JUNE 14, 1901.] 
result of this movement was immediately 
salutary; it developed an esprit du corps 
in the great body of the profession ; it gave 
an authoritative definition to medical edu- 
cation and it created a strong and influen- 
tial national body within the profession. 
At the same time, however, it became ap- 
parent that the organization did not possess 
the necessary inherent strength to accom- 
plish its avowed object to regulate the prac- 
tice of medicine. As time passed schismatic 
medicine grew apace, its colleges multiplied, 
its practitioners appeared all over the 
country, exemplifying that law that always 
makes the blood of the martyrs the seed of 
the church. Quackery of the most flagrant 
character was found everywhere, and 
society was unprotected from its ravages, 
while the inability of a voluntary un- 
chartered organization to enact and to ex- 
ecute plenary laws was reduced to a demon- 
stration. The medical profession, as an 
organized body, discovered that its relation 
to the commonwealth was, as the result of 
its own proscriptive policy, scarcely more 
intimate or more influential than at the 
beginning of the thirty years hopeless ex- 
periment. 
THE ERA OF EFFECTIVE LEGISLATIVE CONTROL 
OF MEDICAL PRACTICE. 
The era of effective legislative control of 
medical practice came as the natural reac- 
tion from the demonstrated failure to ac- 
complish the same result through volun- 
tary organization ; but it came as the re- 
sult of the sentiment which had been prop- 
agated largely through the influence of 
this Association. The representatives of 
progressive medicine, turning from the 
National Association, invoked the aid of 
their respective State societies in taking up 
the question with their respective legisla- 
tures. The profession in each State, how- 
ever, recognizing its own local conditions, 
proceeded in its own way to attend to its 
SCIENCE. 
933 
own business. The very earliest attempts 
to secure State legislation revealed the fact 
that the so-called irregular practitioners, 
under the stimulus of ostracism and the 
fostering care of public sympathy thereby 
induced, had become so numerous and so 
influential that, in the majority of States, 
nothing could be done without their co- 
operation. It was no longer a theory, but 
a condition, with which the real reformers 
were confronted—and they met it. Cali- 
fornia, in 1876, through its regular medical 
society, took the initiative. After confer- 
ences with the representatives of the sec- 
tarian societies, and after securing their co- 
operation, a law was procured creating 
a licensing board composed of representa- 
tives of both the regular and sectarian 
schools of practice. Illinois, confronted 
by precisely the same condition, took pre- 
cisely the same course. Alabama, always 
progressive, but the happy possessor of 
other conditions, was able to place the 
regulation of medical practice for the time 
being under the control of its incomparable 
State medicalassociation. Coloradocreated 
a mixed board. New York, confronted by 
conditions even more complicated than 
those in other States, took up the same task. 
The profession of that State, acting through 
its organized body, containing among its 
members many of the most honored and 
illustrious names in American medicine, 
found it doubly necessary to enter into 
treaty with the denominational physicians. 
It realized, however, that the rules of con- 
duct to which it had always conformed 
contained, among other provisions, one 
which made it unlawful to ‘* * ** examine 
or sign diplomas or certificates of pro- 
ficiency for, or otherwise be especially con- 
cerned with the graduation of persons 
whom they have good reason to believe in- 
tend to support and practice any exclusive 
and irregular system of medicine.’ 
As the thing expressly interdicted by this 
