Tired of Medical Legislation. her; before night she was under arrest, and upon her refusing to pay a heavy fine was hurried off to jail and her little family depending on her for support had to spend the night without her care. She got a friend to notify us what had happened and the next morning we employed competent counsel and at the cost of one hundred dollars had her released on bond. Surely under such a condition of affairs the question "What is the matter, and what is the remedy?" demands the earnest and careful consideration of all thinking people who have the welfare of humanity at heart. 407 now dawning shall become a bright day; when the plants now growing in the nursery shall be the trees that shelter nations, and when the healing arts now rejected and living outside of Medical Colleges shall occunv the places of honor to bless the world, to empty the wards of the hospital and vacate the insane asylum." When we contrast the conditions described by this able writer with the existing conditions of to-day, we begin to realize that in bringing about the much needed change, very grave difficulties will be encountered, but the discussion of how best to overcome these obstacles for another naner. I Coming My Way. To answer in detail these important and apply the remedy needed, we leave questions would require more space than the limits of this article will admit, but the fact that ens of thousands of patients are annually spending millions of dollars to escape from ill health, and the further fact that thousands of so-called highly educated M. D.'s are utterly failing to give them the help and relief desired, is certainly overwhelming proof that the system of medical practice taught in the colleges, recognized as reputable and rated as in good standing by the various State Boards of Health, is woefully defective. In order to intelligently prescribe a remedy we should first clearly understand the nature of the trouble and what is really the matter, and with the thousands of cases on record where the graduates of said colleges have proved helpless to render substantial aid to their patients and who as a last resort could only get genuine benefit outside the poisonous drug practice-these facts so well known are conclusive proof that a radical change in the system of medical education and the laws governing medical practice is needed if we ever get to the root of the difficulty. An able writer several years ago on this subject has well said, "Let me now draw aside the veil that covers the future and show you a scene on which no old college professor or student attempts to gaze. "I point to the higher civilization of the twentieth century when the morning HAVE said time and time again, that medical legislation leads nowhere but to ruin, helps no one but the lazy and good-for-nothing doctor, solves no problems, but makes an infinite amount of mischief. I have said this over and over again. I intend to say it over and over again some more. But it appears now that I am going to have help. No less a man than George A. Gould, editor of American Medicine, is saying practically the same thing. His attitude toward the subject, of course, is different from mine. But for all practical purposes we agree that medical legislation is steering us straight toward a quagmire of foolishness. We might a thousand times better let the subject rest where it was in the beginning. Let every one select his own physician. Let every one find out for himself who can cure and who cannot cure. We might a thousand times better have left it exactly where it was. That is where it is coming to, anyhow, and in a round-about, soul-destroying, demoralizing way. Listen to what Dr. George Gould says: "Did it ever come to your mind that our long, great, valiant fight for medical registration, state boards of examina tion, four year courses, for medical organization and dignity, has ended in utter failure? . "We are just where we began twenty years ago. Then the Sick Citizen had a choice between quacks and regular practitioners and the law could not be invoked to protect the citizen from greed and ignorance. "How is it now? The law now de mands the legalization of Osteopathists and Eddyites, and heaven only knows what other forms of healers and healers. Progress is giving the former unlegal and despised quack a legal and professional status. "Isn't that an atrociously funny result of the generation-long demand for professional exclusiveness and registration? "But only sillies can fail to see that it is leading to the right of the citizen to choose his doctor, or his quack, or his murderer as he pleases. And nothing on earth or heaven can prevent this democracy." so? Coming our way. Don't you think Undo the whole miserable business of medical legislation. Let us go back and try it over again. And then let us make some laws that are intended to dignify the medical profession, and to really protect the people. Let us make laws against fraud, against malpractice. I I Let us hold every doctor, with a diploma or without a diploma, responsible for what he does. If he commits a surgical atrocity upon any one, let us hold him responsible for his deed. Let us help the people get their redress and their rights in the matter. Let us not make it easy any longer for the doctor to escape from responsilife, or poisoned some one to death. Nor bility when he has maimed some one for let us not make it easy for the quack to do these things. Let us give the people such laws that they will find it easy and convenient to punish any man who poses as a healer, while in reality he is an ambitious man, willing to sacrifice his own honor or some one else's life, to further his own selfish interests. All that is necessary is laws that protect people against pretense and fraud. If a doctor pretends to be doing something for a patient at the same time he is doing nothing, knows that he is doing nothing, that he is simply experimenting, that he shall be made to smart for the damage that he has caused his patient. This is all the regulation that is needed. The doctor who is honest and skillful, the surgeon who is cautious and careful, need have nothing to fear. It is only the blunderbuss, the reckless, daring experimenter, that will suffer, and he ought to suffer, whether he holds a diploma or not. Drugless Healers United. By DR. D. W. HULL, Magnetic Healer, Olympia, Washington. AM in accord with your proposition to unite drugless doctors. In this state we are joining hands. Last Legislature there was a strong effort made to throw us out. A bill was sneaked into the Senate, making it a misdemeanor, punishable by fine and imprisonment, for any except medical doctors and Osteopaths to heal by any means whatever. But we got after them and the bill never came up for a second reading. The coming winter a determined effort is to be made to shut us out, but we shall be in the fight. There is one objectionable feature to your proposition, that is to hold just to one method of treatment. It is stated thus: "For instance, if he is a magnetic healer he is licensed solely to practice magnetic healing. He has no right to practice Osteopathy, Homeopathy, Electropathy, Hydropathy, or any other of the recognized systems of healing." Now, I believe in taking the shortest Drugless Healers Get Together cut to health, whatever that may be. If a man is hanging I want to cut the rope. About fifty years ago I studied Hydropathy and practiced it in my father's family and on myself, and yet recommend rheumatic patients whom I am treating to wrap a wet bandage around the painful limb, and a dry flannel outside of it when retiring at night. It does not interfere with my treatments and relieves the pain. I have been practicing magnetism more or less for forty years, at one time supplementing drugs under the Scudder system of Eclectic practice. For forty years I have used massage, as I saw it was needed. We all did, and this was long before we ever heard of Dr. Still. Indeed we did much that the Osteopaths now do and we learned it as a part of our magnetic treatment. Just now I am finding facial neuralgia, headaches, weakness of the eyes, tonsilitis, sore throat, asthma and even nose bleed, all indicating that the occipital, cervical and trigeminal nerves are affected. The trouble is the congestion of the capillaries. Carbon dioxide in its attempted egress from the system is detained, and it must be eliminated. To do this, I must reach as much under the skull and ear as I can and pull it downward and toward the throat with my fingers, but the Osteopath might claim I was trespassing on his province if I did such a thing as that. Occasionally, I find a spine slipped, causing what appears to be rheumatic affection. The thing to do is not magnetic, but adjust the spine. A man came to me for treatment for rheumatism in one of his feet, but my hand ran against a misplaced metatarsal bone. It took only a second to replace it. Should I send him to a surgeon, who would charge him five or ten dollars, or to an Osteopath, or replace it myself? Magnetism would not replace it. The doctors had been treating him, but as they did not need to examine the foot, they did not find it, and their rubefacients did no good. I am thinking of commencing a magnetic school this winter. If I do I want my students to study the human system 409 and learn to do the thing that is needed to be done, whether it is adjusting a displaced spine, or stimulating the nerves and muscles by resolute massage, as is necessary in paralysis. I believe all, or nearly all drugless healers are doing good, and if they would use magnetism in their treatments, they would do much more good. I was pleased to see the article entitled "Laying on of Hands," by Nelson Hanson, of St. Paul, Minn. What he is doing many others can do. It seldom requires more than two weeks to cure the worst chronic cases by magnetic treatment, and that is more than half as quick again as can be effected by any other system of healing. And all could easily learn it. I heartily agree with you as to practicing anything that helps. I did not mean exactly as you interpret my words. I only meant to say that the Osteopath should not be allowed to hold out that he was practicing magnetic healing, neither should a magnetic healer be allowed to hold out that he was practicing Osteopathy, unless he had fitted himself to do so. If a man was a regular graduate from several of these schools, he would then be allowed to practice either or all of them, but if only a graduate of, say, magnetic healing, while he would be allowed to practice anything that he knew to be beneficial to his patients, he would not be allowed to advertise himself or to give out in any way that he was practicing some other school than the school from which he graduated. Of course, the Osteopath has to do many things, no doubt, not taught by his school, and so with all practitioners. They should be allowed to do whatever they can of benefit to the patient, but it would be unfair for a Hydropath to masquerade as an Osteopath or a Mag netic healer to pretend he is able to practice Homeopathy. Since you have misunderstood my article, maybe many others have, also, and the above may serve as an explanation. OUR HOMELESS ORPHANS Don't you want to adopt a child? We can help you. A growing child in the house is often a God-send to the home; physically, mentally, and morally. The orphans we advertised recently were promptly adopted. Write us. Address Dr. Darby, in care of The Columbus Medical Journal. N OW IS a good time to receive a boy, eight or ten years old, into your family. Let him get used to your home and its surroundings. Introduce him in Sunday school and to some of the neighbor boys. Let him begin to feel that he has a home, a standing, in your locality. Like other boys he will possess some most excellent traits of character. Find out what they are. Boys like adults are valuable for their specialties. What would a man amount to if he hadn't his specialty? If he was not able to do something much better than his fellow man? Ascertain your boy's particular taste for this, that or the other line of study or work. Then cut him loose! By this time school will be ready to open. Start him in the first day. Let him "get used to the school-house." An early start in any venture is the proper thing; but with the school boy, and especially the neglected strange boy, it is all important. The pupils and students we found in school and college, we respected. Those that came in later and especially late were put through certain initiatory, hazing and other ceremonies, not calculated to make them fall in love with their new surroundings. It will be a mistake to work your boy after the school opens. He might do you a little good, but that is not the object. Your object should be the boy's good. Do not take him for what you can get out of him, but for what you can put into him. Never mind about girls. You do not oblige us by taking them. They are handsome and companionable and everybody wants them. What we want now is homes in suitable private families for neglected and dependent boys eight or ten years old. Send them to school this winter. Envaluable they will be by next spring dear yourselves to them and see how and summer. You gradually work them up from a lower to a higher plane and thus improve American citizenship. This takes time and will cost some money, but you have too much Christianity and patriotism to expect something for nothing. Like your Creator, your ambition should be to create something out of nothing. P Care of Orphan Children. Purpose of a Children's Home. By F. J. HATHAWAY, Marietta, Ohio. RIOR to 1857 there had been very little done to save homeless children, beyond the establishment of orphan asylums in the large cities. These were usually under the auspices of some religious denomination, so that their benefits were limited to a city or to a certain denomination. For the large majority of homeless children the only refuge was the poor house. They were in this way classed as paupers, when, in fact, no homeless child is a pauper. It is not the child's fault that it is cast on public charity. It was in 1857 that Catherine Fay established the first Children's Home, at Marietta, for the express purpose of taking these children out of the County House. There being no law in Ohio providing for the county supporting dependent children outside of the County Infirmary, she soon began the agitation for the Legislature to pass a law authorizing the erecting of Children's Homes. For the purpose of doing what? EsEstablishing an old-fashioned orphan asylum in each county? No, not at all. Her purpose was to provide a place, separate and apart from the County House, where these children could be kept until such time as they could be placed out in families. In fact, she was forced to this conclusion from the very first, on account of her limited means and the constantly growing numbers in her home, which for nearly ten years she supported largely through her own efforts. So then, from the beginning, a Children's Home has been considered only a temporary abiding place for a child. There are ample reasons for this outside of the mere economic reason of saving the county the cost of their support. Institution life is not good for children. It lacks the daily impress and example of a good man and woman in the family life. In institutions, it makes no difference how well the same may be conducted, 411 they lack the love and affection needed to develop their characters. Every child longs for attention and loving care. It is hungry for it. If you do not believe this, go to a Children's Home, single out any one of the children and see how quickly it will respond to your advances. It is really pathetic to see these little ones yearning for the mother love, and to see how little they get. It is impossible to give all the children the attention in a Children's Home that they should have. So the true purpose of every Children's Home, and always has been, is to give shelter to the child temporarily in the home until a good place can be found in a private family for it. Any other method would be unjust to the child. Some children should be kept in the Children's Home longer than others. Many of them come from surroundings where they have learned bad talk, and other bad things which they should be taught are wrong before they are sent out into families, and no children should be placed out in any but good families. Every child in all the Children's Homes of Ohio, and there are fortyeight counties that now have these homes, could be placed in private families inside of six months if proper efforts were made. However, this is impossible; first, because we have not proper facilities provided to place them out; second, it would not be practicable to do so, if we had the facilities, because many are half orphans and the surviving parent expects to come and claim his child as soon as he can. This period of waiting, of course, often runs into years, and so the child waits and waits and can not have the advantage of being placed out in a good family because some old, good-for-nothing parent is begging the institution to hold the child for him. Many children thus lose the opportunities of becoming somebody, or rather, of getting into a |