Omaha daily bee., 1902-11-18

Knife Applied to the Cuticle
of western Doctors.

OF western DOctOrS.
New York Times.
The Missouri Valley homeopathic as
ISOLATION, having been goaded into the
adoption of a resolution declaring kissing
unsanitary, ought now to stand on one
side until report Of the popular opinion
of the proceedings begins to come in, when
1t will no doubt reach the conclusion that
1t may judiciously go out of business. The
decision was not only absurd, but flies in
the face Of the most ancient appreciation
and of a practice familiar, kindly, senti-
mental and impetuous which, so far as we
know, has never intermitted since the his
tory of the race began. Part the moss
incrusting and curtaining the oldest litera-
lures and the kiss swlms and sparkles
beneath like a drop of dew. 1t is in the
Bible and the Had and the Indian Vedss;
its symbol appears among the Egyptian
~heiroglyphs. There is no period or known
tribe of men and women to which 1t was
alien. It's antiquity and sustained recog-
milton as a ritual almost acramen in
its character should stand as one buttress
of its defense, and another ought to be
found in it's extreme and invariable popu-
larity. In its application both parties to
1t are always satisfied, or, il not, the fact
is rarely brought into the court of public
opinion for review and cuts no figure In
its copious and romantic records. 1t ought
to be proof against the census of any med
ical or neurological fanatic no matter how
many or how imposing the alphabetical
symbols attached to his name. But one
has been found to lift up his voice against
1t as an unsanitary exercise and to urge
its immediate and general abolition. This
was a certain far western and 1agrantly
homeopathic practitioner named DR.. z. @.
Linn, who has recently so far imposed his
ideas on the association in session at Lin
coin, Neb., that it has embodied them in
a resolution and thus given them the sane
tion of the entire body. They therefore
take on a higher but not much higher i'm
p%ortance than IL they were merely the
notions Of a private and individual fanatic
and invite a passing word of mention.
What the learned physician, Sir Thomas
Browne, called "the scandal of his pro-
~fession" may have been in his time as
in this the large number of its members
devoted to the discovery of mares nests,
the implacable diligence Of their quests,
or the absurd noise with which then, as
now, they cackled over the eggs found
In those illusory receptacles. They have
always been numerous since the art of
healing became the possession OF a guild,
were no doubt abundant in the time of
the pious and eloquent physician Of Nor
wich, as they have been in all periods
since Hippocrates poised the pioneer
pestle Of the profession, but il is not on
record that any one of them was such a
lunatic as to propose the abolition of
kissing and hold IL up as a practice
preiudicial to health and well-being. There
is much now known to the Doctors art
of which they were ignorant, but they at
least knew enough to let kissing alone as
a social and sentimental practice, and in
so far were more enlightened than some
of their successors. Amy one of their num-
Der who had tried to win the sanction OF
the profession to such a theory would
very likely have been turned out OF 1t as
one who saw things out OF their proportion
and relation, and was either mad as a
halter or a March hare, or else a fool out
and out, whose resulting pulp when brayed
in his own mortar would have been as void
of wisdom as pemmican. They had many
decisions and fantasies OF their guild to
combat. and in this were In like case with
those who cam before and after, but as
yet the kissophobe had not risen among
them and there was no surmise or dread
OF such an unheard-of apparition. The
specter is Of entirely modern origin, and
as IL does not so far tend to multiply
itself aboundingly there may be a rea-