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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    high pretensions to an exclusive knowledge and the exclusive prac- tice of the healing art, by what criterion can we estimate their usefulness ? If all the glitter, the show, and the splendour, fancifully attach- ed to medical science, affords no efficient passport to employment and distinction—if it affords no efficient protection to a solitary professor, nor to the whole Medical Faculty, united—if they are unable, with all their boasted advantages over the empiric, the dealer in nostrums, &c. Slc. to obtain employment, without the aid of a special law to secure to themselves an exclusive patronage, how little must all their learning—all their laborious, midnight studies, and pouring over volume after volume of ponderous books, avail them in the eyes of the world?—Address to the Botanic Society. If the Medical Faculty could afford that relief which the painful exigencies of the sick imperiously require, they would certainly need no law to secure the practice exclusively to themselves, nor to protect the community from the imposition of empirics. If the gentlemen of the faculty were adepts in their art, mankind could be in no danger of imposition from ignorant pretenders to the art of healing; because this class of physicians could never, in the vicinity of any of the faculty, find employment. But in con- sequence of the regular practitioners of medicine, so often fail- ing to demonstrate what they claim to posses?, a superior knowledge of the healing art—the sick are induced io call upon any other assistance that affords a prospect of relief; and the good effects, often times resulting from the employment of empirics,* induces others to give the preference to this class of physicians, from whom, it is acknowledged, the best articles of the Materia Medica have been derived. U it be a fact, (and it is so acknowledged by emi- nent authors,) that the most active medicines have been derived from this source, how inconsistent the policy of making laws to deprive the world of this natural and legitimate channel of informa- tion? All medical men agree that the healing art, or knowledge of medicine, is in a very imperfect state; why theq should any obstruction be thrown in the way of its consummation? In what situation would this science have been, if such legal restrictions had always obtained and prevailed? , What is the present situation of the Medical Profe6?ion in France? According to a recent publication it is deplorable in- deed. The following quotation is from the publication alluded to: By the direction of a government, possessing nothing of free- *Literally, one who makes experiments. Hence its appropriate, signifi- cation is, a physician who enters on practice without a regular professional ftducation, and relies on the success of his own experience.—Encyclopedia [Webster's Dictionary.] 3 r \ >