The people of Pennsylvania may be expected to observe with no little interest the fate of the bill, introduced to the Legislature the other day, for the rigid limitation of their opportunities to enjoy the consolations and the renewing influences of medical practitioners. This remarkable measure, which is urged by a Representative from Cumberland county, proposes to give a complete monopoly of the business of "doctoring" to physicians of three schools, the allopathic, so called, the homeopathic, and the eclectic. All others are forbidden to engage in "the healing art" under penalty of punishment for misdemeanor.

It will be observed, of course, that under this arrangement the door is shut upon osteopathists and Christian Scientists, and even upon the persons who pledge themselves to the restoration of health through the medium of what are called patent medicines. These persons are thrust back into the ranks of quacks and impostors, and have imposed upon them the ignominy and discredit usually accorded to men who pow-wow and conjure, who claim natural gifts as healers because they are seventh sons of seventh sons, or have learned from Indians the medicinal virtues of certain mysterious herbs. It is an unkind fate.

One interesting fact is developed by the introduction of this bill. It is that the allopaths, homeopaths, and eclectics are apparently standing together in their purpose to assert an exclusive right to the fees. It was not always so. There was a time when the intolerant allopath claimed everything in sight. His arrogant notion was that his method of dealing with disease was the only enlightened and respectable method, and that all other practice than his own was arrant humbug. Particularly did the allopath look with derision, if not with malignant animosity, upon the homeopath; and both contemplated the eclectric with scorn as a man who was surely half wrong either way. When, however, the homeopath had contrived to get firmly upon his feet, so that he could be neither laughed down nor outlawed, when the eclectic had forced recognition for himself upon the ground that he used the truths of both schools and rejected the errors, then all hands began to fight the woman doctor. It has not been fifty years since a woman who wanted to study medicine had to encounter the certainty that society would regard her as a crank, and the assurance that no reputable male physician would take counsel with her. This seems really amusing in the light of the circumstance that women ought manifestly to have a better right than men to deal with women's maladies, and of the experience which has proved that a woman may reach the highest places in the profession.

However, the time has come when allopaths and homeopaths and eclectics, having failed to annihilate one another, are ready to bury the hatchet and to join hands against all newcomers. If we understand the matter, there are still formidable rules which forbid the allopath to hearken while the homeopath explains his notions about a particular case. The ancient Jew was not less resolute to avoid eating meat with a Gentile than is the allopath to escape meeting with, and appearing to give countenance to, a homeopath. Whether the woman doctor is still shut out from the high privilege of talking with a man who probably does not know as much as she does, we have not learned. Perhaps the woman doctor is really in a happier case if she is still compelled to go it alone. The patient's chances may be better, at any rate. To the impartial layman, whose life is necessarily sometimes placed in jeopardy by these warring disciples of the various schools, it seems really curious how intense is the belief of each doctor that his school has all the serviceable knowledge, while facts developed every day prove conclusively that the range of his information is narrowly limited. There must be terrible secrets locked in the breasts of doctors who pass for repositories of encyclopedic wisdom.

Many persons, to their sorrow, have learned that the commonest practice in the profession is to guess, and the frequent result is to guess wrong. The smallest inquiry would develop information of cases where the homeopath has corrected the mistakes of the allopath, and vice versa, and where the eclectic or osteopath has guessed correctly when both homeopath and allopath have gone wide of the facts. These are grounds for humility, not for arrogance. The physician who remembers how often he has diagnosed one disease and dosed for it, only to have a doctor of another school discover that he missed the truth and gave the wrong poison, might be expected at least to exercise a little charity in regarding his rival in the business. There are no available statistics, but no doubt the practitioners of each school can fairly prove that, man for man, the doctors of his faith hit the facts and make cures about as often as the doctors of other faiths. However, exclusive proofs in this business are not easy to get. Many of them, probably, are under ground.

This act now urged upon the Legislature undertakes to determine for a free American citizen in what particular manner his maladies may be treated. It might be a somewhat nice question, perhaps, just in what degree such a man is entitled to have control of such a matter. On the surface it looks as if an intelligent human being, living in a land of liberty, has an indisputable right to declare if his own interior department shall be drenched by a draught or assailed by a squeezing or by prayer. Suppose there should be a majority in a Legislature composed of perfectly untrained and uninformed persons who should make up their minds that homeopathy is pure quackery, and that nobody should be suffered to practise it; how many of us would patiently endure that, or, on the other hand, the outlawry of allopathy?

But, if these law-framing persons may reach such conclusions about osteopathy or the Christian Science practices, why may they not some day reach them about the allopathic, homeopathic, and eclectic practices? Everybody knows that they have no original equipment for dealing with such subjects at all. This bill must have been prepared for the Representative who introduced it, and of course, by practitioners of one of the three favored schools of medicine. We hear no little clamor against trusts and combines, but here, indeed, is a proposition to legalize a combine, not to run railroads, or to manufacture pig iron, or to refine sugar, but to deal with the lives of men and women.

For all we know, osteopathy may be a humbug, and Christian Science a delusion and a snare; but there are multitudes of men of quite the intelligence of the ordinary legislator who believe in osteopathy, and millions to whom Christian Science has the flavor of religion. The legislator stretches his authority very far who understakes to say that one man shall not be allowed to rub and squeeze and manipulate another man for the cure, say, of rheumatism, without peril of a prison cell. The legislator appears to us to trespass in a measure upon sacred rights who tries to make it unlawful for a patient, weary of conjecture and nauseous drugs, to summon a good man or woman to try what prayer will do.

It is to be admitted that to force one system or another upon a helpless and protesting invalid, or even upon an ignorant child, is an act which the law may properly forbid. We may go farther and admit that there are some maladies which osteopathy certainly cannot cure, and Christian Science certainly does not. But let us remember that both those accusations may with equal assurance be brought against allopaths, homeopaths, and eclectics. Under the circumstances, and in view of all the facts, there would seem to be sound reason why the bill alluded to should not pass. At any rate, it should not be permitted to pass until some of the people at whom it is aimed and whom it proposes to suppress shall have had a chance to make themselves heard.