Wausau pilot. [volume] (Wausau, Wis.) 1896-1940, 1919-03-04
THEY GET JOHN TILL

The following is the way the JEFF
ferson County Union handles the mat
ter of the arrest of John Till of Turtle
Lake, which sounds somewhat differ
ent than the many publishers have
regarded the situation:
There is some doubt in our minds
about the wisdom of prosecuting John
Till, of Turtle Lake, Barron County,
on a charge of practicing medicine
and of fining him $3.50, considering the
fact that he never charged a penny
for his services and did a great deal
of good. John Till, in a way, was sci
entific in his treatment of human all
ments. The visitor suffering from dis
ease would go to his homestead and be
given a card costing 25 cents by an
employee. The 25 cents, very probably
was divided up between the employee
and John Till and would barely cover
the most meager service. So far
the expense, to say the least, was
slight. The patient then went into the
house and when his turn came was
told to pull off his shirt and bend
over bringing the spine prominently
into view. Till would then slide his
fingers up and down the spine and
when he came to place where the in
f1ammation of the tissues from pres
sure on the spinal nerves gave a cot
tony ''feel" he would say: Here's
your trouble" AS the trouble" came
from lack of circulation in the disk
feeding tissues at that point, causing
starvation of the fibro-cartilage cells
in the intervertebral disk or disks it
was a safe bet that red pepper plas-
ter would help matters, and to be fair
to Till, it is not stretching the truth to
say that it very often did just this. In
fact it could not help it. The visitor got
no great amount of relief while in the
presence of Till, because the matter of
relief required time for the plaster to
work" therefore he was not tempted
to lay much of gift" on the table.
There was no receptacle there for
money. 1t was usually 25 or so cents
and sometimes a dollar. Many gave
nothing.
Now comes the pitifui part. Thou
sands of poor people were helped by
John Till, and to them he was a ply
never allowed the forbidden word
OOOCOI W appear OI1 UuSS6S IEdl I'LL
to his farm nor on any literature
whatever.
The people whom he helped look
upon this prosecution of their friend
as persecution and it will make
them angry and resentful. How the
prosecution managed to rope John Till
with the law does not matter so much
as how law came to be passed that
would harm benefactor of mankind
that did what John Till did.
We suspect that away back, when
the people were not looking, the Amer
lean Medical Society, an organization
| that takes in about forty per cent OF
the doctors of the United States, got
busy and pushed this law through.
In our opinioll this law ought to be
repealed. Such laws encourage Boil
shevism, and for that reason do more
| damage than all the so-called quacks
that ever lived. This idea that the
public must be snubbed to a new posi-
by each new legislature is getting or
the nerves of the common people. The
ease with which Bolshevism snapped
the bands of Russian civilization gives
us all food for thought. The frame
work Of society is now enduring q
tremendous strain, one that is bound
10 pull apart many apparently strong
bolts, and some very important beams
and glrders are going to come tumb.
ling to the ground"