Article May 1, 1915 Issue

Senator Works of California is in the habit of indicting...

Portland (Ore.) Telegram

Senator Works of California is in the habit of indicting the entire tribe of medical gentlemen who train in the old, hard-shell school. The senator is a Christian Scientist, and in view of that fact we would not expect to find him aiding the old-style medico in his political aspirations. But Senator Works hits hard now and then; and one of his body blows was delivered recently in the showing before the Senate that the federal public health service is given over entirely to one school of medicine.

A portion of the senator's indictment is worthy of quotation: "The allopathic, or old school of medicine, called by themselves the 'regular' school, is made the standard mode of healing, and is supreme. No different method is recognized or even considered. No citizen in time of existing or threatened contagion or epidemic of disease is allowed to exercise his individual belief or conscience as to the manner or mode of preserving or restoring his health. He must submit to the rules and regulations of the health department, eat and drink what it dictates, swallow the vile drugs it prescribes, and live where it as it commands. The service maintains a press bureau and sends broadcast over the country, at public expense, literature, mostly doctors' opinions, about microbes and causes of disease and how to circumvent them, that breeds fear which in turn produces and fosters disease, and cures or saves none who is unwise enough to read it."

The senator expresses just what the average man would say when he stops to think seriously of this official health business. It amounts to a curious class monopoly and tyranny, fostered in a most peculiar way. It touches important matters of conduct and vital beliefs in the every-day life of the people; but there is submission to its arbitrary decrees, as there would not be if mandates of similar import were to be issued by any other department of the government. But after Senator Works has finished with his indictment, after we have carefully considered it, approved it, and said that every word of it is true, as we are apt to do, what then? What is to do, done about it? How break through the exclusiveness of this one school of medicine that has taken charge of the government and through the government has established its supremacy over the people,—will Senator Works tell us that?

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