Rocky Ford enterprise., 1913-05-16
The PEOPLES FORUM /
A REPLY
To DR.. Barbonr's Recent Article on
the Owen Bill

In a recent controversy over school
election in your city, with which this
article has nothing to do. writer took
occasion to defend his opposition to a
certain candidate on the ground that this
candidate was an opponent of the Owen
bill for the establishing Of department
of health. As some Misrepresentation
seems to exist in the public mind as to
the motive and scope ofthis measure we
would appreciate space in your columns
for few lines in regard to it.
Perhaps it would be we'll to begin by
stating that we already have very
powerful and well organized National
Health department as comprised in the
Marine Hospital. At the annual meeting
of the National Conference of State
Boards of Health for the year 1896. held
in Chicago, DR.. Jerome Cochran. chair
man Of a committee of investigation Of
the American Medical Association which
had gone tcWashington tc and made a
study of our national health activities.
said II found that we have already
Department of Public Health in the
Government, and one which was very
powerful department, namely the Marine.
Hospital Service. 1t is not only Public
Health Department, but has public health
functions which are very great. Indeed.
have no hesitancy in saying that it is
the most powerful department of public
health in the world. There is nothing
like it anywhere else; nothing with SO
much power and such abundant means.,
Much more testimony from offici al
sources to the same effect could be given.
The threadbare statement that the
resources of the government are at our
command for the benefit Of sick hogs
while no help is offered for sick children
has been so often disproved that we will
let it pass; but even il it were true that
the government takes an interest in the
health of pigs. why is it? Because OF love
for the pigP No! But beoasue of-love for
the child who may eat Of the pig. What
lis that but activity in the interest Of public
healthp It is also true that the agricult-
ural department sends out many bulletins
in tie sole interest of human health.
Another fact is that such demand as
may exist for comforting enlarged powers
upon the National Health department has
come about, not through natural growth
of sentiment because of popular need. but
from the artificial stimulus Of what the
political doctors call their Campaign Of
education" In other words. there has
been we'll organized and systematized
campaign on the part of the medical trust
people, through gratuitous health columns
in the daily press, through the pulpit and
the lecture platform. through proposed
legislative measures which they have no
hope of passing and through the COM
'pulsory physical examination of children
in our public schools, as to create an ia
creased demand for public health
officers, paid from the public funds, with
authority to follow up compulsory exam
nation with compulsory treatment 1t
does not require great penetration to see
in this desire to create paid offices at
the public expense for the support OF those
who find themselves members Of prof
ession wherein the supply of services IS
policy pursued by the National Health
department in the past had been liberal
and broadmirded one, there could not
have arisen so strong an opposition to it
But it is matter of record that no one
may practice nor hold Office in the pres-
ent National Health service except as an
adherent of the allopathic school. Ii medi-
cine were an exact science like mathe-
matics, If any one school had principle
by which all healing practice might be
regulated, even then it would be wrong to
reject the best practice and research of
any other branch OF the art and deprive
the people of its benefit. But after four
thousand years of the practice of medi-
cine it is still acknowledged by its ad-
vanced and competent adherents to be
an unfixed and experimental system. How
dangerous then to establish rigid state
espionage which shall deprive the people
of the right of choice in this matter.
State medicine is as un-American and
despoto as state religion. Many of the
foremost physicians of the country are
opposed to the Owen bill on these
grounds Many members of the Amer
lean Medical association reject the
narrow policy Of the political element now
in control but this element holds the
balance of power and the many broad
minded and humane members Of the
medical profession who do not favor their
methods are helpless because the con-
trolling element has the we'll oiled mac