Article August 5, 1922 Issue

In a recent issue of your journal (p. 261) you quote with...

Samuel J. Macdonald, Committee on Publication for the State of New Jersey,

New Jersey Law Journal

In a recent issue of your journal (p. 261) you quote with approval a portion of an article which appeared in Law Notes for May, 1921, entitled "Faith Cures and the Law." Kindly allow me space for a brief comment thereon.

It is a comfortable and convenient mode of conducting a discussion, and no doubt also economical of time and space, to assume all one's premises; but it scarcely rises to the dignity of legal argument. It is not yet generally admitted in the legal profession, I trust, that petitio principii has a prominent and authoritative place in legal discussions. In the first place, I cannot and do not admit the assumption that "the majority, the overwhelming majority, of people in the United States now believe that medicine aids in the cure of disease, and that medical precautions do much to check the spread of contagion." Even the medical profession themselves no longer believe this. Let me cite only two out of many recent authoritative medical statements on this point.

About three years ago, in the city of Newark, New Jersey, a banquet was given by the Medical Society in honor of an M. D. who had been in practice in that city for more than fifty years. The honored guest in his speech naturally contrasted the practice of medicine when he began and at present. He said that when he began physicians were using almost all the medicines in the pharmacopœia, while now they are using less than one per cent. His speech was subsequently printed in extenso in The Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey; so it evidently met with the approval of his professional associates.

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