Article April 24, 1909 Issue

I have a very high regard and appreciation of the members...

[Extract from speech before the Pennsylvania Legislature.]

[We are glad to present herewith some excerpts from a speech by General Hulings on a medical bill which was under discussion by the upper house of the Pennsylvania Legislature. The speech throughout was deeply interesting, and characterized by a spirit of liberality and progressiveness as well as freedom from mere personal bias.—Editor.]

I have a very high regard and appreciation of the members of the medical profession as I know them, and yet I sometimes think they are more prone to professional jealousies than are the members of almost any of the other professions. Twenty-eight years ago, as a member of the House, I found the regular physicians fighting tooth and nail to prevent the recognition of the homeopaths. Today I find the regulars cheek by jowl with their formerly detested enemies the homeopaths, making common cause to keep the other fellows out. Now, it would be all very well to prohibit all persons from practising medicine unless they happen to be of a certain school, if the public were sure that this school knew all there is to be known of the healing art, but there are hundreds of thousands of good sensible people in this state who do not think that any of the so-called schools know all there is to be known.

When John Drawbaugh invented the telephone down here in Lancaster county, his neighbors thought him crazy. He spent much of his time in an upper room of his house, talking into a box, and the wise ones thought him insane; but he was simply putting into operation laws of which his neighbors knew nothing. The wizard of Menlo Park called into operation new laws, and we have the telephone, the phonograph. Marconi, in the discovery of that strange and mysterious power to send messages thousands of miles without even a telegraph wire, created nothing new. He simply called into operation laws which had always existed, but which, until his day, were unknown. These people of whom I speak claim that there are still great things to be known. They claim that there are forces which, properly invoked and set in operation, will add enormously to the power of the healer and his command over disease. So far as I am personally concerned, I have given my faith and adherence to the splendid men of the regular medical profession whom I have from time to time called into my family in case of illness. But I do not shut my eyes to the fact that there are hundreds of thousands of people in this country—in this state—who say that the world is moving: who believe that there have been wonderful discoveries in this regard made in the healing art, and I am not prepared by my vote to say that through legislation of this sort they shall not be at liberty to call to the ministration of their diseases men who practise the arts in which they believe. I am not prepared with my vote to say that they in case of illness shall be obliged to call in as physicians men who practise in a school of medicine in which they do not believe.

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