Under the strong title, The Liberties of the People Imperilled, B. O. Flower, in the American Spectator, calls attention to the legal crime of trying to prevent the practice of the healing art according to the methods of Christian Science. He cites the case of Mrs. Post, of McGregor, Iowa, who was fined fifty dollars and costs for the grave offence of praying with a sick woman, with a view to healing her through mental faith.
Thus he argues:
Nothing can be more fatal to a republican government than
legislation in the interest of any class; and every medical law
passed has been framed and pushed through the Legislature by
the doctors for the purpose of securing a monopoly of medical
practice, and depriving the people of the right to employ whom
they please. The same spirit of intolerance which inspires these
laws, inspired the awful persecutions of the Dark Ages. In one
instance the laws protected the regular doctors of divinity, and
persecuted all liberal or Protestant theologians, compelling the
people to go to the law-protected priesthood for soul-sickness,
instead of following the dictates of their consciences. In the
other instance the law protects the regular medical practitioners
who have secured its passage, and seeks to compel all people to
go to them for remedial aid, instead of following the dictates of
common-sense.
