BY S. B. MUNN, M.D., WATERBURY, CONN.

It was sixty-one years in February last when a medical society was organized in Connecticut upon a reform basis. That was a Thomsonian Society-one in a series, which were established to secure mutual improvement as physicians, and general co-operation for a repeal of the laws which made the Reform practice a misdemeanor.

At that time worthy men were liable to fine and imprisonment for honestly endeavoring to cure the sick, and doing it successfully. Laws like that were on the statute-books in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia and Georgia. I denounce those laws as unconstitutional, disgraceful, and suited only to a country where the law-makers are not civilized. They were of the same nature and character as those of two centuries before that sent men and women to the rack and the stake. These old pioneers in Connecticut put shoulder to the work, petitioned the General Assembly and appealed to the people. They were nor discouraged by defeat any more than their fathers were when outnumbered and proscribed in like manner by the Tories of the Revolution. They were bold men and brave, and took no denial.

When one political party deceived them they turned to the other, put it in power and won. The medical practice of these Reformers may have been crude, as compared with what we have now. But it was far better than that of the men that persecuted them. People got well under it, where others died in great numbers, or failed to recover their former health. It was facts like these that made everybody unwilling to be bled to death like Washington, or poisoned with Mercury, Antimony and Arsenic, like William Henry Harrison. These brave old Reformers have passed away. It is to be regretted that so little of their spirit and force exists with their successors. They were men that did not cringe nor compromise principle. They were bitterly hated and ferociously persecuted, but they won the day.

Following after them came the Connecticut Eclectic Medical Association, as incorporated by the General Assembly in 1855. In accepting that charter, and working under it for so many years, we and the State are bound by a contract that neither party may set aside. The Legislature may not do it, nor the court, nor even that illegitimate bantling, the State Board of Health. Under its provisions we have acted for forty years without let or hindrance. It invested the association with full power to instruct and license physicians. That power is still ours, neither surrendered, forfeited, nor taken away. The practitioner licensed by this association is a lawful physician in Connecticut, and by the terms of the Federal Constitution in all the States of the Union.

For fifty years there has been a conspiracy to cheat us of these rights. For this expressed purpose, and hardly for any other, the American Medical Association was organized. It has but a fraction of the physicians behind it, but it impudently pretends to represent the entire profession. Its steady aim is to grasp official positions, to multiply such positions to a degree that is absolutely unnecessary, and to control entirely the practice of medicine. It aims, like the two-horned dragon of the Bible, to make everybody take the mark of this medical beast, and to let no man buy or sell, except he had the mark on him and been stamped as Regular. Its action seems to be fulfilling the text. The dragon or devil, and Satan, gave the beast his own power, and throne and great authority. In pursuance of this plot and con

spiracy, full of lust for power and emoluments, the medical laws have been procured on purpose to place absolute control of the practice of medicine in Allopathic hands. Int hose States where they could not have all their own way, they played the harlot with pliable Homœopathists; and when they could not get on otherwise, they took in also Eclectics of easy virtue, who could be manipulated and moulded.

In Connecticut the law creating the State Board of Health was the entering wedge. Its advocates promised solemnly not to attempt interference with physicians. The bill was defeated by the Legislature, but somehow got placed on the statute-book. A partisan board was appointed, and it has always been partisan. It has sought to increase its own power, and to use that power solely to make the Allopathic school the supreme medical power in Connecticut. Year by year it put out statements assiduously for the purpose, to dispose the General Assembly to favor them and legislate against others. Finally, in 1893, the Medical Practice Act was passed, having the one purpose embodied in it to place all the physicians of the State under the supervision of that Allopathic Board of Health. It is the plain, and almost the unequivocal intention to beleaguer the General Assembly at every session for more legislation, and not to hold up till we are all bound hand and foot, or set to work with ball and chain; and they will not be content until there is only one Board of Examiners, with the Eclectics left out. We will turn the table for a moment, and put our adversaries themselves on their defense. What has the Board of Health ever done to warrant keeping it in existence at all? No such board ever arrested an epidemic or reduced an annual death-rate. Our improved habits of living and greater general intelligence have done it all, in spite of doctors and medical boards, and never because of them. The vital statistics of this State show that in 1848 the deaths were at the rate of 12 per thousand; in 1849 they were 14 per thousand, and ever since this State Board of Health was created they were 17, 18, 19-never less, but plainly increasing all the while. While this annual mortality has thus increased on its hands, with no prospect of ever being lessened, the Board has persisted in its own purpose. It has lobbied the Legislature, and tampered with

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the pliable members for an increase of its own power, and the multiplication of its liens upon the treasury.

Like a board of New York aldermen, it exists and works for the sake of boodle. At every meeting of the Legislature it has a new project to get into the pockets of the people. It is a veritable buzzard's roost with a vulture's rapacity. State boards of health and medical examiners are so many organized appetites, with their hunger growing by what they feed upon. A significant feature in them all is their disregard for personal rights and constitutional law. Courts in many of the States have checked their usurpation of power. In the face of the Declaration of Independence, they seek to create useless offices and establish swarms of officers to prey upon the people and devour their substance. These officers are chiefly doctors out of business, who have not succeeded in their profession. The Allopathic school overruns with such doctors, and places are made at the public crib to feed them. The Bible tells us of the plagues of Egypt. One of these was the frogs. These overran the houses, came into the bedchambers, hopped over the beds, infested the houses of the people everywhere, coming even into the ovens and the kneadingtroughs as the bread was being made. Bible says, "and the land stank.” its army of frogs, is unfortunately yet liar fragrance of the frogs. We are conform to the law while it is a law. Wrong created and entrenched in bad legislation cannot be made right. A legislature that makes a bad law is more wicked than the man that breaks that law. A State board that stretches its powers to the margin of constitutional safeguards and is ready to break over them has not sanctity entitling it to respect.

And when they died, the The Board of Health, with alive, but it has the pecuoften told that we should We seriously doubt this.

There is an account now making up that is yet to be balanced. These encroachments on personal rights and constitutional liberty will never stop except they are sturdily and persistently resisted, We need only look over other States to perceive the usurpations that are contemplated. The attempts are made to put not only medicine but every branch of work under an examining board. One State, South Carolina, has already a bill in its legislature to require a special license for every calling, down to washerwoman.

Only one more law, as the New York Sun remarks, will then be necessary to take out a license to live.

A lawyer in the Hartford lobby once told a committee of the Legislature that when the medical laws had been passed the people did not complain. This is not true, and would be a flimsy argument if it were true. Such logic would justify negro slavery, wifewhipping, and religious persecution of every kind. Often the laws have been stolen through the Legislature. And, again, fifty years ago all medical laws were repealed, and only Old School doctors complained. The people were well satisfied. Dr. Thomas Lapham once said: "In any State where any law has existed, or does now exist, regulating medical practice, it has never originated with the people, but with a class of men who subsist on the miseries of the people. Fines, prisons, dungeons, chains and death are accounted better security to their standing than all the combined skill and wisdom of all the ancient schools of medicine."

Francis Bacon said that "Knowledge is power;" but it may be added that a school of physicians which maintains itself by class legislation can have nothing of genuine knowledge to stand upon. Protection is absolutely absurd to give to that which is power.

We once told a lawyer that the medical laws had no warrant in the Constitution. He replied that we pass those laws under police regulations. I answered, What right have you in time of peace to pass laws under police regulations that are unconstitutional? He made no reply. This statement is simply an affirmation that the Constitution is not the supreme law of the land; but that police power, as interpreted by the caprice of judges, is the highest authority in America. We affirm that such an exercise of power it is the duty of every citizen to resist.

Lawyers of the first class in the cities of New York and Philadelphia have repeatedly declared that, if a good case were made up and expenses provided, they would carry it to the Supreme Court of the United States, in full confidence that the medical laws would be declared unconstitutional. Already, in Maine, the issue has been made in the Supreme Court of the State. In Alabama and Missouri the Supreme Courts have already decided that