Article March 20, 1915 Issue

It will have to be admitted by all fair-minded people that...

Red Wing (Minn.) Daily Eagle

It will have to be admitted by all fair-minded people that the opposition on the part of Christian Scientists to this bill is based on good grounds, and is consequently fully justified, because with one fell swoop this bill classifies among the quacks, clairvoyants, and charm-workers, whom it aims to suppress, some of the most successful healers of physical and mental ills that the world has ever known.

That quackery should be suppressed is highly desirable, whether the quackery be practised by means of drugs, knives, or prayer; and in so far as the bill aims to accomplish this purpose, it is commendable. But in its failure to draw the line between humbuggery on the one hand and actual ability to heal on the other,—in this the bill is vicious. The bill provides no other discrimination between the one and the other than the possession of a license from the state board of medical examiners. If the board issues a license, the possessor of the same may go ahead and kill or cure, free from molestation. But if some one not possessing this medical examiners license, through special abilities and qualifications should heal a sick person, the punishment for so doing shall be a fine of from one hundred dollars to five hundred dollars or imprisonment from four to twelve months. Could anything be more preposterous?

The result of this bill, if passed, would be to make the medical board of examiners the lords and masters of all the God-given powers of healing known and practised by men. And who or what is this medical board of examiners which should be vested with such absolute control of God's gifts to humanity? A handful of medical men, as human as the rest of us, and as prone to preferences and prejudices as men in general—and sometimes more so.

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In its present form, the Gjerst-Sawyer bill to bar all...
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