In the Legislature of Massachusetts a bill is now pending whose object is to prohibit, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, the practice of "medicine, surgery, or midwifery" by any other than the "regular" physicians. The attempt to pass such a bill has been made before, but it failed. It is a measure which ought not to pass, because it invades the personal liberty of the citizen; not the personal liberty of the "irregular" physician only, but of the patient. It practically denies to citizens of Massachusetts the right freely to select their own medical advisers and prescribes a list of "regular" physicians, from among whom, and no others, choice must be made. We do not think the people of this State desire to have their free right of choice shackled in this way in a matter which affects them so personally and vitally. It strikes us that the demand of certain physicians for a close monopoly of the business of healing the diseases of the people of this State contemplates both an outrage on personal liberty and a piece of impudence.
We take, as an axiom, that a man has a right to choose his own medical adviser, for his own reasons. Very many highly intelligent persons utterly distrust the wisdom of the so-called "regulars" regarding it as dogmatic, unelastic, narrow, bookish, and out of date. We do not say they are right, but we do say that they have a right to their opinion, and a right to act upon it when they are ill. The assumptions sought to be conveyed by the doctors who advocate this bill are that they alone possess wisdom, and that all outside of their schools are ignorant impostors. Neither assumption is true. Any fair-minded physician of the "regular" schools must confess that their knowledge and art fall far short of the ideal; and, if they do not confess it, their numerous failures to cure diseases which are known to be curable will prove it.
Only yesterday, Dr. Holt, in a paper read before the Massachusetts Medico-Legal Society, an organization of "regular" physicians, complained of the ignorance of his professional brethren as shown in the notorious Robinson poisoning cases. "This crime," said the doctor, "one of the greatest in our medical history, would never have been discovered but for the suspicions aroused outside the profession." And he called attention to the fact that in five of the poisoning cases the regular physician certified the cause of death to be pneumonia, typhoid fever, meningitis, bowel disease, and Bright's disease respectively. This shows how far the "regular" physicians are from being infallible. It would seem to be more in accordance with justice and common sense were they to perfect their own knowledge before they appeal to law to prohibit others from healing. Not long ago a Globe reporter called upon ten "regular" physicians on the same day, and described his symptoms in exactly the same language to each. The ten physicans informed him that he was suffering from ten different diseases and gave him ten different prescriptions, each utterly inconsistent with the others. The implied claim that there is any certainty in "regular" medicine as at present practised, is absurd. All medical practice, outside of the simplest complaints, is more or less guess-work and experiment, whether regular or irregular. When Garfield was shot, five of the most famous regular physicians in the country spent three months probing for the bullet in the region of his left hip, and after his death it was found under his right shoulder blade.—The Boston Daily Globe.
