Editorial March 28, 1903 Issue

"Unalienable Rights."

WE are devoting considerable space in this issue of the Sentinel to the defeat in the North Carolina Legislature of a bill, ostensibly for the regulation of the practice of medicine, but in fact for the prevention of the practice of Christian Science. It is to the credit of the legislature that the arguments which prevailed were based upon purely constitutional grounds and in accordance with the Declaration of Independence which says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident,—that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

The question primarily involved in the justice of such legislation, must be whether medicine is recognized by all intelligent people to be a necessity, or whether they differ on this question. Under our law, a man has a right to use his faculties in matters where mankind have not reached definite and fixed conclusions, and where intelligent people are not agreed. With this test applied, prohibitive legislation of this character must fail.

The courts have taken cognizance of the fact that the practice of medicine is not an exact science. In the case of Corsi v. Maretzek (4 E. D. Smith, [N. Y.] I.), the court used the following language: "That the practice of medicine has been characterized in a greater degree by fluctuations of opinions as to its principles and modes of practice, than, perhaps, any other pursuit. That it has been distinguished by the constant promulgation and explosion of theories, that it has been alternating between the advancement of new doctrines and the revival of old ones, and that its professors in every age have been noted for the tenacity with which they have clung to opinions and the unanimity with which they have resisted the introduction of valuable discoveries. They still continue to disagree in respect to the treatment of diseases as old as the human race; and at the present day, when great advances have been made in all departments of knowledge, a radical and fundamental difference divides the allopathists from the believers in Hahnemann, to say nothing of those who believe in the sovereign instrumentality of water."

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