VII-CERTIFICATES OF GOOD MORAL CHARACTER.

(Signed by not less than two physicians in good standing.)

for

This certifies that I have been personally acquainted with Dr. years; that I know him to be of good moral character, and I hereby recommend him to the regents of the University as entirely worthy to be licensed to practice medicine in the State of New York, pursuant to law.

P. O. address.

VIII-CERTIFICATE OF PRELIMINARY AND MEDICAL
EDUCATION.

(Either this certificate properly made out, signed and sealed by the president or secretary of the medical school, or both preliminary and professional original credentials must accompany application for admission to a licentiate examination) It is hereby certified that holding medical certificate No. 189, received from a diploma conferring on him the degree of doctor of medicine, and that he studied medicine at least three full years as follows, including three satisfactory courses of lectures in different years as follows: • Give months, years and name of institution.

on

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I hereunto set my hand and the seal of day of

this

Dr. Higbee read the following:

REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON MEDICAL LEGISLATION. BY F. H. ORME, M.D., ATLANTA, GA., CHAIRMAN,

During the past two years there has been more or less agitation, as usual, in some of the States, at least, of the subject of medical legislation-showing the same diversity of views that has heretofore been observed. While men think at all, they will be likely to show this diversity- and, as the conditions vary in different States, diverse methods have been proposed for remedying by legislation evils that some think must be overcome independently of legislation; for in attempting to legislate upon a subject so nearly affecting the right of individual selection, there is danger of running into paternalism, and infringing upon natural personal rights.

At all events, when legislation is to be determined upon at all, each State will, of course, have to be the judge as to what are its

requirements, and no rigid, cast-iron system of laws can be, in the nature of things, adapted to the needs of each of our forty-four States.

The American Institute of Homoeopathy years ago determined that the proper way in which to elevate the standard of medical education, and thus furnish competent and trustworthy physicians to the people, was to improve the character and enlarge the term of teaching in the colleges by the action of the profession itself. In this direction the Institute has led, by requiring all colleges represented in its body to give three courses of lectures of not less than six months each, in connection with four years of study, as conditions precedent to graduation. This course supersedes the necessity claimed for the awkward and unrepublican attempts to elevate the standard by legislation, the evidence being abundant that such attempts have generally been abortive.

Many members of the American Medical Association have been endeavoring for several years to bring that society up to the standard of the Institute. In the meantime the National Eclectic Association has acted upon the subject, and now requires the three-term course for all colleges claiming representation therein. It is hoped that the American Medical Association may soon come up to the same plane, in which case nearly all of the graduates in medicine will be from three-term colleges-so that the output of the colleges may readily be accepted by the people. The claim of a necessity for boards to supervise the work of the colleges will have little or no basis, although it may have had some in the past; and the objectionable board system, which has proved so inefficient, distasteful, and odious in many ways, will have no reason for being, and these cumbersome and offensive organizations will disappear.

With all of the strenuous efforts of the Old School for many years past to secure boards for sectarian purposes there are really but about one-third of the States of the Union that have examining boards. A somewhat larger number have supervising boards, to examine as to the validity of diplomas (the least objectionable form of board), so that the regular examining board movement has made little progress, and promises to make less.

There are probably not as many States, in proportion to number, having examining boards now, as there were twenty years ago, many States having wearied of their iniquitous workings and abolished them, relying upon the diplomas from the colleges, registered according to law, and the discernment of the people; for the ignoramus generally soon finds his level, and any legislation upon the subject is likely to interfere with those personal rights of which the people are naturally so jealous.

The profession and the people are to be congratulated upon the present outlook. Better physicians will be found in the land, and

boards, with their tendency to engender and perpetuate sectarian strife, are upon the wane, notwithstanding the fact that some of the advocates for boards have, from misconception of facts, endeavored to create the impression that boards are likely to be insisted upon, and consequently that we should have ours.

The position of the Institute is clear upon the point that if boards be insisted upon that is, inevitable-then each school should have a separate board of its own, a condition not at all desired by the majority of the Old School; for, if boards cannot be had that will give sectarian advantage by intimidating and excluding so-called irregulars," they are not wanted.

In some of the States attempts have been made to abolish the existing registration laws (the best form of medical law obtainable), with a view to substituting a sectarian board arrangement; but the partisan object has generally been exposed, and failure has been the result of the attempts, either by the defeat of the proposed bills, or the adoption, by amendment, of three boards, much to the chagrin of the originators of the schemes. Thus it is likely to be in other cases, for the day of boards has to a large degree passed.

When boards are advocated, it is either with a view to some partisan advantage or under the idea that they may be a remedy for existing evils, namely, the number of inefficient practitioners and the fraudulent, mountebank, vagabondizing speculator upon the credulity of the people; but it has not been shown, and probably never will be, that boards are much of a remedy as to these, for the newspapers of States having examining boards show as disgusting an exhibition of quackish and criminal advertisements as do the papers of those States which have simple registration laws, and which some affect to fear may become "dumping grounds" for the disreputable class. Besides, no laws can prevent, cupidity, imbecility, or degeneration. The young man who has passed a fair examination may at once enter upon a decline of mental energy or moral tone. He may neglect study, and thus retrograde, for a man in the profession must be either progressive or retrogressive, or he may take up with some medical or instrumental speculation, and boards and laws cannot prevent this.

The people at last must use discernment, and they are apt to do it, so that the really deficient practitioners will soon be relegated to the rear, and will engage in some other pursuit. Probably onefourth or more of those who receive medical diplomas disappear from the profession within a few years. In any event, the people would rather be left to themselves in this case than be treated as incapable children having to be "protected;" and they are sufficiently imbued with the ideas of democratic and republican fairness and freedom to resent attempts to put them under a paternalistic form of government. A witness to the correctness of this statement is the fact

that with all the occasional clamor for "protection" of the people, through the instrumentality of interested sectarian examining boards, none of it is found to come directly from the people, but all of it is a "hue and cry" raised by sectarian doctors, who have a purpose to accomplish; as may be seen by careful perusal of their proposed bills.

There is something obviously preposterous in conferring power upon a board of men to pass upon the merits of a new-comer-a prospective competitor in a business way and an antagonist in a certain sense when difference of sect or jealousy of the applicant's superior qualifications may affect his downfall. Is it accordant with correct principles of legislation to give such power to one set of men, or to subject another to such power in the hands of interested and perhaps prejudiced examiners? Surely the frailty of human nature should be remembered.

So many attempts to secure boards controlling medical licensure by one school have resulted in disaster that it is probable we may hear less of them hereafter; but if these efforts should still be persisted in, they should be met with opposition based upon the ground of their being contrary to sound principles of government; contrary to the wishes of the people in whose interest it is proposed they shall be made; unnecessary; meddlesome; provocative of ill-feeling; cumbersome and difficult of operation; subjecting the people as well as the profession to inconvenience; injurious and offensive in many ways.

While boards of medical examiners are objectionable, as indicated -all but one member of your committee, for many years, having been opposed to them-boards of health are approved, and a board of health for the entire country may be desirable. The question of States rights has, interfered, but, if necessary, a constitutional amendment should be adopted in order that the nation may protect itself against invasion by pestilence, as it would against invasion by armed forces. As, however, to the Department of Medicine, or Sanitary Bureau, that is proposed-a political and probably sectarian machine—of course our concurrence in this cannot be expected. Indeed, the Institute, at its meeting at Atlantic City, distinctly declared against this measure. Nothing has been unanimously determined upon by the dominant or so-called "regular" school, and opposition has been raised within its own ranks to everything so far proposed.

The old National Board of Health was better than anything that has since been suggested, and should never have had the appropriation necessary for its operation cut off. The question of States rights had something to do with this, but it is probable that the fact that one of its most distinguished and able members (Dr. Verdi) was an Homoeopathist, influenced some sectarians in favoring an

other system, which should place the whole sanitary machinery of the government in the hands of the one school of physicians; that is, in control in the army and navy. This sort of legislation should be watched with jealous eye, and when some other plan of sanitary supervision shall be established, it should be one that shall be free from sectarian manipulation, and as free as possible from poli

tics.

DISCUSSION.

Dr. T. P. Wilson, in opening the discussion, said that he was very much averse to the whole idea of examining boards as totally undemocratic, as an importation from the protected foreign countries where Homœopathy had practically been crushed out by this system of protection. This system of boards and the arguments which are used to bolster them up assume that the dear public wants the protection. It is not so. It is a few doctors who are calling for protection and securing such laws that no one will dare make application to practice in their territory; it is really a fight among the doctors themselves-doctor against doctor, dog against dog; and the public has nothing to do with it. If you are anxious to make better doctors, why, begin at the colleges where the foundation lies, and if you are anxious to do a little legislation turn it loose upon the colleges and compel them to do the right thing; there are good colleges and poor colleges I suppose; but no decent college requires any interference of that sort. Every college in the land has been elevated and educated to a better position, to a higher plane; and the doctor of to-day, therefore, stands infinitely higher than we did who were graduated after only two courses of lectures; now they come in with their examining boards and legislative enactments and insist that theya few men-shall sit two or three hours once a year upon the acquirements of a lot of men who have sat a half dozen hours over their books and work six months in every year for three or four years. They want to come in now and cut off our legs. As to Dr. Paine, I am astonished that he still has the face to come in here and so openly boast of the inferiority of the medical colleges of this country, and to imply that we have been at the wrong remedy all this time in elevating the standard and improving the colleges generally, while he with his board of examiners is the proper protection to the people. I, for one, will not sit quiet under the imputations which he casts upon the colleges. He himself is the product of a college, and I will let him answer for himself. I do not know how he got through, nor how he practiced so many years on the knowledge which his college gave him. The institution of an examining board, to come in and take the power away from the legal diploma received from a qualified college is an absurdity. Who makes that board? They are no better than the men that examine the students in college; they are