, 
AGAINST 
Medical Legislation in Massachusetts, 
TOGETHER WITH 
Oov. LONG'S VETO MESSAGE, and Extract from 
HERBERT SPENCER'S "Social Statics." 
PUBLISHED BY 
THE MASSACHUSETTS MEDICAL LIBERTY LEAGUE, 
BOSTON, MASS. PREFACE. 
To the Reader : 
In presenting this pamphlet for your thoughtful considera- 
tion, we desire to call your attention to the nature of the 
arguments herewith presented. 
The legal view of the question is most ably argued by that 
distinguished member of the Boston bar, J. H. Benton, Jr., 
Esq. 
Dr. Chas. Wesley Emerson, the well-known President of 
the Monroe College of Oratory, (who, although a regular 
medical graduate, has never practised medicine, having 
given his entire life to literary and educational pursuits,) 
argues the question from the standpoint of an intelligent, 
unbiased citizen of the Commonwealth, who believes in jeal- 
ously guarding the liberties of the people against that great- 
est danger that can threaten the republican form of govern- 
ment, class legislation. 
Prof. Joseph Rodes Buchanan reviews the subject from a 
medical point of view. Professor Buchanan is not only a 
profound thinker and author, (among the many able products 
of his pen his “ Higher Education ” is probably the best 
known,) but also for a number of years Dean of the Cincin- 
nati Eclectic Medical Institute, (parent college of American 
eclecticism,) and professor of Physiological Institutes of 
Medicine in the same college. He also occupied the same 4 
chair in the New York Eclectic Medical College, still later 
filling one of the chairs in the Homoeopathic Medical School 
of the Boston University. Hence his arguments are enti- 
tled to great weight, coming as they do from one of the 
most learned teachers and physicians in the land. 
That great philosopher of this century, Herbert Spencer, 
gives in the extracts we make from his “Social Statics,” 
cogent reasons that will appeal to the better judgment of 
every student of the social problem ; while the terse but 
pointed reasons set forth in the veto message of our justly 
popular and universally loved son of the old Bay State, 
Gov. Long, shows this question as viewed by the able states- 
man. In short, we here give this subject — the crowning 
crime against the liberties of the people — as viewed from 
the legal and medical standpoints, as well as those of the cul- 
tured civilian, the philosopher, and the statesman. ARGUMENT 
OF 
J. H. BENTON, Jr., Esq., 
BEFORE 
The Committee on Public Health of the Massachu- 
setts Legislature, against the Petition of the 
Massachusetts Medical Society for the 
Passage of an Act to regulate 
the Practice of Medicine. 
STATE HOUSE, BOSTON, MARCH 0, 1885. 
This is the petition of the Massachusetts Medical Society 
for “An Act to regulate the Practice of Medicine” in Mas- 
sachusetts. It raises an important question. It raises a 
question which touches the personal happiness and security 
of every man, woman, and child in this Commonwealth, and 
time which is spent in considering it fully is not wasted. 
I desire to invite your attention to the history of the legis- 
lation upon this subject in this Commonwealth, but first I 
want to say a few words about the petition and the proposed 
bill. It appears that last June the Massachusetts Medical 
Society appointed a committee of seventeen, — I take it, one 
from each of the seventeen districts in the State, — to pre- 
pare a bill upon this subject and to procure its enactment 
by this legislature. In pursuance of that a bill was prepared, 
and a circular, which I will now read, was sent over the 
State: — 
“Dear Doctor:—Herewith find a copy of a bill, prepared after 
very careful consideration by a committee appointed by the Massachu- 
setts Medical Society, at their annual meeting last June. 
“It will be observed that it is based upon no society or class distinction, 
but upon the evidence of possession of a fundamental knowledge of the 
science of medicine.” 6 
Well, if the members of the Massachusetts Medical Society 
are willing to stand upon the claim that the examination pro- 
vided for in this bill goes to a fundamental knowledge of the 
science of medicine, when they have left therapeutics and 
materia medica out of it absolutely, they take a much more 
narrow view in the law than they do in their own standard 
for examination for admission to their own body. 
“ It has been framed with the thought only of the protection of the 
people from fraud and ignorance, and has had the almost unanimous 
approval of the best men consulted in the profession, regardless of modes 
of practice. 
“Twenty-six States have already taken action upon this important sub- 
ject, and a number of others are now pressing action in their respective 
legislatures. It is believed that the present presents certain marked 
advantages for the securing of legislation.” 
Just what those marked advantages are I don’t know; 
perhaps some people can surmise. 
“This circular is addressed, as far as possible, to every member of the 
medical and dental profession within the State, and your committee 
earnestly hope you will at once return to the secretary your approval of 
its passage.” 
There is a direct call to each member of the medical and 
dental profession in Massachusetts to return at once his ap- 
proval of this bill. 
“ And write briefly to your representative your reasons therefor. You 
can be of great service in doing this, but only by immediate action. 
Very respectfully, 
Henry O. Marcy, Sec'y of Committee. 
116 Boylston Street, Boston, Feb. 13, 1885.'” 
That bill, for some unknown reason, has not been openly 
presented to this committee, and yet every member has had 
a copy of it in his pocket. Everybody understands that it 
is the bill which the committee of the Massachusetts Medical 
Society wants ; and I cannot understand why, unless they 
are ashamed of it, they have been unwilling to present it for 
fair and impartial discussion. There are, I believe, about 
2,000 physicians in the three medical societies in Massachu- 
setts,— about 1,600 in the Massachusetts Medical Society, 
about 300 in the Homoeopathic Society, as I understand, and 
about 100 in the Eclectic. I don’t know how many dental 7 
surgeons there are, but a good many. This bill, with a 
request for its approval, has been sent to every one of these 
gentlemen, and out of the whole number 168 only have 
returned any kind of an approval of its extraordinary pro- 
visions. (Applause.) Fifteen oppose it, and of the 161 
who endorse it, — many of them by simply writing on the 
back of the circular, “ I approve,” which is not a very marked 
endorsement, — of the i6i who endorse it at all, 117 are 
members of the Massachusetts Medical Society. And of the 
twenty medical gentlemen who have appeared in favor of 
this bill, all but three are members of the Massachusetts 
Medical Society, and of that three, one, I believe, was a horse 
doctor. ( Laughter.) He said to the members of the com- 
mittee that he really did n’t know what he did want. He 
had written a book of 400 pages, but he did n’t think that 
ought to be enacted, although something ought to be done. 
Among these letters there is one from a member of the 
Massachusetts Medical Society who sits upon this committee; 
and the chairman of this committee, who has presided with 
such uniform fairness and clearness, is a member of that 
society. 
I am not here to say anything against that ancient and 
able organization. It was created at a time when there was 
but one school of medicine, and it was given extraordinary 
powers, and it exercised them from 1788 to i860 as wisely 
and as well as any exclusive body of men from one 
particular school of a profession probably could exercise such 
powers. Hut I invite your consideration for a few moments 
to the history of the legislation in this State on this subject : 
because it is wise, when you are asked to enact a new law, 
to see whether there has been any law on that subject before, 
and how it has worked, and what the people have done with 
it. 
The Massachusetts Medical Society was incorporated in 
1781. (Laws of Mass., vol. III., pp. 140, 145.) It was given 
corporate powers ; authorized to sue and to be sued ; to elect 
to membership ; to suspend, expel, or disfranchise members ; 
to make laws for the government of the society ; and was 
also authorized to issue letters testimonial, under the seal of 
the society, to such as were found skilled, to the approbation 8 
of the examiners, as medical practitioners. A penalty of one 
hundred pounds ($500) was fixed upon the society and its 
officers if they should obstinately refuse to examine anybody 
who presented himself for examination. I believe, sir, that 
they are now bound to examine anybody, whether a graduate 
of a college or not, and always have been. It had not oc- 
curred to the legislature of Massachusetts at that time that a 
man was not entitled to practise a profession in which he 
was skilled unless he had a diploma. It recognized the fact 
that a quack may exist under the protection of a diploma as 
well as without it. 
The society was organized in June, 1782. 
In 1788 it was required to prescribe such a course of med- 
ical and surgical instruction, and such qualifications, as they 
should judge requisite for candidates for the practice of physic 
or surgery, and to cause the same to be published annually in 
one or more newspapers in each of four medical districts pro- 
vided for in the State. (Laws of Mass., vol. III., pp. 140- 
145.) Here you see a standard for qualification was fixed, 
and it was a public standard. The Massachusetts Medical 
Society was the authority to fix the standard, and they were 
required to make the standard known to the people, and 
every person licensed was required to pay such fees as should 
be established by the society for examination and license. 
In 1802 the examiners or censors of the society were re- 
quired to examine all who should offer themselves to be ap- 
proved as practising physicians or surgeons, who had re- 
ceived such an education as was, or might be, from time to 
time, prescribed by the regulations of the society. An ap- 
plicant need not necessarily be a graduate of any college, but 
anybody who came up to the published standard was entitled 
to examination and to be licensed, if found qualified. And 
they were required to give every candidate whom they should 
approve a license to practise physic or surgery, or both. 
(Laws of Mass., vol. III., pp. 140-145.) 
In 1803 it was provided that the members of the Massa- 
chusetts Medical Society should not be enrolled in the mili- 
tia. (Laws of Mass., vol. III., pp. 140-145.) 
Then came, in 1817, Mr. Chairman, “An Act to regulate 
the Practice of Physic and Surgery.’* This was the first spe- 9 
cific act to regulate the practice of physic and surgery in 
Massachusetts. It provided that the Massachusetts Medical 
Society should appoint examiners in each county, who should 
examine all applicants who had pursued the course of study 
required by the society, and give licenses to such as were 
found qualified according to that standard, and also provided 
that every person licensed by the society to practise should 
file a copy of his license with the town clerk of the town 
where he practised. ( Laws of 1817, chap. 131.) 
It was also further provided by an act in 1818, that any 
person who had been admitted to the practice of physic or 
surgery out of the Commonwealth, and had come into it to 
pursue the practice of the same, might present himself to 
either of the boards of examiners in the various districts as 
a candidate for examination, and if they were satisfied that 
the candidate had received an education agreeably to the 
regulations provided by the society, — that is, the course 
of study which was published by the society and had been 
duly examined and approved by some competent authority, 
— they might license him to practise physic or surgery or 
both, without subjecting him to a new examination. (Laws 
of 1818, chap. 113.) 
Then, in 1819, came a most remarkable act. It was enti- 
tled “ An Act in Addition to an Act Regulating the Prac- 
tice of Physic and Surgery.” It provided that “ No person 
entering into the practice of physic and surgery after the 
first day of July, 1819, shall be entitled to the benefit of law 
for the recovery of any debt or fee for his professional ser- 
vices, unless he shall, previously to rendering those services, 
have been licensed by the officers of the Massachusetts 
Medical Society, or shall be graduated a Doctor of Medicine 
in Harvard University.” (Laws of 1819, chap. 113.) 
The provision prohibiting anybody but a member of the 
Massachusetts Medical Society or a graduate of Harvard 
University from maintaining an action to recover compensa- 
tion for medical or surgical services, was repealed in the re- 
vision of the statutes in 1836. The other provisions which 
I have referred to were incorporated in the provisions of the 
statutes in 1836, and are found in chapter 22 of the Revised 
Statutes, entitled “ Regulations Concerning the Practice of 10 
Physic and Surgery.” This chapter also contains certain 
other provisions which had been enacted from time to time 
concerning anatomical science, providing with regard to the 
use of human dead bodies for dissection and other scientific 
purposes; and this chapter stood unrepealed and substan- 
tially unchanged until 1859, when it was reported by the 
commissioners for the revision of the statutes as chapter 27 
of the Commissioners’ Report. This report was submitted 
by the legislature, at its May session, to a joint special com- 
mittee of 11 on the part of the Senate, and 28 on the part of 
the House, together with the President of the Senate and 
the Speaker of the House. This committee was divided into 
eight sub-committees, to whom different parts of the Com- 
missioners’ Report were referred for examination. Chapter 
22 of the Revised Statutes — that is to say, chapter 27 of 
the Commissioners’ Report—was referred to a committee 
composed of six members. The Hon. Increase Sumner of 
Great Barrington was chairman, and Chas. Hale of Boston, 
subsequently Speaker, was also a member. 
On the 16th of May, the general committee instructed 
this special committee, by special order, to inquire into the 
expediency of omitting all that part of the chapter relating 
to the Massachusetts Medical Society, and to the regulation 
of the practice of medicine; and on the 21st of May they 
reported to the general committee amendments, striking 
out every section, and every line, and every word in that 
chapter which gave to the Massachusetts Medical Society 
any power to examine or license physicians or surgeons, or 
to prescribe a course of study and qualifications for physi- 
cians and surgeons. The general committee adopted these 
proposed amendments, with the addition of a change of title 
of the act, from “ Regulations Concerning the Practice of 
Physic and Surgery,” to “Of the Promotion of Anatomical 
Science.” And that chapter now stands, with the same title, 
“Of the promotion of Anatomical Science,” as chapter 81 
of the Public Statutes. 
All these amendments were adopted by the legislature, 
and chapter 22 of the Revised Statutes, being chapter 27 of 
the Commissioners’ Report, was enacted as chapter 27 of 
the General Statutes, Dec. 28, 1859. A comparison of these 11 
chapters and the amendments will show that the legislature 
then deliberately took out of the law of the Commonwealth 
every provision for the regulation of the practice of medicine 
or surgery, or for the examination and qualification of phy- 
sicians or surgeons. This was not done hastily, Mr. Chair- 
man, for the Commissioners’ Report was made on the 15th 
of December, 1858, and submitted to the legislature in Jan- 
uary, 1859. The committee to whom it was referred com- 
menced its work on May 3, 1859, and continued their sessions 
until Sept. 6, 1859, during a recess of the legislature, and 
reported to an extra session of the legislature on the 7th of 
September, 1859, and the General Statutes were enacted on 
the 28th of December in that year. The matter was thus, 
as you see, under consideration more than a year. 
Nor did this action of the legislature pass unchallenged 
and undisputed by the Massachusetts Medical Society. The 
report of the councillors of that society for 1859 shows, that 
on May 25 they appointed a committee, and instructed them 
to “ look after the interests of the society in the legislature, 
and authorized them to take such measures to protect those 
interests as they might deem expedient.” And yet, in spite 
of this watchful care of the Massachusetts Medical Society 
over their rights and privileges, the legislature, without 
dissent, took every provision for the regulation of the 
practice of physic and surgery out of the statute law of the 
Commonwealth, and we have lived without it ever since. 
(Applause.) 
Who opposed Restrictive Legislation. 
Now, gentlemen, it is sometimes wise to see what kind of 
men disapproved legislation. And if you will look to the 
record, you will find that among the members of the commit- 
tee who reported this amendment, by which the State went 
out of the business of supervising the practice of medicine, 
were the Hon. Increase Sumner of Great Barrington, the 
Hon. George M. Brooks of Concord, afterwards an able mem- 
ber of Congress, and now and for many years the Judge of 
Probate in Middlesex County, the Hon. Benjamin F. Butler 
of Lowell, the Hon. Mellen Chamberlain of Chelsea, now 
the Librarian of the Public Library of Boston, and for 12 
many years Chief Justice of the Municipal Court of Boston, 
the Hon. Caleb Cushing of Newburyport, the Hon. Charles 
Hale of Boston, the Hon. Amasa Norcross of Fitchburg, 
the Hon. Tappan Wentworth of Lowell, the Hon. George 
M. Stearns of Chicopee, and the Hon. Thomas H. Russell 
of Boston, now the chairman of the Board of Railroad Com- 
missioners. These men were all able and experienced legis- 
lators. They did not act hastily or secretly. They acted 
deliberately and in the open light of public discussion. 
The whole thing was under consideration and discus- 
sion for months. The parties who were most interested 
in preserving these statutory provisions took action upon 
the subject ; and the legislature, as I said before, delib- 
erately took these laws from the statute books. Do you 
ask why ? 
The answer seems to me obvious. The legislature found 
that the great power to regulate the practice of medicine, 
though in the hands of the wise and able and trained mem- 
bers of the Massachusetts Medical Society, could not be and 
had not been exercised, even by them, to the satisfaction of 
the people of the Commonwealth. They found that it was 
impossible to regulate the practice of an art in which there 
is no standard, in which the most distinguished members of 
the profession admit that there is no standard, and differ and 
quarrel among themselves all the time as to what is best and 
right. And for this reason the legislature of Massachusetts 
wisely said : Let this thing stand upon its own merits ; the 
people of Massachusetts are educated and intelligent enough 
to know what they want (applause) ; we will abandon the sys- 
tem of paternal government, which provides doctors and 
nurses and pap for the people under the guise of protection. 
And they did abandon it (applause) ; and we have lived 
twenty-five years in this Commonwealth, gentlemen, without 
any statute law whatever upon this subject, and I represent 
people who believe that we can live without any a little 
longer. (Applause.) 
We have not lived during this- twenty-five years without 
such a law because nobody has asked for it ; for there have 
been, during this time, repeated attempts by the medical fra- 
ternity— most of them, I believe, coming from the same 13 
source from which this petition comes — to have the prac- 
tice of physic and surgery regulated. One was made in 
1877. I hold the bill then asked for in my hand, and I shall 
be happy to furnish it to the committee if you desire to 
examine it; it may aid you somewhat. Its provisions are of 
the same general character as the bill now asked for. I 
have no doubt it was drawn with great care ; I have 
no doubt the gentlemen who presented it believed it 
ought to be enacted. They had a very full hear- 
ing upon it before the Judiciary Committee. That 
Judiciary Committee was composed of the Hon. Charles 
Theodore Russell of Cambridge, Mr. Bowman of Mid- 
dlesex, since member of Congress, Judge White of Ply- 
mouth, Mr. Kellogg of Berkshire, and Mr. Coffin of Middle- 
sex, — probably as able a Judiciary Committee as the Senate 
of Massachusetts has known for fifty years. That commit- 
tee reported unanimously on the twenty-third day of March, 
1877, that the bill ought not to pass. (Applause). 
The next year they were up here again, and were sent to 
the Committee on Water Supply and Drainage (laughter) ; 
just why, I don’t know, and I have not been able to find 
anything in the record that would tell. But there it was ; 
and the proposition then took two forms. One was a gen- 
eral bill to regulate the practice of medicine and surgery in 
the State of Massachusetts ; the other was a bill to regulate 
the practice of medicine and pharmacy in the city of Boston. 
And those bills contained the provision,— which many med- 
ical gentlemen think ought to be in the one asked for this 
year,— that there should be a fixed representation upon the 
board of examiners from each of the three medical societies 
in the Commonwealth. The fate of those bills was this : 
The bill to regulate the practice of medicine and pharmacy 
in the city of Boston was reported by a minority of the 
committee, consisting of Mr. Reed, Mr. Cornish, and Mr. 
Martin. That bill went into the House, and I believe they 
did n’t get votes enough to call the yeas and nays on it. The 
bill to regulate the practice of medicine and surgery in the 
State of Massachusetts was reported by the entire 
committee as inexpedient, so that didn’t get any votes. 
(Applause). 14 
Under a New Disguise. 
In 1880 they came again, that time under a new bonnet, 
— it is sometimes a new bonnet, but it is always the old 
face. Then it was under the bonnet of the Social Science 
Association,— and then the applicants employed able and 
learned counsel. The gentleman who now presides with 
such ability in the branch of the legislature in which you, 
Mr. Chairman, sit, was counsel for the petitioners ; and he 
cut the bill down so small that he thought it would go. I 
will submit that bill to you, if you would like it ; I won’t 
stop to read it. The essence of this bill was that nobody 
should be allowed to practise medicine or use the title of 
doctor, or doctor of medicine, in Massachusetts, unless he 
had received the degree of doctor of medicine from some 
reputable medical institution empowered by special charter 
to grant it. That year the Committee on Public Health, to 
which the matter was referred, adjourned to the Representa- 
tives’ Hall and sat for days, and heard everybody, and this 
subject was probably discussed in its various aspects with 
more learning and more ability than is likely to be brought 
to the discussion of it again for a great many years. Well, 
they got a bill that time. A short bill was reported by the 
committee (Senate Document, No. 198, 1880). But it was 
rejected by a very large majority in the House. 
There has also been some legislation upon the subject of 
medical degrees, to which I desire to call your attention. 
In 1874 the legislature provided by a general law that 
corporations might be created for medical purposes by vol- 
untary associations. (Laws 1874, chap. 375, sect. 2, now 
Public Statutes, chap. 115, sect. 2.) Under that act one 
or more medical schools or colleges were incorporated in 
Massachusetts. And these colleges assumed, as they had 
a right to do, to confer degrees. The Massachusetts Med- 
ical Society, and its advisers, came to the legislature in 1883, 
and said : “ We want that provision of the law which 
authorizes corporations to be formed for medical instruction 
repealed.” They got the matter referred to the Committee 
on Education, and the Committee on Education reported a 
bill, striking the word “ medical ” out of section 2 of 
chapter 115 of the Public Statutes. (House Document, No. 15 
159, 1883.) This would have prevented any corporation 
being formed under the general laws for the purpose of 
medical education ; not a very good way to promote medical 
knowledge and education, I submit. That bill went into the 
legislature, and there it was rejected, and an act was substi- 
tuted providing that no corporation organized for medical 
purposes under the provisions of chapter 115 of the Public 
Statutes should confer degrees, or issue diplomas or certifi- 
cates, conferring, or purporting to confer, degrees, unless 
specially authorized by the legislature so to do, with a pen- 
alty of $500 in case of violation of the act. (Laws, 1883, 
chap. 268). That is now the law, and to-day, with the ex- 
ception of the Harvard Medical School of Harvard Univer- 
sity, and the Berkshire School, which I think is under Wil- 
liams College, and two or three others, and the College of 
Physicians and Surgeons, in Boston, which has a special 
authority to confer degrees, but which I believe the Massa- 
chusetts Medical Society refuses to recognize, there are no 
medical schools or colleges in Massachusetts that can confer 
degrees. So you see the limited number of students in 
Massachusetts medical schools who could obtain degrees 
that would entitle them to examination under the proposed 
legislation. 
Gov. Long's Veto. 
In 1882 the Massachusetts Dental Society, a sort of an 
auxiliary of the Massachusetts Medical Society, obtained 
the passage of a bill “to regulate the practice of dentistry,1' 
for the purpose, as they claimed, of keeping the profession 
clear of impostors ; but that wise and sagacious magistrate, 
John D. Long, who was the governor of the Commonwealth, 
promptly returned it to the Senate with a veto message, in 
which he said : “ If such legislation is required for dentists, 
it is not easy to see why there should not be similar special 
legislation concerning cooks, plumbers, apothecaries, and 
the other businesses which involve life and health ; ” and, 
also, that “ it would, perhaps, be better worth while to con- 
sider the expediency of n general statute to the effect that 
any person pursuing a business or profession, without suffi- 
cient skill therein, shall be punished. Such a statute, in the 16 
hands of judge and jury, would never work injustice, and 
yet would be ample for those exceptional cases of imposition, 
on the strength of which various special statutes are urged 
from year to year.” I respectfully commend this last sug- 
gestion to the careful consideration of this committee. 
After this message had been read in the Senate, the ques- 
tion was put “ Shall the bill pass, the objections of the 
Governor to the contrary notwithstanding ? ” One Senator 
only voted for the bill, and thirty voted against it. 
Still Another Attempt. 
There has been one other attempt to obtain legislation 
upon this subject, or upon subjects analogous to this, up to 
the present time ; and that was last year, when a bill was 
introduced to regulate the sale of patent medicines and pro- 
prietary articles. That was sent to the Committee on Pub- 
lic Health, which reported it ought not to pass. 
Now, you will find by the record, Mr. Chairman, that 
none of these applications have been made by the people. 
They have all been made by gentlemen of the medical pro- 
fession. They say they have made them for the protection 
of the people. By what divine right they are authorized to 
act as protectors of the people of Massachusetts they do not 
show. (Laughter.) They held the control of the matter for 
more than half a century, and the people took it away from 
them. For twenty-five years the people have kept it away 
from them, and I believe they will continue to do so for an 
hundred years to come. (Applause.) The people have 
never asked any change, and they do not ask it now. There 
was, however, until this winter, to my mind, a very sound 
reason why there should be legislation upon this subject. 
And it is found in the statement contained in the preamble 
of the petition of the Social Science Association in 1880, 
that “by the laws of this State death caused by culpable 
and reckless ignorance of duty is not considered manslaugh- 
ter by the courts in regard to physicians, although it is held 
to be manslaughter in the case of those following other 
callings ; so that ignorant and self-styled physicians are not 
restrained by fear of the law from recklessly trifling with the 
lives of the citizens of this State.” And that was the fact ; 17 
such was the law at that time. And yet, in spite of that 
fact, the legislature refused to regulate the practice. The 
learned gentleman who represented the petitioners at that 
time, the present President of the Senate, said,—I quote from 
his printed argument, —“In this condition of things, we ask 
you to interefere.” That was his main, almost his only, argu- 
ment. He said : “The Supreme Court of Massachusetts, in 
Commonwealth v. Thompson (6 Mass. Reports, 134), which 
was decided in 1809, and which every doctor knows about, 
and most people have heard of, held that a man who prac- 
tised medicine, — who attempted to cure, — if he acted hon- 
estly, although he was grossly negligent, although he was 
presumptuous, could not be convicted of manslaughter, or of 
assault, or any crime, and, therefore, he said there ought to 
be legislation to regulate it ; that if physicians were protected 
under the law from the consequences of the same things 
which, if done by others, would send them to State prison, 
then the practice of physic should be regulated. And I 
thought so too. But such is not the law of Massachusetts 
to-day. That old decision of the court was not conceived by 
the profession to be sound ; and, in Worcester County, a 
man by the name of Pierce was indicted at the May term of 
the Superior Criminal Court, in 1884, for manslaughter, in 
causing the death of Mrs. Mary A. Bemis, in the application 
of kerosene oil, with her consent, by covering the deceased 
with flannel saturated with oil, for two or three days, in con- 
sequence of which she died. On the trial before His Honor 
Judge Pitman, the counsel for Pierce contended that under 
the decision of Commonwealth v. Thompson, to which I have 
referred, the killing, to constitute manslaughter, must have 
been the consequence of some unlawful act, and what he had 
done was not unlawful, because it was done as a physician 
in the attempt to heal the woman. They asked the court to 
rule that, “ There is no law which prohibits any man from 
presc:ibing for a sick man, with his consent, if he honestly 
intends to cure by his prescription. A patient has a right 
to employ whom he pleases to treat him, and acceptance of 
the employment by one who honestly believes he is able, 
and honestly intends to cure, is not a felonious act, however 
ignorant of medicine he may be in fact.” But the court, 18 
against the defendant’s objection, ruled as follows : “ It is 
not necessary to show an evil intent ; if, by gross and reck- 
less negligence, the defendant caused the death, he is guilty 
of culpable homicide.” Upon this ruling, Pierce was found 
guilty by the jury and convicted. The case went to the 
Supreme Court on exceptions to this ruling, and I have here 
the opinion of the court, in which they sustain the ruling of 
Judge Pitman ; and Pierce is now serving a sentence of six 
years in-the State prison for manslaughter. 
The Law as it Stands. 
Thus you see that the law in Massachusetts is now that 
every man or woman has a right to practise the healing art, 
but practises it at his or her peril. If he is ignorant or 
negligent, he is liable in damages civilly. The rule which 
covers the liability of a physician is not different from that 
which covers the liability of a farrier who shoes a horse, or 
a man who assumes to do anything in a particular calling. 
A man who assumes to do a particular thing for you, Mr. 
Chairman, because that is his profession, impliedly says to 
you, “ I have sufficient skill and ability to do it.” A man 
who assumes to minister to you in sickness, impliedly says 
to you, “ I know enough of the art to minister to you wisely 
and skilfully and well; I am a physician ; I am learned 
enough to treat the disease which I assume to treat.” Not 
necessarily to treat every disease, but the disease he assumes 
to treat. The man who holds himself out as being compe- 
tent to treat a fever does not necessarily say, “ I am compe- 
tent to amputate a leg, or to perform the operation of ovario- 
tomy.” The law is very plain and simple. The man who 
says, “I can treat you for a fever, or for the ague,” impliedly 
contracts for skill and learning sufficient to do that and 
nothing else, and the law ought not to require anything else 
of him. Under the proposed bill, however, he must not only 
have knowledge to treat a fever, but he must be a surgeon 
and a dentist, and the man who assumes to fill teeth must 
be a physician and a surgeon. The examination for admis- 
sion to practice is made the same for dentists, surgeons, and 
physicians. The present law is clear and ample. A man or 
woman who assumes to practise the healing art, impliedly 19 
contracts that he or she has sufficient skill and knowledge 
to do the thing which they assume to do, to cure the disease 
which they assume to treat, and no other. And if he or she 
docs not have it, they are liable in damages for all the con- 
sequences that result from the lack of knowledge and skill. 
If he or she is grossly or presumptuously ignorant and 
negligent, and a person is thereby killed or injured, he or 
she is liable for manslaughter or for an assault. The same 
principle that made Pierce liable for manslaughter because 
Mrs. Bemis died, would have made him liable for an assault, 
if she had lived and been a cripple. Every man, woman, or 
child in Massachusetts who assumes to practise medicine, who 
assumes to heal others, docs so at his or her peril absolutely. 
Xow, I submit, that is all the law we need. (Applause.) We 
have got on under that law—-under a law much less strin- 
gent than that until this year — well enough for twenty-five 
years. Now you are asked by the Massachusetts Medical 
Society to change it. 
Nobody asks for it but the Doctors. 
We have had nineteen doctors here in favor of it, and one 
was a horse doctor. They are all excellent men, all gentle- 
men worthy of respect, and they ought to be heard, and have 
been heard fully. They had a right to come hereto get such 
legislation as they think the Commonwealth needs, or their 
own interests require. Only a part of them, however, were 
frank enough to say that what they were after was protec- 
tion. The medical gentleman who came up from Plymouth 
County said, “ We think we ought to be protected against 
these quacks. Why! there are six of them down in my 
county,” he says, “all having a large practice.” ( Laughter.) 
And said he, “some of them cannot read nor write.” Well, 
what if they can’t, if they cure diseases ? — if they do what 
they assume to do? If a man comes to cure me of a disease, 
— of a fever or the ague, — and he cures me, I don’t care 
whether he can read the New Testament in Greek, as the 
Rev. Dr. Warren says every man who claims to be liberally 
educated ought to be able to do, or whether he can write his 
name. If he does not cure me, if he is negligent, if he has 
not the skill which he assumes to have, why then he is liable 20 
to me in damages. If he is grossly and wilfully and pre- 
sumptuously ignorant and negligent and he injures me, he is 
liable criminally. I need no other protection. The people 
need no other protection. My friend Mr. Gargan said to Dr. 
Abbott, as you remember, “ How is it about the people being 
unanimous for this, when there is such a large practice for all 
these quacks ?” “Oh!” he said, “I didn’t say the people 
were unanimous for it; I said the doctors were.” (Laughter.) 
The Three Clergymen. 
We have had three clergymen here, presumably at the 
request of the doctors. The first was the Rev. Dr. Warren, 
who is the president of Boston University, and who has, of 
course, every year a fair crop of new-fledged doctors of 
medicine to provide places for; and he would be very glad 
that nobody should be allowed to practise the healing art 
except those who had diplomas. He would be very glad, 
I have no doubt, to have as narrow a circle from which to 
draw doctors as possible, and then his graduates would stand 
a better chance. But I do not think the Doctor was actuated 
by that motive, or knew that he was. Sometimes, however, 
men are actuated by motives of which they are not really 
conscious. I think the Doctor felt there ought to be some 
legislation. But about all he said was, he wanted to have 
some sign by which people could tell whether a man was a 
doctor or not. Well, I don’t object, and I don’t know that 
anybody objects, to a law, if it is necessary and discreet, 
compelling every doctor to put on his sign the name of the 
college from which he graduated ; and if he did not grad- 
uate from any college to put that fact on his sign too. 
(Laughter.) My knowledge of physicians has been some- 
what extensive, and I do not believe that the fact that a man 
graduated from the Harvard Medical School, engraved upon 
his door-plate, would drive away a great many patients. At 
any rate, people might choose, and I don’t know anybody who 
would object to that. It is precisely this liberty of choice 
which ought to be preserved, and which the proposed bill 
takes away. 
Then comes the Right Rev. Dr. Byrnes, and I could not 
but remember, when he was talking, the historical fact that 21 
the great religious denomination of which he is an honored 
member, and which I believe does a great deal of good to- 
day, has always claimed the right to regulate men’s morals 
by law, and once practically claimed the right to regulate the 
practice of medicine also, and ordained that any woman who 
practised medicine without its sanction should be deemed 
to be a witch. I take it the people of Massachusetts will 
not profit by going to that school for instruction. (Ap- 
plause.) Hut even Dr. Byrnes did not tell you he approved 
the proposed bill. 
Then we had the Rev. Dr. Webb, a gentleman widely 
known, of great learning and of most excellent inten- 
tions. Hut he, too, belongs to the old red sandstone 
age. (Laughter.) It is within the past twelve months, 
I think, — certainly within two years, — that he was 
opposed to settling one of the most able and eloquent 
ministers of his denomination as pastor in the Old South 
Church of Boston because he could not swallow quite 
all the ultra dogmas of the extreme Calvinistic creed. 
(Laughter.) Knowing this, I was not surprised when 
Dr. Webb told you that he thought the State ought to 
guarantee sound education and competency in teachers of 
morals and practitioners of medicine. And I agree that if 
it is bound to do the one it is bound to do the other. 
(Applause.) 
Now, Mr. Chairman and gentlemen, you have had no evi- 
dence in favor of this petition. No fact has been given to 
you. No one of these gentlemen, so competent, so trained, 
so well fitted to instruct you, has given you any facts. They 
have dosed you with their opinions, which you probably 
knew before ; but they have given you no facts. They have 
formulated no charges against anybody. I could not but 
think, sir, yesterday, when Judge Ladd of Cambridge, who is 
known and respected of all men in the community where he 
has lived for more than half a century, filling an important 
judicial office with honesty and fairness and dignity, was 
giving you, specifically, case after case to show that his view 
of the healing art was correct,— a view, by the way, in which 
I cannot personally agree,— how different the clear, the 
careful, the accurate, specific statements that he made to 22 
you were from the rhetorical efforts of the gentlemen in 
behalf of the petitioners. (Applause.) 
Not a non-professional man has said a word in favor of any 
legislation. And yet this hearing is so widely known and 
excites such interest in the public mind that this large room 
is not sufficient to accommodate those who desire to come. 
The petitioners say that quackery is so rampant in the Com- 
monwealth, and the evils resulting from the fact that you 
have no law regulating the practice of medicine are so great, 
that the people are crying out for the proposed legislation ! 
And yet not a man, woman, or child, outside of the three 
doctors of divinity and the nineteen doctors of medicine,— 
seventeen of them, I believe, members of the Massachusetts 
Medical Society,— has come here to raise a voice in favor of 
such legislation. I know the legislation is not called for by 
the people, and I believe that it is unwise and unnecessary. 
No Medical Standard. 
There is no standard by which you can regulate the prac- 
tice of medicine. That is the root of this matter. There is 
no standard in the different schools. Do you not find, in 
every country town, gentlemen of the same school quarrelling 
over the practice of their profession, oftentimes in as un- 
seemly a way as the medical gentlemen have quarrelled 
before you ? There are mistakes in all the schools. I have 
no doubt there is good in all the schools. I am free to say 
that if any legislation was to be had, from my standpoint it 
would be legislation which made the Massachusetts Medical 
Society the sole judge, because I belong to that school in 
medicine as much as I belong to any, and if I were to be 
doctored to death I should prefer to be doctored to death by 
a man of the old school rather than of the new. (Laughter.) 
But I do not believe it is any more just or right to exclude 
my friend Judge Ladd, who wants to be doctored by a mag- 
netic healer, or by a Christian scientist, or by somebody who 
does not profess to practise medicine according to any of the 
recognized schools, from exercising his choice, than it would 
be to debar me from the right to be doctored to death by my 
friend Dr. Marcy, if I chose to employ him, as very likely I 
should. (Laughter.) 23 
Doctors Disagree. 
Why, they differ in therapeutics, as we all know. They 
differ in materia ntedica, as we all know. They differ even in 
pathology and anatomy,— at least, they quarrel over it. 
Within six months I have had a case in this city, where I had 
upon the one side three of the ablest pathologists of the so- 
called regular school as witnesses in behalf of my client, and 
on the other side were three of the leading surgeons of the 
homoeopathic school in Massachusetts, and upon precisely 
the same facts, upon precisely the same autopsy, at which 
they were all present, they came to diametrically opposite 
results, and disputed over it just as badly as the homoeopaths 
and the allopaths always dispute. You find an illustration 
of this in all expert testimony. I have seen—everybody 
who is familiar with the courts has seen — doctors, able men, 
learned men, honest men, who believed it, and who had 
opportunity to inform themselves, come into court and testify 
that the plaintiff would never recover from certain injuries; 
and yet I have seen that same plaintiff, under the curative 
power of a verdict, take up his bed and walk, and go about 
his business in six months afterwards. (Laughter.) I know 
of a case in my practice where five of the ablest surgeons in 
Massachusetts, on my side of the case, testified that a man — 
who was brought into court upon his bed, who said he could 
not walk, who said he could not stand or use his hands — 
could get up if he only tried, and would get up as soon as the 
case was decided, and get well and go about his business, 
and they all believed it; and if they did not know, as I argued 
to the jury, there was no one in Massachusetts that did 
know. And yet that man, who obtained a very large verdict 
two years ago, is still in substantially the same condition 
that he was then. Talk about a standard in medicine! I 
want no better evidence that there is no standard than this 
hearing has given us by the unseemly contests of the doctors 
before you. 
Self-Condemnation. 
It may be said to be presumptuous, perhaps, for me to 
say there is no standard, though I believe myself that Vol- 
taire was right when he said that “the art of medicine con- 24 
sists in amusing the patient, while Nature cures the disease.” 
(Laughter.) But I desire to call your attention to the opin- 
ions of a few of the ablest members of the medical profession 
upon this subject. Dr. Chapman, Professor of the Practice 
of Physic in the University of Philadelphia, says : “ Consult- 
ing the records of our science, we cannot help being dis- 
gusted with the multitude of hppotheses obtruded upon us at 
different times. Nowhere is the imagination displayed to a 
greater extent; and perhaps so ample an exhibition of human 
invention might gratify our vanity, if it were not more than 
compensated by the humiliating view of so much absurdity, 
contradiction, and falsehood. To harmonize the contrarieties 
of medical doctrines is, indeed, a task as impracticable as to 
arrange the fleeting vapors around us.” Dr. Abercrombie, 
P'ellow of the Royal Society of England, and of the Royal 
College of Physicians in Edinburgh, says : “ Medicine has 
been called by philosophers the art of conjecturing, the sci- 
ence of guessing.” Sir John Forbes, Fellow of the Royal 
College of Physicians, London, physician of the Queen’s 
household, etc., says : “No systematic or theoretical classifi- 
cation of diseases or therapeutic agents ever yet promulgated 
is true, or anything like the truth, and none can be adopted 
as a safe guidance in practice.” Dr. James Johnson of 
London, Surgeon Extraordinary to the King, etc., said : “I 
declare my conscientious opinion, founded on long observation 
and reflection, that if there was not a single physician, 
surgeon, apothecary, man midwife, chemist, druggist, or drug 
on the face of the earth there would be less sickness and less 
mortality than now obtains.” Coming nearer home, Dr. 
Jacob Bigelow, a former President of the Massachusetts 
Medical Society, in his “Expositions of Rational Medicine,” 
says : “I sincerely believe that the unbiased opinion of most 
medical men of sound judgment and long experience is, that 
the amount of death and disaster in the world would be less 
than it now is, if all disease were left to itself.” Sir William 
Hamilton, in his “ Discussions on Philosophy,” p. 638,— an 
authority that I know my medical friends will respect,— 
says : “The history of medicine, on the one hand, is nothing 
less than a history of variations ; and on the other, only a 
still more marvellous history of how every successive varia- 25 
tion has by medical bodies been furiously denounced, and 
then bigotedly adopted.” If you will turn to Thatcher’s His- 
tory of Medicine in America, pp. 21, 22, you will find that 
when Dr. Boylston, in 1721, introduced vaccination into 
Boston, “most of the medical faculty were its active and 
violent opposers.” 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, formerly Professor of Anatomy 
in the Medical School of Harvard University, in his “Border 
Lines of Knowledge,” p. 70, says : “The disgrace of medi- 
cine has been that colossal system of self-deception, in obe- 
dience to which mines have been emptied of their cankering 
minerals, the entrails of animals taxed for their impurities, 
the poison-bags of reptiles drained of their venom, and all 
the inconceivable abominations thus obtained thrust down 
the throats of human beings suffering from some fault of 
organization, nourishment, or vital stimulation.” 
Bichat (the great French pathologist), in his “General 
Anatomy,” vol. I., p. 17, says: “Medicine is an incoherent 
assemblage of incoherent ideas, and is perhaps of all the 
physiological sciences that which best shows the caprice of 
the human mind. What did I say ? It is not a science for 
a methodical mind. It is a shapeless assemblage of inaccurate 
ideas, of observations often puerile, and of formula? as fan- 
tastically conceived as they are tediously arranged.” 
The late Sir Henry Holland, one of the most eminent phy- 
sicians in Europe, in his “ Recollections of Past Life,” p. 88, 
says : “ Actual experience, with a sense of responsibility at- 
tached to it, is the sole school in which to make a good phy- 
sician. One of the most learned men I ever knew in the 
literature of medicine, as well as in physical science, was one 
of the worst practitioners, borrowing his diagnosis from 
books, and not from that happier faculty, almost an instinct, 
a spiritual gift, which enables some men to interpret and act 
upon signs which no book can describe.” 
Dr. L. M. Whiting, in a dissertation delivered at an annual 
commencement in Pittsfield, Mass., and recorded in the 
Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. 14, p. 183, says : 
“The very principles upon which most of what are called the 
theories involving medical questions have been based were 
never established. They are, and always were, false ; and 26 
consequently the superstructures built upon them were the 
baseless fabric of a vision — transient in their existence — 
passing away upon the introduction of new doctrines and hy- 
potheses like dew before the morning sun. Speculation has 
been the garb in which medicine has been arrayed, from the 
remote period when it was rocked in the cradle of its infancy 
by the Egyptian priesthood, down to the present day ; sys- 
tem after system has arisen, flourished, fallen and been for- 
gotten, in rapid and melancholy succession, until the whole 
field is strewed with the disjointed materials in a perfect 
chaos, and amongst the rubbish the philosophic mind may 
search for ages without being able to glean from it hardly 
one solitary well-established fact.''' 
It is not strange that Dr. Benjamin Waterhouse, who for 
twenty years was a professor in the Medical School of 
Harvard University, at the close of his time said : “ I am 
sick of learned quackery.” 
The Art of Medicine in one Sentence. 
The great German physician Boerhaave ordered in his 
will, I believe, that all his library should be burned, except 
one book, which he said contained the whole art of medicine. 
After his death, I believe they did not burn the whole 
library, but they looked for that one book with great anxiety. 
Its pages were all found to be blank but one, and upon that 
was written, “Bowels open, head cold and feet warm, and 
physicians will get poor.” Dr. Holmes stated once, I believe, 
in an address to the Massachusetts Medical Society, that he 
thought it would be be better for mankind if all the medi- 
cines were poured into the sea, although he thought it would 
be hard on the fishes. (Laughter.) Perhaps this was one 
of the genial jokes of the autocrat of the breakfast-table. 
He did say on this subject, however, the following, which is 
not in the nature of a joke, but what he undoubtedly thought 
and taught. In his essay, read before the Massachusetts 
Medical Society, at the annual meeting, May 30, i860, he 
said : “A glance at the prevalent modes of treatment of any 
two successive generations, will show that there is a change- 
able, as well as a permanent, element in the art of healing; 
not merely changeable as diseases vary, or as new remedies 27 
are introduced, but changeable by the going out of fashion of 
special remedies. The truth is that medicine, professedly 
founded on observation, is as sensitive to outside influences, 
political, philosophical, imaginative, as is the barometer to 
the changes of atmospheric density.” 
You all remember Lord Macaulay’s vivid account of the 
death of Charles II., when “the fourteen doctors who 
deliberated on the king’s case contradicted each other and 
themselves. Some of them thought his fit was epileptic, and 
that he should be suffered to have his doze out. The 
majority pronounced him apopletic and tortured him like 
an Indian at the stake. It was then determined to call his 
complaint a fever, and to administer doses of bark.” I sup- 
pose that means quinine. “ Several of the prescriptions 
have been preserved. One of them is signed by fourteen 
doctors. The patient was bled freely. Hot iron was 
applied to his head. A loathsome volatile salt, extracted 
from human skulls, was forced into his mouth.” (Macau- 
lay’s Hist. England, vol. 2, pp. 6, 15.) No wonder the poor 
king apologized for being such an unconscionable time 
dying! And yet, all these fourteen physicians were men 
licensed under a system precisely such as the people of 
Massachusetts destroyed in i860, and as the Massachusetts 
Medical Society now asks you to re-establish. (Applause 
and laughter.) The Act of 14-15 Henry VIII. gave to the 
College of Physicians, corresponding exactly to the Massa- 
chusetts Medical Society, the whole power of examination 
and license of physicians for England ; so that, as the pre- 
amble provided, the practice of the healing art should be 
confined to “those persons that be profound, sad, and dis- 
creet, and deeply studied in physic.” (Knight’s Hist. Eng- 
land. vol. 2, p. 497.) 
Hut, it is said, you inspect fish, you inspect oil, you 
inspect gas, you license lawyers ; why should you not 
inspect physicians and license them ? I have a list from 
the statutes, which I will hand to the committee, embracing 
every case in which inspection is called for of any article 
sold in Massachusetts. It includes petroleum, and fish, and 
hops, and milk, and sperm oils, and intoxicating liquors, 
and hoops and staves, and lime, and vinegar, etc. ; and in 28 
every one of these cases, where the standard is not one that 
everybody would recognize,— as, for instance, diseased meat, 
or decayed fruit, where you need no standard to be estab- 
lished by law or by a medical examination, for everybody 
understands what decayed fruit is and what is diseased meat, 
— in every case where there is any standard necessary to be 
defined, the statute fixes it. 
The statute which provides for the inspection of fish, fixes 
definitely the standard for such inspection. (Public 
Statutes, chapter 56, sections 25, 26, 32, 37.) The statute 
which regulates the sale of milk provides that milk shall be 
deemed to be adulterated which contains more than eighty- 
seven per cent, of watery fluid, or less than thirteen per 
cent, of milk solids, and thus establishes an absolute 
standard for the guidance of dealers. (Public Statutes, 
chapter 57, section 9.) The statute for the inspection of 
illuminating gas and gas meters gives a unit of measure and 
an absolute standard of quality. (Public Statutes, chapter 
61, sections 8, 14.) The statute regulating the sale of 
naphtha and illuminating oils fixes the standard of quality 
by express and specific terms, and even provides that the 
test shall be made by a particular kind of instrument for 
that purpose. (Public Statutes, chapter 102, sections 69, 
70.) The statute which regulates the sale of intoxicating 
liquors provides specifically what liquors shall be deemed 
intoxicating within the law. (Public Statutes, chapter 100, 
section 27.) The law regulating the inspection and sale of 
sperm oils provides that the test shall be Harris’ oleometer. 
(Public Statutes, chapter 59, section 5.) The statutes 
regulating the sale of hops, lime, hoops and staves, vinegar 
and lumber, all prescribe certain and definite standards of 
quality in express terms. (Public Statutes, chapter 56, sec- 
tions 31, 32; chapter 60, sections 49, 70; chapter 63, 
sections 8 to 16 inclusive.) 
And in the building laws, which are talked about, there is 
a standard fixed by the law, and there are two pages of the 
Public Statutes filled with the most exact and complete 
description of the kind of lumber that shall constitute the 
various qualities recognized to be sold under the law. 
(Laughter.) 29 
And there is a standard for the qualification of lawyers. 
Turn to chapter 159 of the Public Statutes, sections 34 to 41 
inclusive, and you will find the regulations for admission to 
the practice of the law. There is a very general impression 
in the community that a man cannot practise law without 
being examined, and licensed, and admitted to the bar ; but 
it is not correct. There is nothing to-day to prevent our 
friend Dr. Marcy from going down on State Street and hir- 
ing an office and putting out his sign and styling himself an 
attorney-at-law, and doing all the law business for anybody 
that he can get to do. If he is not an attorney-at-law, and 
he tells a man falsely he is, he is liable precisely as anybody 
else is liable for false pretences ; but there is no statute law 
specifically prohibiting him from doing such business. A 
man may open an office, he may draw papers, he may give 
advice, he may do all kinds of law business, except going 
into court and trying cases, generally as an officer of the 
court, as a part of the machine of the courts, without leave 
or license of anybody. It is his right as much as it is to 
make boots and shoes or sell goods. 
Now, let us see how it is when he goes into court. If a 
man wants to be an attorney, an officer of the court, ad- 
mitted to do general business and to try cases generally in 
court, without nomination by his client in each case, he must 
be admitted to the bar. He must take an oath fully set 
forth and prescribed by the statute. But, mark you, there 
is a standard by which a lawyer can be examined. If the 
question is asked, What is the law on such a subject ? we 
turn to the statute or to the decided cases and find it. 
What is the law in regard to the punishment of a physician 
who is ignorant and presumptuously and wilfully negligent 
in the treatment of a patient, whereby the patient is either 
injured or dies? We turn to the opinion of the Supreme 
Court in Commonwealth v. Pierce, and find what the law 
is. There is a standard for qualification for admission to 
the bar, and a standard by which to examine candidates, — 
the statute law of the Commonwealth and the 136 volumes 
of reported decisions, — and you know when the applicant 
makes a correct answer to questions. Not so in medicine. 
Ask what .is necessary to constitute an estate of inheritance 30 
in Massachusetts, and there is but one possible answer. Ask 
what is the proper treatment for a fever, and there are more 
answers than there are different schools of medicine. 
But, leaving that, section 40 of chapter 159, Public 
Statutes, provides that parties may manage, prosecute, or 
defend their own suits personally. Well, I believe this bill 
does leave people the right to take drugs themselves. 
(Laughter.) Section 41 provides that “any person of 
good moral character, unless he has been removed from 
practice as an attorney, under section 39, by the court, may 
manage, prosecute, or defend a suit, if he is specially author- 
ized by the party for whom he appears, in writing or by 
personal nomination in open court. ” That is to say, I can 
go down to the court, and I can say I want my friend Dr. 
Wilson to try a case for me, and the court are bound to hear 
him for me. I need not put anything in writing ; I can 
simply say, “Dr. Wilson is my attorney,” and the court are 
bound to hear him. It is my constitutional and legal right 
to be heard by him, or by any reputable person, learned or 
unlearned, with a diploma or without a diploma; and that is 
all we want to preserve for the people as against the physi- 
cians. All we want to preserve is the right of every man 
or woman of full age and sound mind in Massachusetts to 
have such persons minister to them in disease or sickness as 
they wish. ( Applause.) And when the medical profession 
say that doctors should be examined and licensed, because a 
man who becomes an officer of the court is examined and 
licensed by the court, I say : Put into any bill that they may 
bring here a provision that any person may have the same right 
with regard to his choice of his physician or his surgeon that 
he has to-day with regard to his lawyer, and I am content. 
(Applause.) But they don’t mean it, and they won’t do it. 
Dr. Marcy. Yes, we will. 
Mr. Benton. Then, why don’t you put it in your bill; 
year after year such an amendment has been proposed, and 
it has always been rejected by your society. 
Now, Mr. Chairman, I am taking a good deal more time 
than I meant to take. I think this proposed legislation is 
Back to the Dark Ages. 31 
going back to the dark ages. It is simply an odious form 
of the most odious kind of government, a paternal govern- 
ment which regards the subjects of the State as children, to 
be fed and nursed because they cannot take care of them- 
selves. It was once extended in England to overlooking 
modes of manufacture and agricultural operations and do- 
mestic affairs. It directed farmers at what fairs they should 
sell their products; it prescribed the quantity of ale to be 
sold for a penny ; it made it penal to sell any pins except 
those of a certain specified character; and it directed farmers 
what crops they should raise, and how much. In China this 
kind of government has regulated the dress ; in Austria it 
has regulated the literature ; in Germany it has prevented 
shoemakers from following their craft until an inspecting 
jury has certified to their competence, has forbidden a man 
who had adopted one calling from ever taking up another, 
and also forbidden any foreign tradesman from settling in a 
German town without a license. Under this theory the 
governments of olden times regulated the creeds and the 
morals of their subjects, and upon this theory of the 
province of government Sir David Brewster, in an address 
to the British Association in Edinburgh in 1850, advo- 
cated a scheme very much like that which the Rev. Dr. 
Webb has advocated before you of having “men ordained 
by the State to the undivided functions of science, an 
intellectual priesthood, to develop the glorious truths which 
time and space embosom.” That was in 1850, and it 
was exactly in the line of this theory that a priesthood 
of physic has always been advocated by certain theoretical 
medical gentlemen. In the reign of Edward IV. those wear- 
ing any gown or mantle not according to specification were 
fined. In the reign of Charles II. the length of people’s 
boot-toes and the material of their grave clothes were pre- 
scribed by statute. 
If a government is to enter upon this line of legislation 
at all, I submit it will be entirely proper that it should deal 
with the matter of health, and in so doing it ought to re-enact 
those ancient statutes which protected people’s stomachs by 
restricting the expense of their tables; and, to prevent the 
injury which undoubtedly arises to a large portion of our 32 
population from fashionable late hours, it ought to revive the 
old Norman custom and fix the time at which people should 
put out their fires and go to bed. Or, acting upon the 
opinion of an eminent French statesman,—I believe the 
law of France has been cited by the petitioners for your 
guidance,—that it was “ proper to watch during the fruit 
season lest the people eat that which is not ripe,” the govern- 
ment should make it unlawful to sell or eat fruit until its 
quality has been approved by a medical board. And in 
order to make the care of the State in this example quite 
complete, sir, it would be well to follow the example of the 
Danish king, who provided by law how his subjects should 
scour their floors and polish their furniture. 
And you should also certainly provide for the examination 
and license of nurses as well as physicians, for every one 
knows that a good nurse is of even more importance in sick- 
ness than a good physician. And following the same line of 
legislation, you should certainly regulate the charges of all 
physicians and surgeons, for if it is the duty of the State to 
protect its citizens against practitioners who are ignorant, it 
is equally its duty to protect them against practitioners who 
are extortionate. 
The theory that a government is bound to guarantee to its 
citizens or subjects that every person who undertakes to 
practise physic or surgery shall be thoroughly qualified and 
competent, or, as is stated by a majority of the medical pro- 
fession who ask for this bill, that the State should interpose 
between quacks and those who patronize them, is not essen- 
tially different from all other governmental interferences with 
trade. One of the most profound philosophers of the 
English-speaking race, Herbert Spencer, treats upon this 
subject as follows : “The invalid is at liberty to buy medicine 
and advice from whomsoever he pleases ; the licensed prac- 
titioner is at liberty to sell these to whomsoever will buy. 
On no pretext whatever can a barrier be set up between 
these without the law of equal freedom being broken, and 
least of all may the government, whose office it is to uphold 
that law, become a transgressor of it. Health depends upon 
the fulfilment of numerous conditions.” If this legislation 
is designed for any purpose, it is designed to protect health. 33 
“It can be protected only by the fulfilment of those condi- 
tions. If, therefore, it is the duty of the State to protect 
the health of its subjects by licensing physicians, then it is 
its duty to see that all the conditions of health are fulfilled 
by them. Shall this duty be consistently discharged ? If 
so, the legislature must enact a national dietary; prescribe 
so many meals a day for each individual; fix the quantities 
and qualities of food, both for men and women ; state the 
proportion of fluids, when to be taken and of what kind” — 
that would be troublesome in Boston ; “ specify the amount 
of exercise and define its character; describe the clothing to 
be worn; determine the hours of sleep, allowing for the 
difference of age and sex ; and so on, with other particulars 
necessary to complete a perfect synopsis for the daily guid- 
ance of the nation. And to enforce these regulations it 
must employ a sufficient establishment of well-qualified 
officers empowered to direct everybody’s domestic arrange- 
ments.” (Social Statics, pp. 407, 408.) 
Legisi.ation not Needed. 
As I have said, Mr. Chairman, the proposed legislation is 
going back to a system which the people of the Common- 
wealth tried for many years and then deliberately abandoned. 
They do not need this legislation ; they do not ask for it. 
It is in the wrong direction, and unnecessary and uncalled 
for by the people. Now, I want to say only a word or two 
more about this proposed bill, for I have talked longer than 
I meant to. I object to this bill, in the first place, because it 
assumes that a diploma never covers a quack. Take the 
first section of it: “There shall be established a board of 
medical examiners, consisting of nine men, appointed by the 
Governor and Council. They shall be graduates of a legally 
chartered college or university having the power to confer 
medical degrees.” Why, under that very section, it would 
be competent for the Governor to appoint anybody who had 
a diploma and who had practised ten years ; and if you can- 
not pick out of the sixteen hundred members of the Massa- 
chusetts Medical Society—to say nothing of members of 
other societies, and graduates of medical colleges who are 
not members of any societies—nine quacks who have prac- 34 
tised ten years, I shall be very much surprised. You cannot 
get sixteen hundred physicians in one body without having 
quacks among them, no matter what school they belong to. 
A diploma does not insure honesty, capacity, knowledge, 
intelligence, and fidelity to the profession. (Applause.) But 
this bill assumes it as an essential requisite. Again, the 
bill puts a premium on old quacks. It says that a man who 
has been a quack in Massachusetts for ten years shall stay, 
he shall have the approval of the State to stay; not merely 
stay here at his peril, as he does now, but he shall stay here 
licensed to practise his nefarious calling under the law. 
Because, forsooth, a man has been doing wrong ten years,— 
because he has been acting ignorantly and wilfully for ten 
years,—he shall have a right to go on for any number of 
years more ; but if he has only done it one year he shall be 
cut off; if he has done it nine years and eleven months he 
shall be cut off. It is wrong ! It is wrong! If such legis- 
lation means anything,—if you are going to regulate the 
practice of medicine and surgery at all, gentlemen,— create a 
standard, just as the Massachusetts Medical Society did ; a 
standard that means something and that people can know 
something about. Ordain arbitrarily that homoeopathy is 
wrong and allopathy is right, or that homoeopathy is right 
and allopathy is wrong, or that eclecticism is right, and every- 
thing else is wrong. Then, when you have done that, 
provide that everybody who does not practise according to 
the standard shall be driven out of business, whether he has 
been in it one year or fifty. 
Again, the bill creates another commission to be added to 
the numerous commissions with which the Commonwealth is 
already burdened. It provides for expenses of about $6,000, 
I think,— $500 apiece to the nine medical examiners, 
$4,500; $1,500 to the secretary, and expenses as great as the 
consciences of the secretary of the board and of the auditing 
officer may be elastic; all to be paid from the State treasury. 
(Laughter.) We don’t want any more expenses of that 
kind than we are now saddled with. 
It then gives a premium to this board to reject people. 
It says that an applicant shall pay a fee of twenty dollars, 
which shall not be returned if a certificate is refused. Now, 35 
look at that. Here is a young man who has gone through 
the Harvard Medical School, or through the Boston Univer- 
sity Medical School. He wants to practise his profession. 
He comes up to be examined and he fails. He is over- 
worked, he is diffident ; perhaps he is not quite up in some 
branch, and he cannot be passed fairly. He fails. He has 
paid twenty dollars ; and I know, sir, and many people here 
know, that twenty dollars is a great deal of money to a 
young professional man when he is first struggling into life. 
He goes back to his studies and in six months comes up for 
re-examination, and then he must pay twenty dollars more. 
That is wrong ! If this is legislation in the interest of the 
people, let the people pay the expenses of examination. Do 
not put it upon the young men who are struggling to come 
into the honorable profession of medicine. Levy a tax on 
me and on you, and you, and everybody else in Massachu- 
setts, and pay the expense of protecting the people by a gen- 
eral tax upon the people. 
Again, the bill necessarily excludes persons who may do 
good in the healing art, who are not graduates of any med- 
ical school. Dr. Marcy shakes his head, and he ought to 
know his bill better than I do ; but I understand this to be 
the effect of the bill. In the first place it provides that after 
this act takes effect, “the following persons and no others 
shall be permitted to practise medicine, surgery, or dentis- 
try : All persons who are graduates of a legally chartered 
medical or dental college. Every such person shall present 
his diplonia to the said board of medical examiners, and, if 
the same be found to be genuine, and was issued by such 
college as is hereinbefore mentioned, etc.” Now, I suppose 
under that, all the leading physicians and surgeons in Bos- 
ton would be obliged to take their diplomas and go before 
this board. Imagine such men as Hodges and Cheever and 
Talbot being obliged to come before this board appointed by 
the Governor and Council, and say, “ Won’t you please put 
on this diploma of mine the evidence that 1 am competent 
to practise medicine ? ” (Laughter.) 
Then the bill further says that everybody who is not a 
graduate, but who has practised medicine, surgery, or den- 
tistry in this State continuously for the period of ten years 36 
prior to the first day of July, 1885, may keep right on prac- 
tising, but must first make an affidavit of that fact, which 
shall be received as true, unless the board prove it to be 
false. That takes care of everybody in Massachusetts who 
is practising at the present time. 
And then the seventh section provides that “ after July, 
1876, the State Board of Medical Examiners shall examine 
all applicants for license to practise medicine, surgery, or 
dentistry, in this Commonwealth. Applicants must give 
satisfactory proof of being twenty-one years of age, of good 
moral character, and of having received a diploma from some 
legally chartered medical college or university." Now, does 
not that make the possession of such a diploma a prerequi- 
site to examination ? Clearly it does. Under the act, if 
you should adopt it, a man who was not a graduate of a 
legally chartered medical college could not be examined for 
admission to the practice of medicine in Massachusetts, no 
matter how much he knew, no matter how good his morals 
were. Anybody can be examined to be admitted to the 
practice of law. We have had men who were good physi- 
cians, who had no diplomas ; we have had men who were 
good lawyers and good judges, who had no diplomas. The 
people never yet had any profound conviction of the differ- 
ence between a good doctor with a diploma, and a good 
doctor without one ; between a good lawyer without a 
diploma, and a good lawyer with one. 
Again, the bill creates a medical tribunal,— and this is the 
great objection to any legislation of this kind, — it creates 
an arbitrary medical tribunal, with power to take from men 
the means by which they get their living. Turn to the last 
clause of section 8 : “ Said Board of Medical Examiners 
may revoke a license for unprofessional or dishonorable con- 
duct upon a unanimous vote, after giving the accused an 
opportunity to be heard in defence.” Now, the suggestion 
was made, What is the harm in that, if it is by a unanimous 
vote ? Turn to the last clause of section 13 : “A majority 
of the members of said Board of Medical Examiners created 
by this act, when qualified according to the provisions of 
this act,” — I don’t know how they are qualified, there is 
no provision for qualifying,— “ are authorized and empow- 37 
ered to exercise all the powers and perform all the duties 
authorized and required by said board, by the provisions of 
this actthe effect of which would be, sir, that five gentle- 
men could call any member of the medical profession in 
Massachusetts before them, and without charges, without 
evidence, not for any crime, not for any neglect of duty, 
not for any malpractice in the profession, but for anything 
which they thought was “ unprofessional or dishonorable,” 
absolutely, and without appeal or remedy, take away from 
that man the power to earn his bread. No such power 
ought to be conferred upon any five men or nine men, 
or any number of men, no matter whether they act by 
a majority vote or a unanimous vote. A man’s profession 
is property as much as houses or lands. And no man or 
woman should be deprived of the right to practise the 
calling by which they gain their bread, without a fair and 
open trial conducted under the rules of evidence and practice 
established by the law of the land. (Applause.) Why, sir, 
even a member of the bar can be removed from his office 
only upon charges, only upon a trial in open court, with the 
right to go to the full court of the Commonwealth upon all 
questions of law. He cannot be removed arbitrarily by any 
Star Chamber practice like that proposed by this bill. 
Under this act — under any act which will satisfy these 
medical gentlemen — it is in the power of a board of medical 
men, without remedy, without appeal, to take out of the 
mouth of any practitioner in the State the power to earn the 
bread on which he and his family live. 
“ You take my house when you do take the prop 
That doth sustain my house ; you take my life 
When you do take the means whereby I live.” 
Again, I believe that under any law which you can pass, 
the Massachusetts Medical Society will have substantially 
the controlling power in the board, unless you adopt the 
doubtful expedient of providing that the members shall be 
limited to so many from each school, which I should ques- 
tion. I will not say it will be unconstitutional, but it would 
be open to very grave objections, and it is very doubtful 
whether you can prescribe limitations upon the appointing 38 
power of the executive, and say he shall appoint from one 
school and not from another. Why, look at the power of 
the Massachusetts Medical Society. The law of Massachu- 
setts provides for medical examiners throughout the Com- 
monwealth. We have got seventy-one in all, who were 
appointed by the Governor and Council. How many of 
them do you think belong to the Massachusetts Medical 
Society? Sixty-two, sixty-two ! Now, I say that is a great 
tribute to the learning, to the intelligence, and to the ability 
of the members of that society, and that learning and ability 
will give them the control of any board of examiners which 
may be appointed under any law, and they know it, and 
that is why they want the law. But that society was just 
as learned and just as able, and its members were just as 
honest and just as judicious when the people took away 
from it the power to regulate the practice of medicine in 
Massachusetts, as it is now, and the people do not want to 
put that power back into their hands, by direction or indirec- 
tion. (Applause.) 
Again, the bill purports to give the public competent and 
educated physicians, but it does not prescribe a course of 
examination which is of the slightest consequence with regard 
to the great branch of therapeutics. The Massachusetts 
Medical Society comes here and asks you to ordain that men 
may be licensed to practise medicine upon an examination in 
“anatomy, surgery, physiology, chemistry, pathology, and 
obstetrics.” Now, turn to the course which is required for 
admission into the Massachusetts Medical Society, “ anatomy, 
pathological anatomy, physiology, general and medical chem- 
istry, materia medica, therapeutics, midwifery, the theory 
and practice of medicine, clinical medicine, surgery, clinical 
surgery, hygiene, and public hygiene.” (By-laws of Massa- 
chusetts Medical Society.) Have these gentlemen ordained 
a course of examination for admission into their society 
which they regard as unnecessary to qualify a man to prac- 
tise as a physician ? By no means. They have adopted a 
full course, a wise course. And if we are to have any exami- 
nations at all, Mr. Chairman ; if the people of Massachusetts 
are to have any legal band of medical men licensed to prac- 
tise upon them, let them be licensed under an examination 39 
as full and thorough and complete as the Massachusetts 
Medical Society requires for admission into its own ranks. 
Mr. Chairman, I believe that when doctors cease to make 
mistakes; when they cease to quarrel among themselves as 
they have before you ; when they can control quackery within 
their own medical societies ; and when they can keep mem- 
bers of their own societies from committing crimes for which 
they serve in the State prison and are hanged, it will be 
quite time for the medical gentlemen of the Commonwealth 
to ask that the issues of life and death in the practice of 
medicine and surgery shall be committed to the arbitrary 
decision of an irresponsible medical Star Chamber. (Ap- 
plause.) 
I have talked longer, sir, than I meant to talk. I have 
treated the subject in a very superficial and unsatisfactory 
manner to myself, but if I have opened any lines of thought 
which you, as wise and capable and judicious legislators, can 
pursue to a result which shall benefit, not the medical pro- 
fession of Massachusetts, for they can take care of them- 
selves, but the whole people of Massachusetts, I shall have 
answered the purpose for which I have spoken. I am much 
obliged to you for the courtesy with which you have listened 
to me. (Applause.) MEDICAL LEGISLATION. 
Argument of Remonstrants 
Delivered by Dr. Jos. Rodes Buchanan, President 
of Committee of Remonstrants, before the 
Committee on Public Health, March 5, 1885. 
On Thursday morning, March 5, Dr. Joseph Rodes 
Buchanan, as President of a committee of seven appointed 
by the remonstrants against medical legislation to conduct 
their case, delivered the following eloquent and powerful 
address before the Public Health Committee of the Massa- 
chusetts Legislature, which was frequently interrupted by 
the enthusiastic applause of the crowded audience which 
attended the hearing. 
Mr. Chairman:—The remonstrants would respectfully 
say that the people of Massachusetts are firmly opposed to 
restrictive medical legislation; that the most liberal and 
enlightened portion of the medical profession are still more 
firmly opposed, because they understand its evils; that the 
demand for such legislation comes only from the illiberal por- 
tion of the profession ; that it arises from their own failure 
to retain the public confidence, and is a movement of pure 
selfishness, which is hostile to justice and injurious alike to 
the public welfare and the improvement of the healing art. 
This demand, urged by a few, was supported by false and 
libellous assertions, without a particle of proof. On the other 
hand, the remonstrants propose to establish, by competent 
proof, these propositions : — 
41 42 
1. That legislation to give a monopoly of medical prac- 
tice to persons with medical diplomas would be legislation in 
favor of quackery, because more than nine tenths of all the 
quackery and malpractice come from those who hold diplo- 
mas, as we are able to prove, and because these gentlemen 
confess they are unable to cure cases such as cancer, which 
other physicians do cure. 
2. That a large number of persons possess the power to 
heal disease without medicine, and to examine the condition 
of the sick with greater accuracy than ordinary physicians, 
or even the most eminent professors, and also to select 
remedies appropriate to each case without any medical 
education whatever, and that a vast number of our people 
have been healed by them, in many instances after the best 
physicians had totally failed. 
3. That medical colleges as at present constituted do not 
any of them teach one half of the healing art, and that what 
they do teach is so imperfectly taught that more than half of 
their graduates are unfit even to practise their own limited 
system, and that these evils would be greatly aggravated if 
by legislation they were deprived of the wholesome stimulus 
of free competition. Such legislation would be oppressive to 
the poor, would increase the suffering and mortality of the 
sick, and would be felt by many thousands as a personal 
wrong, a gross and tyrannical outrage. 
4. That independent practitioners have already saved a 
vast amount of money, health, and life; that they have 
proved themselves an extremely useful and benevolent class 
of citizens; that they are highly esteemed by the people; 
that they have a vested right in their honorable profession, 
and that to deprive them of this right without compensation 
would be a more tyrannical act than any of those which 
caused the American Revolution. 
5. That practical medicine is not a positive science, but 
an empirical art, which is continually changing; that the 
greatest changes and improvements originate outside of 
colleges, against their opposition, and that to give the abso- 
lute control and possession of the whole field to colleges 
would be disastrous to progress, and would in the present 
century have prevented the development of American 43 
eclecticism, of homoeopathy, and of the magnetic practice, 
the three greatest improvements of the century. 
6. That in the present very imperfect and unfinished state 
of medical science the new discoveries which are coming up 
with greater rapidity than ever before demand new methods 
of practice and new applications of remedies as the noblest 
work of science and humanity, which are necessarily outside 
of colleges, until they have attained numerical and financial 
strength, and, instead of being prohibited, deserve to be 
assisted by the patronage of the State. 
7. That the bill proposed by the Massachusetts Medical 
Society is unconstitutional, tyrannical, malicious, and absurd, 
and such legislation has already proved oppressive and inju- 
rious to the welfare of the people. 
8. That the only medical legislation which would promote 
the interest of the people is legislation to promote a knowledge 
of the causes and the prevention of disease, and to make 
them acquainted with the actual results of different methods 
of treatment by statistics honestly collected, as is requested 
in the petition herewith submitted ; and until such statistics 
shall have been collected it will be impossible to legislate 
wisely on the subject. 
In this matter I am individually a representative of colleges 
and diplomas, for not less than twenty thousand dollars have 
been paid to medical colleges as fees for diplomas bearing 
my signature. Hut I am not so selfish or bigoted as to claim 
that the holders of our diplomas should have any exclusive 
privileges or legal advantages over their fellow-citizens, 
hence I appear for the people as Chairman of the Committee 
appointed by the remonstrants. 
Protection for the Regulars. 
The Massachusetts Medical Society calls upon you once 
more for protection against fair and free competition. Of 
course they protest they are acting for the. dear people, but 
the pretence is so very thin it is almost laughable. They 
attempt to convey the impression that the ringleaders of this 
movement represent the medical profession generally, but it 
is a false impression ; they represent only the illiberal class. 
I offer you here one of the ablest homoeopathist journals 44 
published anywhere (American Homoeopathist), in which 
this whole scheme of medical legislation is exposed and 
denounced in strong language. There may be some homoeo- 
paths who have so recently escaped from the Bastile of 
medical despotism that its malaria is not yet out of their 
blood, but they do not represent the most enlightened mem- 
bers of their profession. 
I hold here, also, the expression of the two leading eclec- 
tic medical journals of this country, and regret that I have 
not time to read their scathing exposition of this great wrong 
against the people and the profession. 
I offer you, also, the powerful plea against medical legisla- 
tion made by my old colleague, Prof. John King, author of 
the “American Eclectic Medical Dispensatory” and other 
valuable medical works, when he gave the annual address to 
the National Eclectic Medical Association. This address 
was so highly appreciated by them that they ordered ten 
thousand copies to be printed for distribution. They had no 
personal interest in the matter, but they were friends of 
human freedom, and this was their honorable contribution to 
the defence of liberty for all. 
You see, therefore, that the most enlightened members of 
the medical profession abhor such bills as an alarming inva- 
sion of liberty. 
There never-was a legislative scheme of monopoly and 
corruption so glaringly iniquitous on its face that a good 
talker could not make a plausible statement that would 
sound very well until the other side was heard. I listened 
carefully to all that was said, and I perceived a fatal weak- 
ness in the whole argument. 
It was all based upon one broad, bold, and libellous assump- 
tion, for which no proof was offered. It was begging the 
question. The assumption was that Massachusetts was 
overrun by a $et of unprincipled, mercenary ignoramuses, 
who were swindling everybody they could reach, disgracing 
the State, and ruining the doctors by taking the business 
from them. It was assumed that these independent doctors 
were such notorious culprits that the legislature ought to 
sentence them to professional death, without trial and with- 
out evidence that anything wrong had been done. 45 
The Independents demand a Trial. 
If they are such notorious culprits, why not prove it by 
investigation, showing their malfeasance? Simply because 
it is impossible to be clone ; and investigation is what the 
gentlemen shun. Let a commission of inquiry be appointed, 
and the independent physicians of Massachusetts will prove 
before that commission that more than nine tenths of all 
the quackery is done under the shelter of diplomas, and that 
the existence here of independent practitioners is a blessing 
to the State, causing a great diminution of the amount of 
suffering and death, a diminution in the expense of medical 
treatment, and a more active progress in the knowledge of 
therapeutics. 
The independent practitioners, with a clear conscience, 
demand a trial ; and if the Massachusetts Medical Society 
has an equally clear conscience they will not shrink from 
the ordeal ; if they shrink from it, it amounts to a confes- 
sion of wrong, and they throw up the case. 
I present now before you the petition which is to be pre- 
sented in the legislature in which the trial is asked for. 
We ask for an impartial commission from the four classes of 
physicians who are interested, and two impartial statisticians, 
not of the profession, to record all the mortality in the 
State, with names of the attending physicians, that the peo- 
ple may see under what method of practice the greatest 
mortality occurs. 
Give us such a law as that, and we will cheerfully con- 
sent that any party showing great inferiority in the results 
of their practice shall be prohibited from practising in this 
State. We are willing to abide by the rule of “the survival 
of the fittest.” 
Pass an Honest Law. 
Pass such an honest law as this, and there will be a shout 
of joy throughout the Commonwealth. The homoeopaths 
will welcome it, because they have had the statistics in 
many hospitals, and they know how triumphant the result 
would be for them. The eclectics would welcome it, 
because there is nothing more eagerly desired by them than 
to have the true statistics before the people. We point to 46 
the fact that while the mortality of cholera practice under 
old school treatment has been from twenty-five to fifty per 
cent and sometimes greater, fifteen hundred patients were 
treated by the eclectics of Cincinnati in 1849 with a mor- 
tality not exceeding six per cent, —a fact which I can attest, 
having been there in that terrible epidemic and helped to 
collect the statistics, which have never been denied. I have 
heretofore proposed such a law. Every medical liberal 
would rejoice in it, and the patient, long-suffering healers, 
who have no diploma and have lived under the perpetual 
slander of their rivals, would celebrate the event as our peo- 
ple celebrate the Fourth of July. 
A Mournful Occasion. 
But I am sorry to say that there would be sad and solemn 
countenances in the Massachusetts Medical Society, when 
such an act is passed. Of all the unwholesome drastic 
doses that could possibly be offered to an allopathic med- 
ical society, there is nothing so indigestible, so sickening, as 
a dose of honest statistics honestly gathered. Dr. Forbes, 
the head of the profession in England, took his dose like an 
honest man, and confessed that under the operation of sta- 
tistics his old profession seemed to be a failure. 
If we do not get such a law, or if this imperious society 
insists on immediate action, we are ready to establish the 
truth by proof, ready to prove that medical diplomas are the 
best shelter of quackery; and as long as you are willing to 
hear our witnesses, we will prove that patients have been 
maltreated and abandoned to die until cured by independent 
physicians without diplomas, and that this has been going 
on with diversified horrors for fifty years, until, as their 
champion confessed last Tuesday week, homoeopathy and 
eclecticism have grown up out of the blunders and follies 
of the old profession. 
For this you are asked to legislate against independent 
physicians as if they were wolves and foxes ; but where is 
the argument offered ? Why, twenty-six States have been 
captured by the medical ring. I would ask, when was it 
that a powerful, numerous, and resolute combination could 
not obtain, by stubborn perseverance, legislation for their 47 
own benefit when there was no efficient opposition? In 
most of the States the liberal element is not sufficiently 
strong or vigilant to defeat these schemes, cunningly man- 
aged and passed without due warning. But wherever the 
people have had enough of the independent practice to 
understand its merits, they are opposed to such legislation. 
The legislature of Maine has just given these gentlemen a 
Waterloo defeat. But does wicked legislation in American 
States, or in the European despotisms which are brought up 
now as our models, prove anything at all ? 
How many States established African slavery, and fought 
for it too? How many States have kept on their statute 
books laws grossly unjust to women ? We are growing out 
of all these barbarisms. Massachusetts is free, but the 
medical ring would push back the index of time on the 
dial of progress and revive a system which is more rigid 
than even in England or Germany—a system even despotic 
Germany is giving up. l'or there no diploma is now 
required, and the private student can take as high rank as 
the college graduate. 
The strength of the case presented by the Massachusetts 
Medical Society consists entirely of their own opinions, and 
their libellous assertions. They offered the opinions of 
something over one hundred and sixty doctors in favor of a 
law. That was magnanimous indeed! Why did they not 
offer the whole sixteen hundred of their State society? Is 
there any man in any business who would make much objec- 
tion to having his rivals legislated out of business without 
taking any part in the matter himself ? Perhaps he would 
be ashamed to ask it. And it seems that nine-tenths of the 
society have too much self-respect to ask for the law. 
Those who are really good physicians do not feel the need 
of it, and do not w'ish to make a raid on their neighbors, and 
this was stated by the gentlemen who appeared. It is a 
shameful business ! and the last time the matter was brought 
before the legislature only one very obscure member of 
the profession appeared to ask for it, and the year before 
that nobody appeared, and now they can only get one man 
A Shameful Business. 48 
in ten to ask for it, after drumming over the whole State. I 
think it is much to their honor that they have given it the 
cold shoulder. 
A few ultra-partisans come here and attempt to carry this 
iniquitous measure by scurrilous abuse of their professional 
rivals. They say that irregular or independent physicians 
have flocked to Massachusetts because it is free, and that 
this has made Massachusetts a common sewer. Such 
language degrades only the man who uses it. 
Blind and Maligant Selfishness 
always produces a certain degree of mental obscurity—an 
unconsciousness of right and wrong, and this bill, concocted 
in the most concentrated selfishness, but purporting to rep- 
resent the aggregate wisdom of the Massachusetts Medical 
Society, exhibits a mind blinded by malice. It actually 
makes it a criminal offence for a man to write his name 
correctly. 
If a man has graduated, and is, accordingly, accustomed to 
write his name with a legitimate M. D. attached, but does 
not wish to practise, and does not register as a physician, he 
is liable to a fine of fifty to five hundred dollars, and im- 
prisonment from one to twelve months for writing his name 
with M. D. after it. The proposed bill says that any one 
who shall append to his name the letters M. D., “shall be 
regarded as practising medicine within the meaning of this 
act.” But if he does not present his diploma, and get a 
certificate, he is one of the proscribed class, and liable to ad 
the penalties, for he is considered as practising medicine 
whether he does or not. It would be very wrong to consider 
the gentlemen fools who drafted this bill, but the virus of 
selfishness made them blind when they wrote it, and they 
thought of nothing but punishing their professional competi- 
tors. Still I have a great deal of charity for the men who 
are asking for this law. I can say, “ ‘ Father, forgive them, 
for they know not what they do.’ ” 
They are educated in schools in which they learn no more 
of the true character of medical liberalism than a pupil in a 
Jesuit college does of the real merits of Protestantism—nay, 
not so much. I doubt if there is a member of the Massachu- 49 
setts Medical Society in good standing and orthodox, who 
can give a correct statement of the principles and practice of 
American eclecticism. 
Dr. Bowditch’s Amusing Confession. 
I was amused at the confession of Dr. Bowditch that he 
was astonished on consulting with an eclectic, to find that 
he was a splendid physician, never knowing till then that 
eclecticism claims to give a superior medical education. I 
can understand that men of respectability, men who are 
naturally just and somewhat liberal, actually believe, through 
the force of education, that restrictive medical legislation is 
just—that we have a right to prosecute and persecute men 
who do not believe in medical orthodoxy, and medical col- 
leges, as Catholics once believed it was right to crush out 
Protestantism by law. 
You do not know, because it is contrary to your education, 
that medical skill depends far more on innate endowment 
than on college education. Do you know that genius is 
primary and education secondary? “Pocta nascitur, non 
fit," is a principle of universal application. A great 
general is born, not made. A great musician is born- 
not made. That splendid musician, Blind Tom, owed 
nothing to education, neither did Zerah Colburn owe his 
genius to education. 
Harvard College Challenged. 
The power to diagnose disease is a matter of innate endow- 
ment. We can find many a country boy or girl, of little or 
no education, who, in a clairvoyant state, can make a better 
diagnosis and prognosis than a whole college faculty, and 
there are thousands who possess this faculty in their normal 
condition, and can exercise it at any time. There are more 
than five thousand in the State of Massachusetts who can do 
this, and any number who are ready to swear that it has been 
done and is being done. Will you permit us to prove this 
by showing the fact in your presence ? Or will you appoint 
a sub-committee to verify the facts ? Appoint your commit- 
tee, and we would challenge Harvard College to a competi- 
tive test in diagnosis. 50 
The same innate genius which makes the diagnosis will 
also select the remedy, and I am very sure that if the whole 
medical profession were abolished there is enough of this 
talent everywhere to take their place, and under its guidance 
we should have none of those frequent and terrible blunders 
which are the disgrace of the profession. They are so com- 
mon now that eminent surgeons in Germany, about two years 
ago, were not ashamed to publish, with all its details, the 
fact that they performed the dangerous and often fatal oper- 
ation of ovariotomy on a woman—only discovering then that 
the ovaries were perfectly sound and there was not the 
slightest excuse for the operation. 
Such blundering as this needs very much to be bolstered 
up by legislation ; and the legislation desired is that which 
will annihilate every enlightened, progressive movement in 
medicine. “ Some ten years ago,” (says Prof. Scudder, my 
successor as Dean of the Eclectic Medical Institute,) “when 
the subject of Boards of Health was mooted in the American 
Medical Association, it was freely stated that the crushing 
out of irregular medicine was a prominent object. Boards of 
health not being effective for the purpose, a movement is 
now being made for State Examining Boards, before which 
every physician must appear, and whose certificate will be 
the only legal authority to practise medicine. For fear 
eclectics and homoeopaths will not take to this measure 
kindly, it is proposed that they shall each have one member 
in a board of twenty, these members examining only in the 
particular tenets of the school to which they belong. It is a 
most admirable plan (for the purpose), but it will not become 
a law in our day.” 
In the bill offered by the Massachusetts Medical Society 
there is not even this small concession. They do not desire 
to have any liberal physician on the Board. 
When a man has been thoroughly miseducated, the truth 
being suppressed in his education, as it is in all the old med- 
ical colleges, and when his personal interest and his party 
spirit and associations all support his false opinions, he looks 
at the question thus : We have all the world’s learning, all 
the profound scholarship and multiplied experience of centu- 
ries in the greatest colleges and hospitals, where all doctrines 51 
have been investigated and tried in an enlightened and lib- 
eral manner. The general agreement of the talented, 
learned, and experienced, must be considered decisive in any 
subjjct, and no man should be permitted to assume the 
responsibilities of medical practice without learning that 
which the common consent of able men has established as 
true. The man who undertakes medical practice without 
having this knowledge is necessarily incompetent, for there 
is no other medical knowledge outside of colleges of any real 
value; and when he offers himself as a physician he is guilty 
of a species of false pretence, attempting to impose on the 
ignorant, and such an offence ought to be punished by law. 
My quondam friend, Dr. Cowling, Professor of Surgery at 
Louisville, expressed the idea with unusual candor by saying, 
“We all think that all homoeopathic physicians ought to be 
confined in the penitentiary, and allowed to practise only 
on each other,” and he was never rebuked for that state- 
ment. 
To a man thus educated, physicians who are not orthodox 
are quacks or cranks, no matter how splendid their education, 
or how honorable their character, and those who attend no 
college are shameless impostors who ought to be punished. 
Every Assumption denied. 
I deny every one of these assumptions. I deny that all 
knowledge is in the colleges, and not to be had anywhere 
else. There is ten times more knowledge in our medical 
literature and libraries than we can find in any college ; and 
any ambitious, talented young man who will give the colleges 
the go-by, and plunge into the vast fields of medical litera- 
ture for a few years, will come out able to teach the profes- 
sors without ever entering a college; and that was the way 
that some of our first professors were developed without 
diplomas. My father, reared in early times in Tennessee 
and Kentucky, without ever having entered a medical college, 
was chosen to an important medical professorship in Tran- 
sylvania University, which in time became the leading school, 
and was certainly the peer of any of his colleagues. There- 
fore do I say that men who care nothing for colleges, who 
go to the fountains of knowlege in nature and in the library, 52 
and care nothing for that petty badge, the diploma, are often 
more worthy of our respect and confidence than the men 
who are content to listen to professors, who are often mere 
text-book parrots. The text-books are higher authority 
than the colleges, and when the independent student finds 
something in text-books not represented by any college, he 
has at least as good a right to carry it into practice as if he 
had acquired it in a college, for systems of practice taught in 
text-books are not made any more honorable or true by 
being taught in colleges. I would sooner trust in practice a 
young man who has studied faithfully under an enlightened 
practitioner, and been initiated by him into practice, than 
the average graduate of the best college. He may be one 
of the most splendid physicians of the age in which he lives, 
and yet the colleges would like to put the brand of infamy 
upon him because he has not paid tribute to them. The 
purpose of all medical legislation is to bolster up the colleges, 
and give an artificial value to their diplomas. To give the 
medical corporations the right of selling licenses to practise 
in the shape of diplomas, is to abdicate the sovereignty of 
the State. The State alone has the right to license, and to 
give that power to medical corporations for their own profit 
is as absurd as to give a corporation of distillers the right 
to sell grog-shop licenses for their own benefit. If the State 
gives licenses, the poor student has the right when he is 
qualified, without becoming the slave of a medical college. 
I say slave—for it is the aim of all the regular medical 
colleges to establish and maintain medical slavery. Some 
years back it was for a time attempted both in Scotland and 
in one of our Northwestern States, by requiring the pupil, in 
accepting his diploma, to swear to follow the teaching of his 
professors, and to surrender his diploma if he ever learned 
enough to deviate from them. But this was soon abandoned. 
I deny that all medical knowledge is confined to medical 
colleges of the orthodox persuasion or of any persuasion. 
I affirm that there is more useful knowledge of the healing 
art outside of the regular medical colleges than inside, and 
a large amount of useful information not in any college. 
These colleges have only one contracted system of practice, 
which does not represent the present status of medical 53 
science. You cannot learn half of what a physician ought 
to know as to therapeutics in any regular medical college. 
It is very easy to show this. The colleges teach the 
administration of medicines ; their whole armament is in the 
dispensatory. The United States Dispensatory represents 
the resources of the old regular party. The Homoeopathic 
Dispensatory, equally extensive in its articles, and much 
more extensive in the description, is another huge mass of 
medical resources. The eclectic system of medicine, while 
it does not reject anything in these dispensatories, has a 
large amount of remedies, chiefly indigenous, and peculiar 
methods of using them, a peculiar therapeutics, which make 
another grand accumulation of medical knowledge. And 
beyond these three systems of therapeutics we have still 
richer resources for another system. There is hydropathy, 
with which its votaries compete with the regular system. 
There is electro-therapeutics, the votaries of which also 
compete with the regular practice ; and there are the neuro- 
logical and psychic methods of magnetic treatment, guided 
by clairvoyant and psychometric diagnosis. 
These outside systems, ignored by the colleges, which are 
not yet supported by diplomas, are really richer in their 
stock of therapeutic resources, and may be regarded as the 
fourth or independent system. 
Where can any one acquire all these resources ? Where 
is the college that teaches more than one fourth of thera- 
peutic art ? The graduate’s diploma represents only one 
fourth of therapeutic science, and you require four varieties 
of doctors to bring in all that is known of therapeutics. In 
other words, it takes four doctors to make a complete physi- 
cian. 
Four Farthings make a Penny. 
And the regular graduate is only one of the farthing doctors 
who would like to pass for a whole penny, and claim that he 
knows everything. But no man can claim that. Medical 
science, in its therapeutics, is too vast for any human brain 
to master it familiarly. There are no physicians, in the full 
meaning of the word. We are all, with very few exceptions, 
only farthing doctors, and nothing more — only specialists of 54 
one fourth of therapeutics. And the man who is a good 
specialist, either for big pills, little pills, or American 
methods, or electric, magnetic, and intuitive methods, is a 
very good doctor as the world goes now. 
I say again, we are all farthing doctors — but the regular 
gentleman who claims the highest rank is not even a whole 
farthing doctor (only a clipped farthing), for he does not 
master his own dispensatory. The regular United States 
Dispensatory has a little over a thousand articles; but 
of these, six hundred and twenty are thrown upon the 
appendix, which comprises many of the very best remedies 
known — in fact, I would as soon rely upon the appendix 
alone as upon the officinal list alone. But these best reme- 
dies are thrown into the appendix for empirics, curiosity- 
hunters, domestic practitioners, etc., and only four hundred 
and two are recognized as officinal, so that in his resources 
he has only four tenths of a farthing, less than one eighth of 
what a perfect physician ought to know, less even than that, 
for of the four hundred and two articles, he does not famil- 
iarly know, understand, and use over one hundred, or 
perhaps, if well educated, two hundred. And this pitifully 
narrow, limited system is what they wish to impose by law 
upon the people, depriving them really of nine tenths of the 
healing art. Hence I say that the regular colleges are 
nurseries of ignorance, and this has ever been their condition 
and will ever be until they are reformed. 
I might refer to their most illustrious leaders and exem- 
plars as the very beau ideal of therapeutic ignorance and 
quackery. Sir Astley Cooper stood at the head of his pro- 
fession in his time, and he was in his glory when I was a 
student. He was in the highest positions, and his profes- 
sional income was a hundred thousand dollars a year. He 
was a skilful surgeon, as for handling the knife, but his 
medical practice was that of a barbarian. 
In his biography by his nephew we find this statement : 
“So simple were Mr. Cooper’s prescriptions that he had five 
or six formulae, which under ordinary circumstances consti- 
tuted his complete pharmacopoeia, and such medicines he 
kept constantly made up. His remedies were limited in 
number and but little varied in use, for he never had any 55 
confidence in an extensive variety of medicines. I have 
heard him say, ‘ Give me opium, tartarized antimony, sulphate 
of magnesia, calomel, and bark, and I could ask for little 
else. 
On another occasion he said he could take his five reme- 
dies and with them beat all the country doctors. Oh, 
heaven, what a set of doctors they must have been! 
With these five remedies, what could we do for a consump- 
tive patient? We could only help him to die with different 
symptoms ; and at that time consumption was considered 
incurable. 
What could we do in cholera ? The mortality under such 
treatment is over fifty per cent. 
What could we do in diphtheria, in scarlet fever, in erysip- 
elas, in paralysis, in meningitis, or in obstinate skin dis- 
eases ? There is not an intelligent physician to-day who 
would not pronounce such practice gross an.d abominable 
quackery. 
The professor of practice, John Esten Cooke, whose in- 
structions I listened to, was perhaps worse than Sir Astley 
Cooper. The drift of his instruction was that with three 
remedies, calomel, aloes, and rhubarb, nearly all human 
diseases were to be treated, and he acted on his system — 
he gave calomel in teaspoon doses, and in one case of 
cholera he gave a pound and a half before the young man 
died. 
I think no intelligent man will deny to-day that, so far as 
the pupils of Cooper and Cooke followed such examples and 
teaching, they practised a horrible system of quackery. 
Legal Quackery. 
Under such a medical law as is proposed, that kind of quack- 
ery would have been forced on the people. But you say 
this is obsolete. In forty years we have changed all that. 
Very true ; and every thirty or forty years the whole system 
is changed and condemned, but while the quackery flourishes, 
the people must be forced to submit to it. They must be com- 
pelled to submit to-day to what will be pronounced quackery 
thirty years hence. An unfinished experimental art must be 
forced upon the people who loathe it, who are to be treated 56 
like children and forced to submit. There are many in 
Massachusetts who would rather die without medical help 
than submit to this. 
The people abhor such legislation. You can feel the heart 
of Massachusetts pulsating in this large and intelligent 
audience, and you perceive that it is unanimous against this 
tyrannical legislation. 
You cannot educate a competent physician, if he is to be 
educated by men who are following dogmas as a trade, while 
they have no sincere faith in the virtue of what they are 
doing. I say the leaders in old school medicine have no 
faith in their art. 
I refer to Dr. Forbes of England and Dr. Holmes of this 
city, the witty poet, who said it would be better for mankind 
if all drugs were emptied into the sea. 
I have the recorded confessions of over thirty of the most 
eminent medical teachers and authors, showing the worth- 
lessness of their art. They use language that I would not 
use. I believe they slandered medical science. But they 
are authorities and leaders, and they are competent to con- 
fess the worthlessness of all they know and do. The list 
embraces the two highest authorities in medical literature — 
Dr. Forbes of the British and Foreign Medical Quarterly, 
and Dr. Jas. Johnson of the British Medicu-Chirurgical 
Review, the two most eminent medical reviews in the world 
Magendie, the greatest physiologist of France ; Sir Astley 
Cooper, the greatest surgeon of the age; Mott and Parker, 
the two most eminent physicians of New York ; Prof. Bige- 
low and Prof. John Ware of Boston, and the illustrious 
Benjamin Rush, John Mason Good, and Abernethy of 
London. These and twenty others are on record against the 
old school of practice, and, as a sample of their opinions, I 
quote the language of Dr. Jas. Johnson :— 
“ I declare as my conscientious conviction, founded on long experience 
and reflection, that if there was not a single physician, surgeon, man- 
midwife, chemist, apothecary, druggist, nor drug on the face of the earth, 
there would be less sickness and less mortality than now prevails.” 
I deny all this ; and no doctor ever talks that way who is 
not a narrow-minded bigot, unacquainted with the best 
resources of the healing art. No homoeopath, no eclectic, 57 
no genuine independent ever uttered such a sentiment. You 
are asked to consign the people to the care of these men, 
who confess they are failures, and to the care of their pupils, 
their graduates, whom they say are a great deal worse than 
their preceptors, for the majority of them are not qualified. 
It is not my assertion, but the assertion of the champions 
of this medical bill, that the parties who claim this monopoly 
are in the main incompetent. Dr. Talbot says that the 
majority of medical colleges were established not to teach 
medicine but to sell diplomas, and yet he wants them to have 
a monopoly for the quacks they have sold diplomas to. 
Ignorant Graduates. 
But I have still better authority. I go to the National 
Medical Association, whence all the gods of the medical 
Olympus send forth the law to their subjects. I find that 
Dr. Gihon, Medical Director of the United States Navy and 
President of the Naval Academy, made a report most won- 
derfully honest and true, to the National Medical Associa- 
tion, when it met at Cleveland. He says that of one 
thousand one hundred and forty-two practising graduates of 
regular medical colleges, seven hundred were too ignorant to 
pass the Naval Examining Board. He says: “Many of 
these have doubtless learned something of the art they began 
to practise in the dark, yet most of them have only learned 
to see as the blind see, and at what a fearful cost of human 
life!” 
It is not merely technical and unimportant ignorance that 
he charges, but gross and disgraceful ignorance and illiteracy. 
One gave the normal temperature of the body in “ helth ” 
as 70° ; another as 920 ; another, from 1120 to 140°. Another 
said, “The average respirations are seventy per minute.” 
Another wrote, “ The ureter is the duck of the kidney. ” 
Dr. Gihon says another defined pneumonia to be a par- 
ticular disease of one lung, and pleurisy the name given it 
when it affected the other side. Another advised cauteriza- 
tion of the soles of the feet in congestion of the brain, and 
“using the actual cautery for poor people and nitrate of 
silver for rich patients, that they might not be discommoded 
by the smell of burning flesh.” 58 
A graduate of unimpeachable regularity said that “Campher 
is an auromatic gum from the ilands of the see.” 
Of these blunders Dr. Gihon says : “ I have taken them 
from the graduates of schools of established reputation, in 
order to prove that no one school, however exalted in rank, can 
claim exception from the charge of having as graduates grossly 
illiterate and incompetent men, and that diplomas have been 
sold, not cheaply and openly, but still fora price, meaning two 
full sets of tickets, a matriculation and a graduation fee.” 
The illiteracy was shown in spelling such words as blud, 
medasin, mcdicle bord, vigitable, pluracy, finguers, thyghs, 
helth, sode, shure, wair, scassity, interlec, and aurora epilep- 
tica. He was probably thinking of the aurora borealis. 
Dr. Gihon says further : “ I have seen the spermatic cord 
demonstrated in a female subject. I have witnessed the 
application to fractured limbs that would have deformed the 
sufferer for life; prescriptions written that no apothecary 
could decipher or compound, and others compounded either 
with fatal doses, deliberately prescribed, or ignorantly and 
carelessly weighed, which it would have been eminently 
proper to have required the exhibitor to have swallowed. 
“Some of the revelations of the examinations would be 
amusing were- it not for the lamentable facts that many of 
their authors have been for years intrusted with the lives of 
their fellow-beings, and this by the authority of the most 
respectable regular colleges in the United States.” 
And it is for these quacks that you demand a monopoly. 
Dr. A spoke of the literary ignorance of people who do 
not profess to be educated, but who by the divine gift of 
healing power have gained a large patronage at his expense. 
We are prepared to show that they know more than he does 
about the healing art, and that his professional blunders have 
been rectified by the very people whom he is trying to crush. 
Dr. S •, who made the best speech for a bill (not this 
bill), uttering a great deal of good sense, is, I believe, a good 
physician, for he says he studied both the regular and the 
homoeopathic system, and therefore his therapeutics is not a 
farthing but a halfpenny. He says that he has cured ninety- 
nine in a hundred, and I am willing to believe him, because 
I know that an eclectic in New York, who came as near to 59 
being a complete physician as any one I ever knew, cured a 
hundred per cent, and for several years having no deaths to 
report in a large practice, her name was forgotten at the 
Board of Health. 
It is singular that Ur. S , unlike other good physicians, 
is not willing to rely on his merits, but wants protection 
against competition. Perhaps the reason is that he is not 
quite omniscient; and I know of one case that he did not 
cure with all his resources. The woman whom he was 
unable to cure, whom he led to the border of the grave and 
announced that her death was impending then, had some 
independent assistance. One of those divinely-gifted, good 
women, who are able to heal, and also able to see into the 
condition of the patient, came in as an attendant (I mean 
Mrs. Critchley), sat up and labored with the patient all night, 
and by morning she was saved, and she recovered. 
Now, if I understand him rightly, he wants the law so 
changed that when he conducts the next patient to the 
borders of the grave, when all hope is gone, no one shall be 
allowed to come in and save the unfortunate victim of 
medical colleges and medical legislation. He asks you 
virtually to pass a sentence of death upon all outside of his 
skill, or outside of the skill of men far less skilful, who do 
not know more than half of what he knows. He wants this 
effected by legislation. 
Now. I know of no legislation ever proposed in this country 
which would be so great an outrage upon humanity and 
justice. It would send a thrill of horror and consternation 
into many a Massachusetts home, and it may come even to 
yourselves, on what is supposed to be your dying bed, to 
lock and bar the door against hope, and hasten your depar- 
ture to that better world where we must all go in a very few 
years, and where the memory of such an act must follow you 
as we stand in the sphere or divine justice with an awakened 
conscience, to meditate upon all the wrongs we may have 
done to our fellow-beings. 
Medical legislation is so foreign to the spirit of American 
progress that its ultimate abolition is certain. In several 60 
States the acts have been pronounced unconstitutional. 
The legislatures of Maine and Ohio have rejected the pro- 
posed medical legislation in their recent sessions, and in 
Arkansas the regular medical profession has become con- 
vinced of the uselessness of such legislation. At the late 
meeting of the State Medical Society the president urgently 
recommended the dismissal of the Committee on Medical 
Legislation as useless and impolitic. PLEA OK 
Prof. Charles Wesley Emerson, M. 1)., 
President of Monroe College of Oratory, Boston, Mass. 
Before the Legislative Committee on Public Health, 
Boston, February, 1880. 
Mr. Chairman and Gentlemen :—I wish before speaking on 
this proposed bill, to define my individual position by say- 
ing, first, I do not practise medicine, neither do I wish to, 
nor have I any personal friend practising or wishing to prac- 
tise, whom this bill would in the least affect. I am not here 
in the interests of any person or class. Many of the mem- 
bers of the State Homoeopathic Society, as well as very many 
members of the Kclectic State Medical Society, together 
with some of the members of the Massachusetts State Med- 
ical Society, have petitioned you not to recommend legisla- 
tion on this subject. But I do not represent any of these 
societies, nor do I represent the Spiritualists who oppose 
this bill. 1 am not a Spiritualist, and have no belief in it 
whatever. I object to this bill because it is opposed to the 
well-being of the people of this Commonwealth, by impeding 
progress in the art of curing disease. 
The President of the Massachusetts State Medical Society 
stated to this committee that the most useful information he 
had ever received was given him by a nurse. We have only 
begun to learn the practice of medicine. Scarcely any 
branch of it can be called exact science. There are some 
things to be learned yet, even in anatomy; and much in 
physiology. Progress in these two departments we must 
necessarily look to the learned for, but it does not follow that 
these learned scientists will be graduates of any medical 62 
college. The facts go to show that a large number of the 
discoveries in these sciences have come from men who are 
not M. D.’s. Some of the names that stand the highest on 
this continent, and the other, as discoverers and authors, 
whose books are looked upon as the best authorities contri- 
buting to the knowledge of anatomy and physiology, have 
never graduated from any medical college. Yet this bill, if 
passed, will prevent such men, not only from practising medi- 
cine, but even debar them the privilege of an examination. 
It might seem to those who have only superficially examined 
this bill that it is at least an intended stimulant to educa- 
tion. But it is not even this ; for it will not permit a man 
to practise on the ground that he can pass a creditable ex- 
amination on all the branches supposed to be requisite to a 
thorough medical education, for it will not even examine the 
candidate unless, in addition to his knowledge and fitness, he 
also presents the board of censors a diploma from some ap- 
proved medical college. Disguise it as they may, the regular 
M. D.’s of Massachusetts are simply asking fora monopoly, 
by the guarantee of a legislative enactment. 
Practical Progress comes from the Unlearned. 
Progress in anatomy and physiology, as we have stated, 
comes in the nature of things from the learned, but the pro- 
gress in therapeutics (the meaning of which Webster de- 
fines “that part of medicine which respects the discovery 
and application of remedies for diseases ” ) has, and still con- 
tinues to, come from the unlearned. The materia medica is 
almost entirely made from the discoveries of the unschooled. 
An entire change in the treatment of diseases has taken 
place in all schools during the last fifty years. Prior to that 
time the human system was literally loaded with mineral 
poison by the doctors, they vainly hoping that disease was 
not merely lack of health, but an entity, that could be killed 
by pouring deadly mineral poison into the body of the patient 
on the one hand, and on the other drawing away all the good 
blood in the arteries. Samuel Thomson was the first suc- 
cessful innovator upon this horrid system of practice; and 
he was an uneducated farmer, who could barely write his 
name. The ignorance in the learned profession was so great 63 
at that time concerning the remedial properties to be found 
in the vegetable kingdom, from which Thomson drew all his 
medicines, that upon Thomson’s losing a patient he was ar- 
rested for wilful murder; and at his trial the poison of which 
the patient was said to have died was brought forward by a 
regular M. D. of this same school in whose interest they 
would have you pass this bill. Upon examination it was 
discovered to be the harmless root of marsh-rosemary, used 
in making common candy at the present time. The cures 
this man wrought wherever he went seemed, in contrast with 
the success of the regular practitioner, to be little less than 
miraculous. The news of his wonderful cures spread abroad, 
not by his advertising them, but it was told from man to man. 
The people rejoiced in the new light, the physicians tried to 
suppress him, but the people would have him. At last the 
doctors said, If the people will be doctored by this quackery, 
viz. roots and herbs, we cannot lose our practice; and hence 
we are compelled to sit at the foot of this ignorant old 
“quack,” and learn what he gives, and how he performs 
these wonderful cures. And so Thomson’s remedies are 
now used by every medical school, though they still decry 
his name. And these compounds of Thomson’s, and his 
many discoveries, to the number of more than one hundred, 
are sold by all druggists in America and Europe. His sys- 
tem now is a part of the recognized system, even among the 
members of the Massachusetts State Medical Society. 
The water cure system has a similar history. So of all 
the different elements that now compose the regular practice. 
Every one was fought in its turn by the regular schoolmen ; 
but the people were benefited, and therefore, notwithstand- 
ing it has ever been made scandalous to employ a person 
outside the regular practice, yet, “all that a man hath will 
he give for his life. ” So these systems the regular schools 
were compelled to adopt, or else be left among, the fossils of 
the past. 
Dr. Sweet and Prof. Morse. 
I brought before you a member of the family of the far- 
famed “natural bone-setters.” For two hundred and fifty 
years their system, called the “ rotary ” System, was fought 
back by the colleges of medicine, and kept out of the regular 64 
practice until the people were determined to have this grace- 
ful and easy method of bone-setting; and then the regulars 
were forced to adopt it ; and again the schoolmen were com- 
pelled to move forward a step. Now they say, “Do not let 
any more men practise outside the regular system, for we 
are tired of moving on. We wish to draw our robes about 
us and rest. We might have been resting these hundreds of 
years had it not been for the ‘quack’ compelling us to learn 
first this improvement in medicine and then that, or else 
lose our practice and stand one side and see the money all 
go into the pockets of the man who cures, he having plenty 
and to spare, while we starve on our ‘sheepskin. ’ ” 
It seems at first thought, very strange that these marvel- 
lous improvements in treating disease, and even in bone- 
setting, should come from persons who have not read, and 
can give no scientific name to the diseases they cure, or even 
tell the anatomical names of the bones they set ; yet these 
are the facts, and not even the promoters of this bill will 
dare attempt a denial of them. But this seeming eccentricity 
of nature is not alone confined to discoveries in the healing 
art, but is true of nearly all the improvements. Common 
people give us our improvements, and the schoolmen spend 
their time in giving Greek and Latin names to these im- 
provements, and building metaphysical theories concerning 
them. George Stevenson, the inventor of the locomotive, 
could scarcely read — he was a poor, ignorant collier. He 
knew nothing of the laws of mechanics, never heard of a 
school of technology. Yet nobody thought the less of his 
invention because he could not pass an examination con- 
cerning the very principles of mechanics which he had been 
applying. Even Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph, 
was not a scientist, and could not have passed a creditable 
examination before, any college board of examiners ; yet we 
do not think the less of these wires which, like so many 
nerves, bring into harmony all the families of man. 
Again, disguise it as the friends of this proposed bill may, 
the measure is a proposal for class legislation ! The immortal 
Lincoln said : “ This is a government of the people, by the 
people, and for the ’people. ” This bill proposes to govern 
the people for the doctors, and by the doctors. It is even 65 
worse than that; it proposes to put this monopoly, not into 
the hands of all the educated, graduated physicians, but into 
the hands of those who happen at this time to be members 
of the different State medical societies. 
Medical Legislation promotes Quackery. 
The object of the petitioners for the passage of this pro- 
posed hill is to make the number of physicians in the State 
small, and thereby constitute the greatest money monopoly 
ever heard of in this country, or any other. Then every 
member of the profession in this State will have security of 
practice, whether he helps or hinders the sick, and they will 
not only have plenty to do, but can charge whatever price 
they please for their services, and there is no appeal; for 
there is no other doctor permitted to practise, without pains 
and penalties. 
The real purpose and intent of the bill is hidden under 
two very popular disguises. First, that of a higher standard 
of education, and secondly, the extermination of “quackery.” 
We will notice these points in their respective order. 
First, Is this bill in the interests of higher education ? 
We have already shown that it will hinder progress in med- 
ical knowledge. Let us see what the bill actually does by 
its licenses and prohibitions. In the very start it gives all 
the members of the various State societies a license to 
practise without an examination. And yet many of the 
members of these various State societies, it is well known, 
have never received a diploma from any medical college, and 
many others who have a diploma in said societies took it 
from some one of the very colleges this Board of Examiners 
will condemn. 
Much has been said condemnatory of the ignorance of 
many doctors who are outside the pale of these State socie- 
ties. I will offset that by stating something concerning the 
ignorance of those inside the pale : A druggist asked a gen- 
tleman the other day what he would make of the following : 
“ Ag Moni.” The gentleman, although a learned physician, 
did not know, neither did the druggist. Another member of 
the Massachusetts State Medical Society was asked to state 
what a common dose of morphine is. He replied, “From one 66 
to five grains.” In one of your highly approved medical 
colleges of this State the old caloric theory of heat was 
taught five years ago, and is to-day for aught I know. I 
should hope that learned (?) professor would not be on the 
Board of Examiners provided in this bill ; for in that case 
no true and accepted scientist could get a license, simply 
because he would answer correctly, and the professor would 
not know it. 
Much has been said about the manifest ignorance of 
“ quacks ” who sign certificates of death. Did they give us 
anything that could excel the following from a regular M. 
D. ? “Not certain of the cause of death. Don’t know 
whether it was scarlet fever or from eating too much Bellona 
sausage.” 
They tell you this bill is for the purpose of weeding out 
pretenders; but they do not tell us how it is to work this 
most desirable change. They raise a great cry about 
“quacks.” A “quack” simply means one who pretends to 
do something he cannot do. That there are such preten- 
ders in the medical profession, and in every other profession, 
nobody thinks of denying; but far be it from me, or any 
opposer of this bill, to defend such. The people all have a 
common interest in rooting out all such, and many persons 
have signed the petition for the passage of this bill because 
it was represented to them that this would exterminate that 
obnoxious race ; but has any one shown us how this bill, if 
passed, has any power to sift them out? It has no such 
power, but, on the contrary, it protects them. It is a wall 
of fire around all the “quacks” who are inside the medical 
societies, and where is the man who possesses the audacity 
to say that there are no “ quacks ” inside these societies ? 
Yet this bill will compel the people to employ them, 
because no choice is left them, for the number from which 
to choose, should such a bill as this pass, would be kept 
exceedingly small. Note another means which this bill 
provides for keeping the number small. 
By the terms of this bill no one is eligible to an examina- 
tion merely because he is sufficiently learned, or has 
graduated, unless he shall have graduated from a college 
which they approve. Thus their power is wholly arbitrary. 67 
They can cut down the number of candidates, at any time, 
by disapproving the colleges from which they graduated, 
though every such college holds a charter from the State in 
which it exists. Again, another means is provided for 
lessening the number of physicians, in the clause about “a 
good moral character.” The Bill provides that any person 
having a good moral character shall be licensed, if such 
person has practised within the State ten consecutive years, 
yet, although this looks very fair on the face of it, by looking 
a little deeper we shall see that no criterion of morals is 
established, but the matter is left wholly to this Board of 
Kxaminers. How easy and how consistent is it with the 
entire spirit of this bill to say, “If you have practised ten 
years without being a member of our society or having 
studied medicine in the regular way, you are a ‘quack,’ and 
you have been humbugging the people ten years, and no 
license shall be granted to a man who is immoral enough to 
humbug the people for that period.” For if this bill means 
anything it means to teach that all persons who have not 
been through a medical college are humbugs unless they 
belong to one of the State medical societies. Thus all such 
can be cut off. 
They tell you of criminal practices among “quacks” that 
this bill will put a stop to. Gentlemen, I hold in my hand 
the names of four physicians now residing in this city, who 
are members of the old Massachusetts State Medical 
Society, in good and regular standing, who have been before 
the court for the crime of producing abortion, and also the 
name of one who is now serving his time in the State Prison 
for arson ; so that it seems that the Massachusetts State 
Medical Society is not in a condition to “ cast the first 
stone ; ” but still it asks that you throw around them, by 
special legislation, the arm of the law, lest people shall 
employ better men outside the regular societies. 
It violates the Rights of the People. 
Again, this bill takes away, without compensation, an 
honorable and successful business from a large number of 
persons, which is most unjust and cruel. And what does 
this law propose to call a crime? Simply this : the restoring 68 
to life and health a human being. This bill does not ask the 
question, “ Does this man cure the sick ? ” No ; if he cures 
him twice, it makes him pay one thousand dollars ; if he 
cures a patient three times, it imprisons him. Surely such a 
law is nothing better than barbarous. 
Again, I object to the bill because it practically puts into 
the hands of one medical society arbitrary power; and that 
society so hostile to the other societies that, according to 
the testimony of the president of that society, they will not 
counsel with a homeopath or an eclectic, though the patient 
calling for counsel is dying and this counsel will save his 
life. This rests not alone upon the testimony of this presi- 
dent ; it is one of the rules of the by-laws of said society. 
This bill would force the two small State societies into the 
very jaws of this inhuman lion ; although one quarter part of 
the members of one of these societies have sent in their 
written or verbal remonstrance; and a large and influential 
part of this other society also join in the remonstrance, led 
by no less a member than its worthy secretary, Dr. Morse, of 
Salem, a man of high social standing and extensive practice. 
Other eminent homeopathic physicians of this city, members 
of the State society, and professors in the Medical College, 
sent up their names, but you have not had time to hear 
them. 
Again, I object to this bill because it proposes to legislate 
away the sacred rights and dearest privileges of the people. 
What is so sacred to a man as his own life? Yet this bill 
proposes he shall not be allowed to choose the means of his 
own recovery if he is ill. 
The Clergy need the Same Protection. 
Let us notice the ground upon which the petitioners ask 
for the passage of such a bill. 
ist. They claim that the medical profession needs pro- 
tection from the competition of “ quacks,” and to this end 
they brought a bishop from, I do not know where, neither do 
I know what he was bishop of—I only know the lawyer for 
the petitioners was very careful to make you understand he 
was a bishop. This bishop said the medical profession was 
a very honorable one and needed protection ; he said also 69 
that the clergy needed protection just the same as the doc- 
tors, because there were so many “ quack ” preachers. Now 
what is the burden of this argument? If it means anything 
it means, “We hope you will pass a bill to protect doctors 
this year, and then a bill next year cutting off all ministers 
from preaching who are not in this [or in some other 
bishop’s] diocese.” I admire the candor of that bishop, 
and I feel greatly obliged to him for helping our side so 
much. If we had said that there is no difference between 
the doctors asking for a bill to protect them, and that of 
ministers asking one to protect the clergy, the advocates of 
this bill would have said there was a difference; but now 
that it comes from one of their own choosing—one that they 
had brought here because he was a bishop, thinking thereby, 
as they have in several other instances, to overawe us — it 
strikes them dumb that this good, simple-hearted bishop, 
should, all unintentionally, “ let the cat out of the bag,” by 
saying, in substance : “ Please pass this bill for the doctors, 
and then pass one for us ministers, so that we can get larger 
salaries, for we need more money as much as the doctors 
do.” 
They have brought you the names of other prominent 
clergymen. What we would like to know is, whether these 
clergymen who sent in their names for this petition know 
what they are doing, and are, hence, using this as an enter- 
ing wedge to bring back the oppression of the ages gone by, 
or whether they do not see the bearing of this bill. I am 
happy to say I incline to the latter opinion ; for I know a 
number who signed this petition who are now sorry, saying 
they would never have signed it had they known its full 
meaning. All they meant by signing it was to get rid of 
pretenders, but they now see the bill is not calculated in the 
least to do that, but is simply asking for the most crushing 
monopoly that ever bore down upon the common people. All 
this cry for the medical societies, all this telling how the 
poor members of the medical societies have flat pocket- 
books because the people will persist in employing other 
physicians, is contemptible. Poor, poor regulars ! how 
hungry they go because the people are not compelled to take 
their calomel, and prefer the harmless root-and-herb doctor! 70 
Why, all this lamentation in behalf of the doctors, because 
they may not compel the people to employ them, makes me 
think of the little boy whose mother was showing him a pic- 
ture of Daniel in the lions’ den ; the little fellow began to cry 
bitterly, when the mother said: “You pity poor Daniel, 
don’t you, because the lions are going to eat him up ? ” His 
reply, amid his sobs, was, “ I was not thinking anything 
about Daniel. I was thinking about that poor little lion in 
the corner, who won’t get any, ’cause the old lions will eat 
him all up first.” 
Malpractice among the Regulars. 
In all this cry for a bill to protect the members of the 
old medical societies, not a word is said about the common 
people, whom Daniel represents in the lions’ den. This bill 
takes away all possible competition, which is the only safe- 
guard of the people. 
No price for medical advice or treatment is mentioned in 
this bill. All is left to the nine despots of the proposed Board 
of Examiners, clothed with absolute power, and these des- 
pots are the interested party. They may say, if the price is 
too high, people need not employ the doctor. But what kind 
of an apology is that ? People cannot help being sick, and 
they cannot lie and die, as the monopolists very well know ; 
hence from those members of the medical societies, who 
have no practice now, and who, for want of natural fitness, 
ought never to have any, the people will be compelled to em- 
ploy. Why, gentlemen, when I think of the inhumanity of 
this bill, and practically those who advocate it, I am dumb 
with horror. The grocers might as well band themselves 
together and ask for legal monopoly. The friends of this 
bill tell you there is an immense amount of malpractice 
among the outside doctors, yet they have failed to point out 
a single case. Go look at the law reports, and you will find 
scarcely a case of malpractice outside the members of these 
societies, while the reports of those inside are innumerable. 
They talk to us as though we had no law now to regulate 
the practice of medicine, when the truth is we have laws 
that cover every imaginable case of wrong doing, in this 
matter, that law can cover. 71 
We have already, for instance, a law that if a man adver- 
tises himself as M. D., when he has not that title, he can 
at once be arrested for obtaining money under false pretences, 
and the penalty is State prison. Again, we have the strict- 
est laws concerning malpractice, making bad or injurious 
medical practice also a State prison offense. Now, I ask in 
all candor, what more do we need? No further legislation 
is possible without abridging the rights of the people by 
taking from them power to choose for one’s self what physi- 
cian he shall have. 
Please notice this is a contest not between “quacks ” on 
the one hand, and educated, honest physicians on the other, 
but, simply, may the people elect the person they wish to 
treat them when sick, or may they not ? 
No testimony whatever has been brought, during this 
protracted hearing, against the practice of those who work 
outside the regular schools. Mark one thing in all the testi- 
mony presented : not a physician among the “ irregulars” has 
appeared ; they have all modestly stayed in the background, 
while their works have praised them. The witnesses are 
persons in every walk of life except the doctors. Every one 
who has testified has stated that he was first given up to die 
by the regular physicians before he employed one of the out- 
side physicians. The regulars have no reason to complain, 
for all these persons gave them the first chance, and in many 
instances were doctored by them until they had no money 
left to pay the outside doctor who finally cured them. Does 
not this crowd of witnesses show plainly that if you will leg- 
islate some way, it certainly should not be against those who 
wrought the cures ? 
The President of the old Massachusetts State Medical 
Society declared to you that cancer could not be cured. 
Thus through the month of their chief, the regular physi- 
cians declare they cannot cure cancer ; yet I have brought 
witness after witness to testify that they have been cured of 
cancer by these irregular physicians, whom this bill would 
cut off from practice. One might say these were another 
kind of tumor, and not cancer ; but we have been careful to 
guard that point by proving, in every case, that the regular 
physicians pronounced it a cancer, and incurable. The Pres- 72 
ident above referred to said it was a blood disease, and hence 
incurable. The cases we have presented here have been well 
ever since the cancers were taken out, and they were taken 
out years ago. They testified that the doctors who cured 
the cancers gave them medicine for the blood at the same 
time. Thus we have proved that these cancer-cures take the 
cancer out without the use of the knife, and that their knowl- 
edge of blood remedies enables them to eliminate all ten- 
dency to cancer from the blood. Can the people afford to be 
deprived of doctors who are known to cure cancers in innu- 
merable cases, and be compelled to content themselves with a 
class of physicians who come in here and testify to you that 
they cannot cure a cancer ? Cancer is a disease more dreaded 
than any other, and yet a very common disease. Think of the 
despair of the poor patient, when he is told by one of the doc- 
tors whom this bill would protect and give the monopoly to, 
“You have a cancer, and I am powerless to help you. You 
must be eaten up slowly by this most loathsome disease, while 
yet alive.” Imagine this bill taking effect as a law, and 
though the dying patient begs of the old cancer-curer for 
help, he dare not, for the prison walls loom up before his 
sight. 
The Voice of Despotism or the Voice of the People. 
Who have favored this bill beside the lawyers, who were 
hired to do so, and a few physicians ? Did the honored 
President of the Boston University? To be sure, he was 
brought before you to advocate that side. Did he do so ? 
No ! He warned you against putting so much power into 
the hands of one class. Not once did he favor this bill by a 
single expression. His arguments were all on the other side, 
telling you of the tyranny concerning this medical matter in 
the despotic states of Europe. Did he ask you to follow the 
example of those old oppressive governments ! No ! Did the 
President of the Young Men’s Christian Union favor this 
bill ? He did not say one word about the bill. 
The advocates of this bill tell you the people need the 
guardianship of the Medical Society, because the people don't 
know what they want. This has ever been the voice of 
despotism. I will not go over the testimony in detail; I 73 
will content myself by mentioning a single case, which you 
recognize to be a fair representative of the testimony which 
has come before you, throughout this entire hearing. 
Mr. Nye of Augusta, Me., sent to this honorable commit- 
tee a letter, asking you not to recommend any legislation in 
favor of any such law as this bill proposes, in which he gives 
a statement of his own cases and others. Permit me to tell 
you who this man is. He is superintendent of an Orthodox 
Sunday school. He has been treasurer of the Maine 
Central Railroad for seventeen years, and for many years 
State Commissioner of Insurance, also Centennial Commis- 
sioner from Maine ; a man of the highest standing. This 
gentleman testifies that he was taken ill while on a visit to 
West Point, some ten years since, with sciatica. The emi- 
nent surgeon of the place attended him, but gave him no re- 
lief ; finally told him he could not hope to be better for one 
year, at least. He then came home and employed the most 
eminent of the Maine doctors, but with no success. Finally, 
a magnetic healer ( a resident of Boston ), cured him with 
one treatment. Mr. Nye also speaks of the case of his wife, 
who had a cancer. The best doctors of Boston, the most 
eminent in the regular faculty, were consulted. Finally they 
decided that within ten days the knife would be her only 
chance of prolonging life. A clairvoyant said, “ Do not use 
the knife.” A magnetic healer was then employed, and the 
wife was cured. This was ten years ago, and the wife has 
been well up to date. These, gentlemen, are not isolated 
cases, but of every day and hour occurrence, in every part of 
the State. 
Gentlemen, although I do not, like my brother Giles here, 
believe spirits of the departed produce these cures, yet we 
all must believe that some great physiological law is here in- 
volved, the discovery of which is of the highest value to man- 
kind ; and I ask you, in the name of God and humanity, not 
to recommend a bill that shall cut off these benefactors from 
practising within this Commonwealth. 
You must have noticed the great crowd that has attended 
this hearing from the first. You also have not failed'to 
notice, by their demonstrations, that they are utterly opposed 
to this bill, and most of them eager to testify what great 74 
good has been done them by the persons whom this bill will 
cut off. A mother became so anxious that, although the 
time was filled, yet she cried out to you from the depths of 
her grief and fear, in the name of God, not to pass this bill, 
for her life and that of her friends had been saved by these 
persons of natural medical genius. 
The People want their Favorite Phvsicians. 
I but voice the prayer of the vast majority of the citizens 
of this Commonwealth when I pray you not to deprive us 
of the help of those persons who have again and again 
proved themselves possessed of the natural and improved 
gifts which make them the physicians ! Will you take away 
the persons who have been our family physicians for years, 
in whom we have the utmost confidence, who have saved us 
and our little ones when all scholastic skill gave us up to 
die, and in their places compel us to take the young man 
just passed from the hand of this board of censors, with no 
other claim upon our confidence than the fact that he has a 
good memory or is the son of a rich father who would have 
him a professional man, because it gives him higher caste 
in society, when, according to the laws of his organization, 
he should have been a coal-heaver, or at best a shoe- 
maker ? 
The subject before us is of the gravest character. It is a 
matter of individual choice in a case of life and death. In 
the simplest words possible, we pray you not to take away 
from us, the common people, the one we choose to stand by 
us in the hour of our sorest need. Do not take away from 
us—who believe that Dr. Morse, of Salem, who was for years 
a professor in the medical department of the Boston Uni- 
versity, spoke the truth when he said that some men were 
born physicians, and such were always successful practi- 
tioners, even if uneducated, while he knew many who, 
though having graduated from the oldest medical college in 
Massachusetts, were never known to help a patient—the 
power to choose these natural physicians, to whose wonder- 
ful cures so many testify. 
The natural physicians will not go to your approved 
medical college ; they have methods of study peculiar to 75 
themselves. Think of the “ Sweet family of natural bone- 
setters ” being compelled to go through a medical college in 
their time, when in after years every medical college was 
obliged to learn of them, or the college go unpatronized. 
They say : “ These men may go to college if they have this 
natural genius.” That is easily enough said, but will they 
tell me when in the history of the world David would wear 
Saul's armor when he went out to fight the giant ? They 
will simply give up practice if you pass this law, and we shall 
be deprived of their most valuable services. I do not plead 
for them. They do not need us: we need them ! The man 
of genius always stands on the dignity of his God-given 
powers, and says to the world what Edmund Burke said 
when he was finally shut out of Parliament : “ Gentlemen, I 
can afford to get along without you, if you can without me.” 
It is the fifth-rate men who go down on their knees, crawl- 
ing in the dust to get place and power, as amply illustrated 
in the little fifth-rate doctors who ask for this monopoly for 
their benefit. Not one of the doctors the old school calls 
“ quacks ” has appeared here asking you not to pass this 
bill They can afford to stand back as they have stood. 
But we, who wish their help, cannot afford to stand back 
and see our rights taken from us, not only the right to liberty 
and the pursuit of happiness, but the right to life ; unless we 
can live in spite of all the poison that the old allopath 
would pour down our throats, and charge us what he pleases 
for. 
The people do not want this bill, therefore I pray you will 
not recommend it ! HERBERT SPENCER 
ON 
MEDICAL FREEDOM. 
The great English Philosopher’s Argument for the 
Liberties of the People against Medical 
Class Legislation. 
(Every thinker and person of cultivated tastes, whether he be statesman, scientist, 
physician, lawyer, or divine, must entertain a profound respect for the splendid 
brain of Herbert Spencer.) 
The following is from Herbert Spencer’s “Social 
Statics,” under head of Sanitary Super- 
vision, Chapter 28. 
This theory, of which Boards of Health and the like are 
embodiments, is not only inconsistent with our definition of 
State duty, but is further open to strictures, similar to, and 
equally fatal with, those made in analogous cases. If by 
saying “that it is the duty of the State to adopt measures for 
protecting the health of its subjects,’’ it is meant (as it is 
meant by the majority of the medical profession) that the 
State should interpose between quacks and those who patron- 
ize them, or between the druggists and the artisan who wants 
a remedy for his cold, — if it is meant that to guard people 
against empirical treatment, the State should forbid all 
unlicensed persons from prescribing — then the reply is, that to 
do so is to directly violate the moral law. Men s rights are 
infringed by these, as much as by all other trade interferences. 
77 78 
The invalid is at liberty to buy medicine and advice from 
whomsoever he pleases; the unlicensed practitioner is at 
liberty to sell these to whomsoever will buy. On no pretext 
whatever can a barrier be set up between them, without the 
law of equal freedom being broken ; and least of all may the 
government, whose office it is to uphold that law, become a 
trangressor of it. 
Moreover, this doctrine, that it is the duty of the State to 
protect the health of its subjects, cannot be established, for 
the same reason that its kindred doctrines cannot, namely, 
the impossibility of saying how far the alleged duty shall be 
carried out. Health depends upon the fulfilment of numerous 
conditions — can be “protected” only by insuring that fulfil- 
ment : if, therefore, it is the duty of the State to protect the 
health of its subjects, it is its duty to see that all the condi- 
tions of health are fulfilled by them. Shall this duty be con- 
sistently discharged ? If so, the legislature must enact a 
national dietary; prescribe so many meals a day for each 
individual; fix the quantities and qualities of food, both for 
men and women ; state the proportion of fluids, when to be 
taken, and of what kind ; specify the amount of exercise, and 
define its character ; describe the clothing to be employed ; 
determine the hours of sleep, allowing for the difference of 
age and sex ; and so on with all other particulars, necessary 
to complete a perfect synopsis, for the daily guidance of the 
nation : and to enforce these regulations it must employ a 
sufficiency of duly qualified officials, empowered to direct 
every one’s domestic arrangements. If, on the other hand, 
a universal supervision of private conduct is not meant, then 
there comes the question, Where, between this and no 
supervision at all, lies the boundary up to which supervision 
is a duty ? To which question no answer can be given. 
There is a manifest analogy between committing to govern- 
ment guardianship the physical health of the people, and com- 
mitting to it their moral health. The tivo proceedings are 
equally reasonable, may be defended by similar arguments, arid 
must stand or fall together. If the welfare of men's souls can 
be fitly dealt with by acts of parliament, why, then, the welfare 
of their bodies can be fitly dealt with likewise. He who 
thinks the State commissioned to administer spiritual 79 
remedies, may consistently think that it should administer 
material ones. The disinfecting society from vice may 
naturally be quoted as a precedent for disinfecting it from 
pestilence. Purifying the haunts of men from noxious vapors 
may be held quite as legitimate as purifying their moral 
atmosphere. The fear that false doctrines may be instilled 
by unauthorized preachers, has its analogue in the fear that 
unauthorized practitioners may give deleterious medicines or 
advice. And the persecutions once committed to prevent 
the one evil, countenance the penalties used to put down the 
other. Contrariwise, the arguments employed by the dissen- 
ter to show that the moral sanity of the people is not a 
matter for State superintendence, are applicable, with a slight 
change of terms, to their physical sanity also. 
Let no one think this analogy imaginary. The two 
notions are nof only theoretically related; we have facts 
proving that they tend to embody themselves in similar 
institutions. There is an evident inclination on the part of 
the medical profession to get itself organized after the fashion 
of the clerisy,—moved as are the projectors of a railway, 
who, whilst secretly hoping for salaries, persuade themselves 
and others that the proposed railway will be beneficial to the 
public — moved as all men are under such circumstances, by 
nine parts of self-interest gilt over with one part of philan- 
thropy. Little do the public at large know how actively pro- 
fessional publications are agitating for State appointed 
overseers of the public health. 
Whoever has watched how institutions grow — how by little 
and little a very innoeent-looking infancy unfolds into a formid- 
able maturity, with vested interests, political influence, and a 
strong instinct of self-preservation, will see that the germs here 
peeping forth are quite capable, under favorable circumstances, 
of developing into such an organization. He will see further, 
that favorable circumstances are not wanting—that the preva- 
lence of unemployed professional men, with whom these proposals 
for sanitary inspectors and public surgeons mostly originate, is 
likely to continue. 
The most specious excuse for not extending to medical 
advice the principles of free trade, is the same as that given 
for not leaving education to be diffused under them; namely, 80 
that the judgment of the consumer is not a sufficient guarantee 
for the goodness of the commodity. The intolerance shown 
by orthodox surgeons and physicians toward unordained 
followers of their calling, is to be understood as arising 
from a desire to defend the public against quackery. Ignorant 
people say they cannot distinguish good treatment from bad, 
or skilful advisers from unskilful ones : hence it is needful 
that the choice be made for them. And then, following in 
the track of priesthoods, for whose persecutions a similar defence 
has always been set up, they agitate for more stringent regula- 
tions against unlicensed practitioners, and descant upon the 
dangers to which men are exposed by an unrestricted system. GOV. LONG'S VETO. 
Commoutucaltl) of 
Executive Department, 
Boston, May 16, 1882. 
To the Honorable Senate: 
I herewith return to the Senate, in which it originated, a 
bill “ To regulate the Practice of Dentistry,” with my objec- 
tions thereto. 
The controlling objection to this bill is, that by force of it 
the whole business of dentistry is made a possible monopoly, 
in the control of a close corporation, with restrictive by- 
laws, consisting of less than a hundred members, most of 
whom are in Boston; while the whole number of dentists in 
the Commonwealth is reported as some seven hundred. 
Under this act no person could hereafter enter into the prac- 
tice of dentistry except by consent of this society, which is 
put under no obligation to examine candidates, but may 
examine whom it pleases, and none else. It may set any 
standard it sees fit. The diploma of any other dental or 
medical society is nothing unless such society is “ recog- 
nized ” as “respectable” by the Massachusetts Dental 
Society. But there is no standard of such respectability or 
means of compelling such recognition. How and when is an 
applicant in Nantucket or Berkshire to get into the profes- 
sion ? Suppose the society fall into the control of those who 
desire no more competition ? Grant, as is true, that the 
purpose of the bill is well meant, and that the Massachusetts 
Dental Society would of course have no other purpose than 
to keep the profession clear of imposters ; nevertheless a 
wrong principle is involved, and the precedent is bad. If 
there must be a certificate of qualification, let it come from a 
81 82 
board required to sit at stated times and in convenient places 
throughout the State, and to pass upon the qualifications of 
all who apply. Such a board, too, should spring from a 
broader basis than a single society, however worthy. This 
would obviate the special objection to the present bill. I am 
persuaded the bill should be more carefully drawn before it 
becomes a law. 
It is not easy to see why there should be special legislation 
concerning dentists only. Why not concerning apothecaries, 
physicians, oculists, aurists, surgeons, cooks, plumbers, and the 
other businesses which involve life and health ? It would 
perhaps be better worth while to consider the expediency of 
a general statute to the effect that any person pursuing a 
business or profession without sufficient skill therein shall 
be punished. Such a statute, in the hands of judge and 
jury, would never work injustice, and yet would be ample for 
those exceptional cases of imposition, on the strength of 
which various special statutes are urged from year to year. 
JOHN D. LONG.