Article May 20, 1911 Issue

Notwithstanding the comprehensive legislation of the...

St. Louis (Mo.) Post-Dispatch

Notwithstanding the comprehensive legislation of the past few years for the regulating of the practice of medicine and surgery in this state, every session of the General Assembly brings a new crop of bills. The principal object of these measures seems to be not so much the regulating of the practice of medicine and surgery as the limiting of the practice of healing to particular schools of medicine.

The qualifications for the practice of medicine and surgery should be high, and the regulations with regard to it strick, for the protection of the public from quackery and incompetence in the use of drugs and the knife. The incompetent doctor and surgeon and the medical fraud are menaces to the public. On the other hand, the greatest freedom should be permitted the people in the choice of methods of healing and of treatment of disease. This is a fundamental of personal liberty and is essential to progress. There is no menace to the public in the practice of healing methods without the use of drugs or surgical instruments, so long as there is no resort to fraud or deception and no violation of sanitary regulations. To forbid methods of this kind is tyranny and an invasion of personal rights. It would cut off valuable discoveries and advances in curative methods.

Medical science and art must stand upon their merits. Their exponents are never justified in resorting to compulsion nor should the power of the state be abused to enforce the practice of any school or group of schools. Medical compulsion is as intolerable as religious compulsion.

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