63 So. 28 | Ala. Ct. App. | 1913
— The defendant was convicted of the offense prohibited by section 7564 of the Code, treating human diseases without having obtained a certificate of qualification from the State Board of Medical Examiners. The form of indictment prescribed by law for charging such offense was folloAved in this case, and the complaint was therefore not subject to the demurrer interposed to it. — Code, § 7161, form 84; Carter v. State, 3 Ala. App. 112, 57 South, 1022. The case was tried by the court without the intervention of a jury, as provided by law, upon an undisputed state of facts.
It is admitted that the defendant, who within the past 12 months moved into Jefferson county, held himself out and offered to treat and did treat human diseases for a consideration in money; that he gave the patient, in the particular case relied on by the state for conviction, a little bottle of white pills to take internally, and had her place her feet in a tub of water, while holding with her hands the cords of a dry electric battery, which he had placed in the tub; that he diagnosed the case of the patient as that of “general debility,” and professed to be able to cure her entirely with 10 or 12 of such electrical treatments at $1 per treatment, promising a refund of the money if no good resulted.
We do not doubt that the mind exercises a potent influence over the body, nor but what its state in many cases has materially to do Avith the condition of the body; nor do Ave doubt the efficacy of mental suggestion as a force or agency in leading nature to ássert itself and effect a cure of many of the ills that flesh is heir to, nor but what that suggestion may be often effectually aided by the employment upon the patient of ineffective, but supposed effective, physical remedies, resembling in kind, but Avitliout his knoAvledge, differing in character from those that he has been accustomed to associate
The section of the Criminal Code cited is a part of the same act (Act Aug. 7, 1907, p. 591) as that incorporated in the sections of the Political Code cited. The act mentioned was passed after the decision of Bragg v. State, 134 Ala.165, 32 South. 767, 58 L. R. A. 925, and therefore with knowledge on the part of the Legislature of such decision. Indeed the history of that legislation, as disclosed by the journals of the House and S'enate and the original bill (House Bill 675), in which the act had its inception, will show that that decision gave rise to the legislation, Avhich, while designed in its origin to destroy the effect of that decision, construing the then existing statutes as preventing the practicing of osteopathy 'without standing the examination then required, culminated in an amended bill, which became the statute here violated, and which, among other changes wrought in the lhw, broadened the language, as to the class of persons to whom it should be applicable, from those “practicing medicine in any of its branches or departments,” the language of the statute construed in Bragg v. State, supra, as extending to
The clause is indeed comprehensive in its scope as to the class of persons upon whom the law is to operate; nor are we prepared to doubt the wisdom of the enactment, or the extensiveness of its intended application. The law leaves the practitioner free to adopt any system or kind of healing or cure that he may see fit, whatever it be, whether it be physical or mental, or both; it requires an examination upon no system of therapeutics, and exacts no certificate of proficiency therein. What it does require is the standing of a successful examination upon those branches of medical learning — chemistry, anatomy, physiology, etiology, pathology, symptomatology, gynecology, diagnosis of disease, physical diagnosis, diseases of the ear, eye, nose, and throat — a knowledge of which is deemed necessary to an intelligent understanding of the human body, its composition, organs and their functions, and to an ability to know when it is diseased and when it is not, and when so, to be able to properly diagnose the trouble, a sine qua non to intelligent treatment of any sort; and a successful examination upon hygiene, so that the practitioner will know how to prevent disease and may avoid, at least, the spread and communication to others of the diseases of his patients, or to them of other diseases; and a successful examination upon medical jurisprudence, so that, when called upon to testify as to cases coming under his observation, he may be an intelligent witness, and as such be able to render aid to the courts in the investigation of truth and the administration of the law of the land; and a successful examination upon obstetrics and obstetrical operations, a knowledge of which, as practically admitted by the defendant himself,
These admissions of the defendant, in themselves, prove the wisdom of the laAV, and the necessity for requiring, as a protection- to the people, that the professional healer or curer, who holds himself out to serve the public in that capacity, whatever be his system of treatment, have knoAvledge of those branches of learning named in the law, to the end that, while leaving him free to choose his own curatiwe means, the public may be- assured that the choice shall be made only after an intelligent understanding of the nature of the trouble he offers to treat, and of the human body to which he assumes to minister. The fact that the remedy he adopts
The law is a police regulation, designed for the protection of the public (Brooks v. State, 88 Ala. 122, 6 South. 902), and we are clear in the opinion that the case made against defendant falls within its terms arid spirit, and that the statute is not unconstitutional, at least in so far as this case is concerned. Whether the statute is applicable to one who practices faith of mental cures, not for compensation, but gratuitously out of a sense of religious duty, or whether, if it was intended to so apply, it would be unconstitutional as against such persons because of an infringement'of our Bill of Bights, guaranteeing religious freedom, is a question we need not and do not decide, and upon which we express no opinion whatever, since that question is not before us.
We find no error in the record, and the judgment of conviction is affirmed.
Affirmed.