An appeal to the citizens of Ohio : showing the unconstitutionality, injustice and impolicy of the medical law, and its inconsistency with the interest, spirit, and genius of the age / by William Hance.

  • Hance, William.
Date:
1830
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An appeal to the citizens of Ohio : showing the unconstitutionality, injustice and impolicy of the medical law, and its inconsistency with the interest, spirit, and genius of the age / by William Hance. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the National Library of Medicine (U.S.), through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the National Library of Medicine (U.S.)

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    1& of the opportunity of employing the only class of physicians in whom they have any confidence. The friends of medical aristocracy, very probably may say, thai the medical law deprives no person from employing whom he wishes: I very well kno& that it does not in positive or direct terms; but I also know that it does this as effectually, and perhaps, more so, in its operation, indirectly, as if it declared in positive language, that any person, other than licensed practitioners, admin- istering medicine to the sick, should be liable to a fine. The medical law very clearly shows that its projectors were well acquainted with human nature: and it most forcibly shows, too, that they not only made use of their knowledge, in planning this law, to take the advantage of human nature in its ordinary opera- tions; but also to take the advantage of that base, and degrading dis]X)sition which too often manifests itself in human nature, when prompted by motives of pecuniary interest, to take the advantage of an unjust law, and refuse to pay an hunest debt. Those who were instrumental in procuring the passage of our medical law it seems did not consider that practising or administer- ing medicine without a license constituted the crime, or was, in any way, to be punished; although it is a self-evident fact, that it is from this act, alone that any danger can arise, or injury be done. It is receiving a compensation for medicine and for services rendered to the languishing sick, that constitutes the crime, and makes the unlicensed liable to a fine. The Medical Faculty, who it is under- stood solicited and procured the passage of the medical law, no doubt thought it too barefaced and glaring an absurdity—too gross an insult to common sense, to ask the legislature to make it a crimi- nal offence to administer medicine to the suffering sick; although, as before observed, it is from this act alone, that all the danger arises from the impositions of quackery, and not from the receiving a reward. Why, I would ask, was there not something like consistency observed by the framers of the medical law, by making that act, and that alone, from which all the danger and all the injury to the community must arise, punishable as a crime; instead of making an innocent act—an act which an individual has not only a natural but a constitutional right to do, a crime punishable by fine? If these remarks should prove so severe as to be unpleasant to the subjects of them, they may have the consolation of knowing that their own conduct brought it upon them; and that the remedy and the honor of applying it, yet remains, in a great degree in themselves: but if they refuse, the people will ere long apply it for them. Thefe is, I presume, too much good sense in the people of Ohio to remain long fettered by any law striking at the very