Wood County reporter. [volume] (Grand Rapids [i.e. Wisconsin Rapids], Wis.) 1857-1923, 1889-04-04
Medical Monopoly Not Wanted.
Boston Daily Globe, Feb. It'll. 50

SIN the Legislature of Massachusetts,
a bill is now pending whose object is to
prohibit, under penalty of fine and i'm
prlsonment, the practice Of medicine,
surgery or midwifery by any other than
the regular physicians. The attempt
to pass such bill has been made before
but 1t failed. 1t 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.
"Only yesterday Dr. Holt, in a paper
read before the Massachusetts, Medico-
Legal Society, an organization of 'regu-
lar physicians, complained Of the ig-
norance of his professional brethren as
shown in the notorious Robinson poison
ing case.
This crime" said the doctor, zone of
the greatest in our medical history,
would never have been discovered but
for the suspicious 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
1T would seem to be more in accord
ance with justice and common sense
were they to perfect their own know
ledge before they appeal to law to pro
hibit others from healing.
Not long ago Globe reporter called
upon ten regular physicians on the
same day, and described his symptoms
in exactly the same language to eech.
The ten physicians informed him that
he was suffering from ten different dis
eases and gave him ten different pre-
scriptions, each utterly inconsistent
with the others.
''The implied claim that there is any
certainty in regular medicine as at
present practiced, is absurd. All medi-
cal practice, outside of the simplest COM
plants, is more or less guess-work and
experiments, whether regular or irreg-
ular.
"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,
his right blade" We have but
word to add, which is that the above
is the doctrine Messrs. FL. II. Warner &
have fought for and promulgated for
the past ten years. We know of scores
Of cases, and so does the reader, where
doctors have treated the wrong disease.
They say advanced Kidney Disease can
not be cured, yet thousands of cases
have been cured with Warmers Safe
Cure; yet so bigoted are the medical
profession that the majority of them
will not use it. although thew know thew
could thereby save many valuable lives,
because, forsooth, it is against their
fossilized code. Out upon such bigotry.
Every method to prolong life should be
utilized, and the regular medical pro-
fession should be the first to welcome it
instead of encompassing themselves in
self-conceit and bigotry, doctoring symp-
toms instead Of disease, and sending their
patients to the cemetery, poisoned with
drugs, but on the death certificate that
they died from typhoid fever, meningitis
pneumonia, or some other equally
foreig~ cause.