Article March 22, 1913 Issue

President-elect Wilson, in the course of an address to a...

Chicago (III.) Inter Ocean

President-elect Wilson, in the course of an address to a gathering of social workers at the private house in Hoboken where he was a week-end guest, is reported to have said of the proposal for national supervision of matters of health and sanitation: "Most of the things you have spoken of are without political embarrassment. One that does have political embarrassment is the health department project. There is a fear in many minds that we are about to set up what has been called a 'medical trust.' It is very desirable to remove that idea." It is very desirable. There is nothing, except his religious convictions, with which the average citizen so deeply resents governmental interference as in matters affecting his health and the health of his family. Any sort of dictation about what measures he shall take to preserve or restore health the average man regards as an unbearable outrage. Although Mr. Wilson went on to say that he had "never seen any serious proposal to put any particular school of medicine in charge of the national health," precisely such an intention was widely imputed to the measure most earnestly urged in the last Congress. Whether justified or not, these imputations were confirmed in the minds of thousands by the apparent unanimity with which medical societies of a particular school urged the passage of the Owen bill. It is probably true that desirable measures of sanitation and disease prevention could be more effectively administered under national authority; but so long as doctors disagree so widely and violently among themselves, it is impossible to expect the laity to accept any method of treatment of disease as right, to the exclusion of all other methods. Anything that even looked like a "medical trust" would be widely and deeply resented by all sorts and contitions of citizens. The political party that makes itself responsible for any legislation which can be so construed will have only its own folly to blame for its subsequent troubles,—and it will have plenty of troubles.

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