The Topeka state journal. [volume] (Topeka, Kansas) 1892-1980, 1895-02-09

Rev. DIR. Ray, for several years pastor
of the First Presbyterian church of this
city, man of commanding ability and
large education, and during his pastor
ate here receiving a much larger salary
than has ever been paid to any other
pastor in the city, believed that he had
received great benefit from massage
treatment. There being no professional
man IN the city who gave this treat
ment, he called to his service a young
! man having no experience in this line
and taught him as best he could the
art. For some time he employed this
young man to give him regularly mas
sage treatment. Now, had this propos-
ed law been upon our statute at that
time, our eminent and honored clergyman
would have employed this young man
IN a line of work for which he would be
considered law breaker and subject to
/ the penalties which some of our Kansas
doctors are here asking may be legally
visited upon such offences.
4. This proposed legislation would
violate the religious rights guaranteed
to every citizen under the constitution
of the Q. s. government. The various
schools of faith curers and Christian sci
ence healers all represent the higher
thought that we are first of all spiritual
beings, that these bodies, while they
are the holy temples of our diviner selves,
are not ourselves, but merely the houses
in which we temporarily live, the ma
chinery through which we act and do
our work, and that when God created
man and breathed into him the breath
OF life and man became living soul, he
r. oil bo ~
his hand and that this dominion includes
to large extent dominion over our own
bodies. There is no question but that
such legislation in the interest of our
doctors would infringe upon the re-
person by the constitution of oEr com.
mon government. With some of these
people, their choice to be treated for dis
eases through their own chosen agen-
cies does not pertain merely to their
bodies, but is part of their religious
belief. There has just been dedicated
in the city of Boston a church that has
been built and paid for by the contribu-
tions of the adherents of this faith at
the immense cost of 100000, this one
church representing a cost in money
nearly equal to the aggregate cost of
all the churches in this city of Topeka.
These religious bodies have tteir
places of worship here in the city of To
peka. To say to these people that they
shall divorce their religion from their
treatment of disease, that they must not
send for their friend and counselor in
whom they have faith as one who has
power to aid them in laying hold of
those high spiritual truths which they
believe control the mysteries of life, is
manifest and outrageous interference
with their religious liberties With such
a law as proposed, upon the statute books
of the state of Kansas, pertinent would
be the words of Lowell:
| ''Truth forever on the scaffold; wrong for
ever on the throne;
Yet that scatfOld sways the future, and be-
hind the dim unknown.
Standeth God within the shadow, keeping
| watch above His own
The present health and longevity Of
our people is not such as to warrant our
surrender of our personal liberty to the
keeping of our professional brethren
and the placing of our lives and health
entirely in their keeping.
With all the aid of their professional
care, one-third of all the children born,
die in infancy. before reaching the age
of fGe years. Scarcely one-half grow to
maturity, and many of these are reared
only to feeble and sickly existence. Is
it reasonable to believe that it is neces-
sary to always continue to live out of
harmony with the rest of Gods crea-
ton? With the lower order of animals
in their native state, sickness and pre-
mature death are practically unknown.
Even with our domesticated animals,
we expect to raise nearly all of the
Young that are born. Certainly man,
the crowning work of Gods creation,
should live in harmony with the crea-
ton around him, should enjoy perfect
health, and all should live to a good old
age. To what extent the present de-
plorable conditions are attributable to
self-inhicted abuses, to what extent they
are due to heredity, and to what extent
they are due to the abuses which we
suffer at the present time at the hands
of our doctors, we can only estimate.
Certain it is, and to this point 1 desire
to ask your special attention, that a
large part of the sicknesses and infirm-
tiles of life come to US through the
sensualitv Of man. Appetite, greed and
lust each contribute large quota. The
doctor of the olden time did, and the NJ.
d. of the present is doing, comparatively
little to lift the people to a higher plane.
The medical profession furnishes its full
average, not only of consumers of strong
drink and tobacco, but of drunkards
and victims of various narcotics. That
their prescriptions of alcohol and other
narcotics in their practice is responsible
for much of the drunkenness of to-day, is
beyond question. While they are doing
something, it is true, they are, compared
with their great opportunity and the
vast responsibility of their profession,
doing but little to lift the people to a
higher plane of life.
A few years ago [ visite d the bedside
of a friend in this city sick with inham-
matorv rheumatism. His room had win