Article March 16, 1907 Issue

This newspaper has no quarrel with the doctors

Spartansburg (S. C.) Journal

This newspaper has no quarrel with the doctors. They do a great deal of good. They give their time to much study and work to prepare themselves for the safe adminstration of drugs. They should, of course, be skilled in the use of drugs and medicines. Those who are surgeons should have knowledge of the construction and action of the human body, that they may use the knife and scalpel with safety. The world is not yet ready to get along without doctors. Therefore the laws should and do provide for the regulation of the practice of medicine, which is an important profession.

Let the doctors keep on doing all the good they can. But they should not forget that others also are doing good. There are many schools and systems of healing, all of which do some good and many of which do much good. These should not be interfered with. The doctors should not entirely monopolize the business of healing. People should be free to have any sort of treatment they may prefer, provided it is not dangerous or plainly fraudulent. ...

Our friends the doctors are the most numerous and influential perhaps in the healing profession, but we respectfully submit that they are not the whole thing. There are others. These should be let alone. The laws already amply provide for keeping out fakirs and charlatans, and properly so. But section 2 of the medical bill now in the Legislature would simply abolish every from of treatment, with or without medicine, and put the entire business of healing disease under the control of the State Medical Association, composed entirely of allopathic physicians. This we have stated, and still state, is not desired by many physicians, who already have all they can do and are not envious of practitioners of other schools of healing. Some of them have told us so. Section 2 of the medical bill has its foundation in selfishness. It is not for the benefit of the people, for whom the Legislature is acting. It is not even for the real benefit of those doctors who think they desire it, because nothing can be good which is not right.

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