Article January 20, 1912 Issue

Dr. Abraham Jacobi, speaking to the professional staff...

New York (N. Y.) World

Dr. Abraham Jacobi, speaking to the professional staff of the Post-Graduate Medical School and Hospital, criticized President Taft for permitting Christian Scientists to treat patients in the Canal Zone. "He opens the box of Pandora called Christian Science," said Dr. Jacobi, "and allows equal standing and facilities and justification to you and to the quacks alike."

Why should doctors expect the government to protect them from competition and vest a monopoly of the healing art in practitioners of the "regular" school? No such governmental protection is extended to ministers who preach only the orthodox doctrine, or to lawyers. No monopoly is permitted of the manufacture of medical preparations, and nothing prevents a man who is ill from applying at the nearest drug-store for his favorite nostrum and treating himself. Or he may refuse medical relief of any kind, where his illness does not endanger others.

If medical practice according to the teachings of any one school were a hieratic art, if it were even an exact science, the objections of the doctors to the practice of Christian Science or any other healing method on government territory might have some basis of justice. But it is not, and President Taft in permitting any kind of therapeutics in the Canal Zone only applies the principle of constitutional freedom of opinion.

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