Article May 20, 1911 Issue

It is the tendency of men, however sincere, to exalt the...

Memphis (Tenn.) News Scimitar

It is the tendency of men, however sincere, to exalt the importance of their own calling and to be unconsciously influenced by the pursuits and activities and studies and tastes of their own lives. Some of our medical friends are not exempt from this limitation when it comes to passing on the interests and lives of others. Some one introduced in the present session of the Tennessee Legislature a bill to extend the authority of the board of health over the school children, and we think extend it too far. The material sciences are too far experimental for the world to admit too great dependence upon any one of these sciences. If we are correct, some years ago vaccination was accepted universally by the medicla profession. Now there is a growing dissent from its efficay among the members of the established schools of the profession. the is only one instance of many. The established schools have filled history with their insistence on errors they afterward forsook.

Give us not too many laws and give us more room for play of our own ability to take care of ourselves. Without room to exercise our free will and native qualities, they atrophy. We are taught to be afraid of too many things, and daily the press is heralding some new discovery by the physical scientists for us to fear. This doctrine of fear is apt to be complemented with an insistence on our feeling an absolute reliance on some body of men for our preservation and life. The world has spent blood and treasure to emancipate itself from crafts of various kinds. Let us not fall into bondage to doctorcraft. There are too many great and good and useful physicians and surgeons for them to allow their profession to be discredited by the overzeal and overconfidence of a little learning on the part of some of them. Nothing is so hurtful to a good cause as to make it contemptible or ridiculous by asking, demanding, or claiming too much.

Don't make us afraid or fearful by law; too much dependent on other men. We are amply tending that way naturally.

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