Article February 24, 1940 Issue

Extracts from Reports of Christian Science Committees on Publication

For the year 1938-1939 the outstanding event to record is the enactment into law of House Bill No. 148 by the fortysixth Legislature, which provides satisfactory exemption for Christian Science practitioners from the provisions of the Texas Medical Practice Act adopted in 1907. House Bill No. 148 was introduced at the request of the Texas Medical Association and embodied within it the agreement worked out last year by the Texas Medical Association and this office, representing The Mother Church and the branch organizations in the state. This bill was unanimously passed in the Senate, and there was but vote recorded against it in the House, and that vote was not in protest of our section of the bill. It was then signed on March 14 by Governor W. Lee O'Daniel.

Thus was brought to a satisfactory close our persevering efforts of thirty-two years to have the Medical Practice Act recognized as being a purely medical practice act and not a religious practice act, and, therefore, as one which has no jurisdiction over the exercise of "the principles, tenets, or teachings" of the Christian Science church.

The wording of the section of House Bill No. 148 which applies to us is as follows: "Nothing in this Chapter shall be so construed as to discriminate against any particular school or system of medical practice, nor to affect or limit in any way the application or use of the principles, tenets, or teachings of any church in the ministration to the sick or suffering by prayer, without the use of any drug or material remedy, provided sanitary and quarantine laws and regulations are complied with; and provided, further, that all those so ministering or offering to minister to the sick or suffering by prayer shall refrain from maintaining offices, except for the purpose of exercising the principles, tenets, or teachings of the church of which they are bona fide members."

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