Article February 5, 1910 Issue

Does the state of Missouri intend, through its laws,...

S. Glenn Brown

Kansas City (Mo.) Spirit

Does the state of Missouri intend, through its laws, to create a monopoly of the medical profession, and grant to the members of that profession the sole and exclusive right to cure the sick? Or has the individual the right to choose which method he will employ in relieving his suffering? From time immemorial men have differed in their opinion as to which of the many ways was best. There are failures in all, and successes in all. The object of each patient is to be rid of his particular ailment. The object of the practitioner is to cure him. Are we, the patients, to be deprived of our right to health and happiness merely because one set of men have an idea that their method of curing is the only one?

The administering of medicine is the most uncertain and dangerous of professions. Any one pretending to know the use of poisons, and holding himself out to the public as one competent to administer them, should certainly be examined most thoroughly as to his qualifications. But why should one who does not profess to be a medical doctor be required to qualify as such? It would be a foolish law which required a carpenter to pass a plumber's examination; still they both have the same object in view—both are building a complete house, each one doing his part. A law requiring a non-medical doctor to learn medicine is just as absurd, and to debar them from the practice of their profession on that account is creating a monopoly of medical doctors—a monopoly not only detrimental to the public interests, but actually inhuman in its operation.

It may be that the medical treatment is the best method of healing. The writer is not defending or advocating other methods. Neither is he censuring the M.D.'s as such. He is merely asserting that the lawmaking body has no authority to forbid one man to practise a profession or calling for the benefit or profit of another. The law cannot prescribe what method must be employed in the treatment of disease. This is a question that must be decided by the individual, and by him alone. If he can secure relief from some means other than medical, it would be depriving him of his right to think and act for his own good, to say that under the law he could not use those means.

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February 5, 1910
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