case of his sick servant, and would not require a poor man to submit to in his own. The physicians had their fee system and their professional pride to thank for their defeat in this as in some other cases. This decision having made it possible for every ignoramus to tinker with the health of John Bull, the same apothecaries who had routed the physicians on the point of fees and acquired a right to prescribe as well as dispense their own drugs after a hundred years' experience of the results of their freedom, during which time general medical education had sunk to a dismal condition and quackery had flowered abundantly, procured from Parliament the amendment to their charter known as the Apothecaries Act, whereby their Hall was empowered to examine and license apothecaries. The enactment of this statute according to Sir Henry Halford, who had opposed its passage, “raised the standard of that branch of the profession amazingly."

In other words, the very men who procured the extension to themselves of the right to prescribe, because of the burdensome regulations of the physician, solicited a restriction of that right when they found that charlatanry and ignorance were rapidly getting control of general practice. In this page of history, we find evidence that a law prescribing, with a view to the general good, educational qualifications for practitioners of physic will obtain favor where statutes partaking of a trades-union spirit, using that word not in its better sense, will fail. I use the word “trades-union " here for lack of a better, and not as one necessarily conveying an objectionable idea. In the sense that a trades-union is a combination of artificers to improve their moral, physical, and mental condition. by all lawful means consistent with a due regard to the rights of the community at large, it is a perfectly proper organization, and much to be commended as an element in the common welfare. In so far as such a combination, however, seeks to carry out a plan. for procuring high wages by violently obstructing others in their rights to earn a livelihood in legitimate ways, it is an intolerable evil in society. What is true of the trades-union of artificers is equally true of organizations of capital similarly designed; but, both in handicrafts and trade,- the ostensible objects of which are avowedly selfish, being the pursuit of wealth or the earning of livelihood,— such combinations as these are more understandable, if not more defensible, than like combinations among men engaged in the quest of scientific truth. The avowed object of incorporating medical societies is stated in their charters, in New York at

least, to be "to contribute to the diffusion of true science and particularly the knowledge of the healing art." When they transgress these limits, and seek to establish burdensome fee systems or to forcibly check what they consider schismatic opinions, the law interferes to restrain them within their proper bounds. The courts have wisely, in most instances, declined to pronounce upon any questions of opinion or to interpret the word "physician" in acts regulating medical practice so as to favor the therapeutical systems of any body of practitioners. It is all one to the law whether the doctrine of similia or the doctrine of contraria prevail, whether the patient be dosed with the highest potency or the most heroic bolus; and this point was settled finally and wisely in the State of New York by the case of Corsi vs. Maretzek (4 E. D. Smith, 1), where the court refused to accept the contention that a homœopathist was not a physician in the legal sense of the term because he followed a system of healing disapproved of by the majority of practitioners of medicine. No statute can be effective that is even suspected of the design to shackle or suppress opinion. Free thought is the breath, the life, of the scientific search for truth, as humility is its badge. When a man or a profession reaches the point where intolerance and self-satisfaction take the place of humility and fair inquiry, paresis of the soul has commenced. the law of our existence that

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new;
And God fulfils himself in many ways,

Lest one good custom should corrupt the world."

It is

I dwell upon this point because the reason that we do not have in New York to-day a State Board of Medical Examiners, such as we find in Illinois and European countries, and such as is requisite to any effective scheme for securing a fair average of education among medical licentiates, is due to the fact that it has proved impossible up to this time to bring into accord as to the organization of such a board regular physicians, homoeopaths, and eclectics. About three-quarters of the entire number of medical practitioners in the State are regular physicians; that is, practitioners calling themselves by the name of no "school" or "sect." They number something like six thousand. The homœopaths and eclectics number about twenty-one hundred. Bills to create one or more central boards of medical examiners have been introduced into the legislature during the last four years at the instance of each of these parties. These bills have agreed substantially in all points

save two first, the examination in therapeutics; and, second, the organization of the board. The physicians have insisted that their numerical ratio of three-fourths entitles them to a representation in the board of at least two-thirds. The two "schools" insist that, if this ratio should be given, their candidates would be plucked. and their "schools" effaced, and that, when this was accomplished, the physicians would at once order new vials of enormous size, larger boluses and nastier drugs than ever before, that even the daughter of the horse-leech would be silent from satiety, and the cup and lancet would once more drench the land with gore.

In other words, we have this condition of things: Three parties exist whose interests are at stake in the proposed legislation. All declare that they favor restricting the practice to men who have studied chemistry, botany, physics, anatomy, physiology, diagnosis, microscopy, etc. The homoeopaths and eclectics hold no sectarian views as to the atomic theory or the law of gravitation, and agree with those whom they dub allopaths as to which has the greater number of ribs a man or a woman. But, when we come to materia medica and therapeutics, we find a "state of things." Col. Jones, having a severe pain in the vicinity of his sword-belt, sends for his army surgeon, a regular physician; the baby has a sensation in its corresponding region, and Mrs. Jones calls in her homœopathic adviser,— for Jones indulges her in matters affecting her own baby; the nurse, experiencing a similar agitation, tries an eclectic; and the old "mammy" in the kitchen, feeling a like distress, sticks a pin in the carefully concealed rag baby she keeps for such occasions. All experience relief; and each, like the pedler who was kicked off four landings of a factory in quick succession, is lost in admiration of the beauty of the system.

Let us admit the truth that, while surgery has become almost an exact science as compared to its sister,- physic,-the latter is yet in the condition that unquestioning faith in the efficacy of medication and a willingness to break a lance for a system of therapeutics is to be found rather at the bottom than at the top of the profession. Therefore, whatever our beliefs or prejudices, we may as well make up our minds that no law will be tolerated that shall endeavor openly or covertly to favor or obstruct any system of medical practice as a system, regardless of the attainments of its professors. Whatever the facts may be, the law considers that the true physician is no blind partisan of any theory. He knows how feeble his best efforts are to combat disease, how few the medica

ments that can be used with certain results. In proportion as he is learned and wise, he pins his faith neither to a doctrine of similia nor of contraria, realizing that differences of opinion arise not from knowledge, but from ignorance.

The stumbling-blocks in the way of every effort to achieve wise medical legislation are: first, the ignorance and greed of the believers in and practisers of quasi-supernatural methods of treating disease; second, jealousies among the more intelligent adherents to "isms "; third, jealousies between the mother church of medicine and those of her children that wish to make of their specialties separate professions; fourth, the obstruction from vested interests that consider themselves threatened,― the incorporated schools that have some capital invested, and regard their power to confer a diploma operating as a license to practise medicine as their chief stock in trade.

The condition of our statute books to-day is this: they contain (1) special acts incorporating medical, pharmaceutical, and dental schools, with here and there a general act for that purpose; (2) acts incorporating medical societies of physicians and of sectarian practitioners of motley nomenclature; (3) general acts regulating the practice of physic and surgery; (4) general acts regulating the practice of dentistry; (5) similar acts regulating the practice of pharmacy; (6) sanitary regulations and laws creating health boards.

This jumble is itself an evil and an efficient cause of the propagation of false ideas. A logical law, which will of itself be an educator, will recognize that the principle on which all these statutes are to be defended is that already indicated,— the right of the State to protect the health as well as the life and the property of the citizen. One health statute will then be enacted, and a responsible board created that will have in charge the arrangements of quarantine and sanitation and also the licensing of medical practitioners of every sort; and here I contend that the dentist and the pharmacist, thoroughly accomplished in their calling, are both medical men, and that, the sooner they are so recognized, the sooner existing jealousies as to them will die out, and the scientific character of the profession and its specialties will be raised. The student of medicine and pharmacy must go hand in hand for a while at the outset of their career. The former goes forward to the battle with disease. The latter remains behind to provide suitable ammunition. They are both fighting in the same cause, and will fight much better if each recognizes his fellowship with

the other. It is equally true that the dentist is a specialist in medicine. To deny to these men professional standing is to repeat the history of the past and to create discord and jealousy among those who are working in a common cause.

Legislation can aid in the education of all these fellow-workers chiefly by vesting the licensing power in a central Board of Medical Examiners, and, to some extent, under the diploma standard (1) by fixing a minimum age under which they will not be allowed to practise their calling; (2) by requiring of each of them a fixed term of study of certainly not less than two graded years, leaving to the board, where created, the care of details; (3) by requiring proof by examination or certificate that each candidate for license had studied before beginning his professional course at least those branches of a general education in which law students are examined in this State before they commence their legal studies; (4) by declaring that no medical school — including in the term schools of dentistry, pharmacy, and midwifery shall be incorporated by special act, and providing a general law for the incorporation of such schools only upon proof made of the possession by the incorporators of sufficient capital — say not less than a hundred thousand dollars and teaching plant to justify the belief that the school will be capable of exercising faithfully its franchises. Such an act should contain stringent provisions for its own enforcement and for the forfeiture of abused charters. How useless the mere enactment may be is shown by the fact that section six of chapter 114 of the New York Sessions Laws of 1853 contains a general provision of this nature. Nevertheless, since its passage, some six or more medical colleges have been incorporated by special act of the legislature; and had it not been for the vetoes of Governors Cleveland and Hill, when their attention was called to this general statute by the medical societies, at least one college would have regained by special act its charter of which the courts had deprived it. No greater service can be rendered to the cause of medical education by the State than the exercise of care in creating medical schools, and holding them to strict responsibility when created. The latter will never be done, I fear, except when the laws are invoked by medical societies. (5) A minimum course of medical study should be prescribed, in which a grade of at least seventy per cent. should be attained on. examination. The regulation of all details of examination should be most wisely left to the board of examiners. But the topics in