Article January 19, 1899 Issue

A Terrible, because Truthful, Indictment

BY ALEXANDER M. ROSS, M.D., F.R.S.L., ENG.

Member of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Quebec and Ontario, Professor of Hygiene and Sanitation at St. Louis Hygienic College of Physicians and Surgeons, Vice-President of the Association of Hygienists of America, Member of the Ninth Session of the International Medical Congress, Member of the British, French, and American Association for the Advancement of Science, etc., etc.

I arraign the leaders of the profession of the following grave charges—the rank and file are but sheep led astray:—
1. I charge that, whereas, the first duty of a physician is to instruct the people in the laws of health, and thus prevent disease, the tendency has ever been toward a conspiracy of mystery, humbug, and silence.
2. I charge that the general tendency of the profession is to depreciate the importance of personal and municipal cleanliness, and to inculcate a reliance on drug medicines, vaccination, and other unscientific expedients.
3. I charge that they have encouraged superstition and humbug by the germ theory of disease. I do not question the existence of infinitesimal micro-organisms; but they are the result, not the cause, of disease. They are scavengers, their legitimate work is to clean out the sewers of our bodies. Whenever there is decay, pus, or decomposing matter, there these little life-savers are doing their work of neutralization, sanitation, and purification, they feast upon effete and decaying animal matter—they are beneficial helpers to an important end.
4. I charge that the prevalent custom of advising a speculum examination for every trifling backache, earache, headache, ingrowing toe-nail, or a bunion, is an unnecessary outrage on the modesty of a woman, and disgrace to the profession.
5. I charge that the present abominable and dangerous custom of spaying women for the most trivial uterine derangements is nothing less than criminal, and in contravention of scientific practice.
6. I charge that the prevalent custom of ascribing all ills (imaginary or real) that afflict women, to uterine troubles, weakness, ulceration, or displacement, is false in theory and fact, and is nothing but a cloak to cover ignorance, immorality, or eupidity.
7. I charge that they prescribe to their patients—even child-bearing and nursing women—the use of beer, ale, and other alcoholic beverages, which not only encourages drunkenness, but poisons the life-blood of unborn children, and stamps a permanent appetite for liquor on the rising generation.
8. I charge that they have bitterly opposed every real and scientific reform in the healing art; they have filled the world with incurable invalids, and given respectability to quackery by the outrageous quackery of the profession itself; disgusting all sensible and thoughtful men by their fallacies, tyrannical delusions, fetichism, and humbug.
9. I charge that they have, under the treacherous guise of protecting the people from quackery, secured the enactment of most unjust monopolistic laws, which deprive the people of one of their dearest and most important rights—the right in the hour of sickness and in the presence of death to choose their own medicine.
10. I charge that they have by doctor-craft hoodwinked the legislature into enacting compulsory vaccination laws, which compel parents to submit the bodies of their children to the beastly, useless, and dangerous rite of vaccination, and to deprive unvaccinated children of the right of education in our public schools and colleges. I hold that every individual should be protected and sustained in his medical opinions, as he is in his religious or political opinions, and any man or set of men who would withhold from his brother man this right would light the fires of the Inquistion if he dared.

The Washington News Letter.

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A Terrible, because Truthful, Indictment

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