376 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



movement inaugurated, it is this one. It is a movement by physicians 

 for the reduction of disease, which ipso facto means a movement 

 against their financial interests. 



The writer is a member of the regular profession; he nevertheless 

 would not wish for a moment to limit the freedom of any citizen to 

 choose his physician from some other school or cult, providing the 

 individual assuming the function and responsibilities of a physician 

 had the training necessary to prevent him from endangering the life 

 of his patient by lack of medical knowledge or skill. 



The official mouthpiece of this " National League for Medical 

 Freedom " is Mr. B. 0. Flower, who has had heretofore the reputation 

 of a fighter for everything involving the spiritual, social and physical 

 progress of humanity, and it is inexplicable to many of his admirers 

 how he can lead a movement opposed to the improvement of the 

 health of the nation. The vast majority in the ranks of this so-called 

 " league," though they may be well-meaning, noble, and earnest, are 

 not men and women who have toiled patiently for years in order to 

 acquire the thorough scientific medical training which enables one to 

 assume that great responsibility of the care and treatment of the sick. 

 They are unable to appreciate the inestimable value of federal help in 

 preventing disease. These people are blindly following certain indi- 

 viduals who designate the regular profession as a medical trust, and 

 accuse the thousands of noble men and women who are devoting their 

 lives to the alleviation of human ills of a desire to monopolize medical 

 practise. The establishment of a federal department of health would 

 mean pure food, pure medicine, control of plagues and epidemics, the 

 advancement of medical science and through it the improvement of 

 the health and increase of material wealth of the nation. It is said 

 that many of the individuals opposing the Owen bill are commercially 

 interested in the manufacture of drugs or patent medicines, of which 

 latter the American people swallow about $200,000,000 worth annually. 

 Whether it is true or not that the National* League for Medical Free- 

 dom is backed financially by drug manufacturers and patent medicine 

 concerns, I am not prepared to say; yet even these men have nothing 

 to fear from a federal department of health if the drugs they put on 

 the market are pure and the claims made for patent medicines do not 

 delude the public or endanger its health. The element which clamors 

 most loudly for medical freedom is composed in many instances of men 

 and women who have attended one or two courses of lectures or got 

 their " degrees " without any training at all, and have developed into 

 " doctors " and " healers " in a most remarkably short space of time. 



Because the American Medical Association has always advocated a 

 thorough medical education, is pleading constantly for pure drugs, is 

 opposed to quackery, patent medicines and nostrums, its 40,000 mem- 



