Constitutional (medicine)

“ Neither can the legislature, in whose power it is to do much more for preserving the public health than can ever be done by the Faculty, exert that power with propriety, and to the greatest advantage, without some degree of medical knowledge. ”

“ There would be no discrimination against or for any one set of therapeutic methods, against or for any one school of medicine or system of healing; the aim would be merely to secure under one administrative body efficient sanitary regulation in the interest of the people as a whole. ”

“ The starting point for our legal analysis must be whether a competent person has a constitutional right to avoid unwanted medical care. Earlier this Term, this Court held that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment confers a significant liberty interest in avoiding unwanted medical treatment. ”

“ If medicine had been regulated three hundred years ago by Act of Parliament; if there had been Thirty-nine Articles of Physic, and every licensed practitioner had been compelled, under pains and penalties, to compound his drugs by the prescriptions of Henry the Eighth's physician, Doctor Butts, it is easy to conjecture in what state of health the people of this country would at present be found. Constitutions have changed with habits of life, and the treatment of disorders has changed to meet the new conditions. ”

“ PUBLIC HEALTH, LAW OF. State medicine as an organized department of administration is entirely of modern growth. By the common law of England the only remedy for any act or omission dangerous to health was an action for damages or an indictment for nuisance. ”

“ Article 56 The State shall consolidate and develop the system of universal free medical service, and consolidates the section doctor system and the system of preventive medicine to protect people's life and improve working people's health. ”

“ In the absence of any statutes, therefore, limiting the common law right to practise medicine inherent in every person, the term physician may there be applied to any one who publicly announces himself to be a practitioner of the art and undertakes to treat the sick, either for or without reward. The common law knows nothing of systems or schools of medicine. In its eyes, Eclectic, Botanic, Physio-Medical, Electrical, Thompsonian, Homœopath, Reformed, Indian Doctor, Cancer Doctor, Indianopathist, Clairvoyant Doctor and regular physician are alike. ”

“ Reliance on the good faith of a state agency entrusted with the enforcement of appropriate standards for the practice of medicine is not in itself an investiture of arbitrary power offensive to due process. ”

“ No precise limits have been placed upon the police power of a state, and yet it is clear that legislation which simply defines the qualifications of one who attempts to practice medicine is a proper exercise of that power. Care for the public health is something confessedly belonging to the domain of that power. ”

“ It is the only tool with which they can protect the sick from unscrupulous or even well-meaning people who, for personal gain or with ill-founded conviction, promise cures by the citation of accidental or falsified results. By custom, ethics, and state laws the treatment of disease is the province of the licensed physician. ”

“ In the name of God, were we a parcel of children, who would cry and quarrel for a hobby-horse, which, when we were once in possession of, we quarrel with and throw it away? It is said this Constitution is an experiment; but all regular-bred physicians are cautious of experiments. If the constitution be crazed a little, or somewhat feeble, is it therefore necessary to kill it in order to cure it? ”

“ MEDICAL FREEDOM NECESSARY FOR MEDICAL PROGRESS, MEDICAL TRUTH AND HUMAN SAFETY As we now enjoy the great Democratic Institution of a Free Church in a Free State, with all church control of government and all compulsory or forced religion prohibited, so, in the near future, we must bring about an equally important reform for human welfare in preventing all medical control of our departments of government, in securing true medical freedom and prohibiting all compulsory medicine as effectually as all compulsory religion and church control of government is now prohibited. ”

“ These people are blindly following certain individuals 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. ”

“ A radical cure, however, cannot be accomplished except by surgical means, for which we have the knife, ligature, caustic, stimulating injections, etc., which may be varied to suit the emergency, but which should never be employed except by a competent surgeon. Constitutional conditions materially influence the cure, no matter what procedure is adopted; the greater the constitutional derangement and the poorer the general health, the longer is the cure delayed. The great secret of our success in treating this disease consists in applying appropriate constitutional treatment at the same time. ”

“ If the art of keeping a community in health is but the application of plain physiological laws, it is no less true that the art of restoring the health, curative as distinct from preventive medicine, rests upon the same basis. In former days the physician was one who recognized what he called the disease of his patient, who referred to his books of precedents as a lawyer to his statutes, and who prescribed a proper remedy to cast out the disease. We now know that disease is, as the name implies, a purely subjective conception. ”

“ Another of the duties of the Department of Health was to examine every person that applied to practice medicine and surgery or to engage in any professional calling. The law required a medical examination to be made of the person, who was granted a license every year, so as to keep the professions up to a high standard. ”

“ More than a year and a half ago, I asked Congress to pass a strong, enforceable Patients' Bill of Rights that ensures critical protections for Americans in managed care, from the right to see a specialist if your doctor recommends it to the right to emergency room care whenever and wherever you need it to the right to keep your doctor through a treatment—even if your employer changes HMO coverage—to the right to hold health plans accountable for harmful decisions. ”

“ The Health Department is usurping the powers of the Legislature, which it has no authority to do. The law plainly states what the physician shall report and the Board of Health has no power to require additional matters. ”

“ The object of this Course of Lectures is to communicate such a knowledge of medicine, and its collateral sciences, as is absolutely necessary in the practice of your profession. Questions of the highest interest, in a social point of view, are constantly occurring in our various courts of justice, some affecting the rights of property, some the health and comforts of whole communities, and some the character, the liberty, or the lives of individuals, the determination of which depends almost entirely on evidence derived from the medical sciences. ”

“ We perceive nothing in the statute which indicates an intention of the legislature to deprive one of any of his rights. No one has a right to practise medicine without having the necessary qualifications of learning and skill; and the statute only requires that whoever assumes, by offering to the community his services as a physician, that he possesses such learning and skill, shall present evidence of it by a certificate or license from a body designated by the State as competent to judge of his qualifications. ”

“ President, if this powerfully organized and dominating sect of medicine, which now has such a dangerous [Pg 67] power in our body politic, will cast out the blinding “beams” of compulsory medicine, inflicted disease and medical falsification out of its mental eyes it may then be able to see clearly to cast out the relatively harmless medical “motes” out of the eyes of our fellow men. ”

“ If the focus on the bill of rights is on the issues that involve people's health care, such as a woman's right to go see her OB/GYN without going to first a gatekeeper or a primary physician, if it involves somebody's right to go to an emergency room without having to first dial an 800 number, then our nation will have a patient bill of rights that this President will sign. ”

“ The charter invested the society, their members and licentiates, with large powers and privileges, in regulating the important public interest of the practice of medicine and surgery, enabled them to prescribe a course of studies, to examine candidates in regard to their qualifications for practice, and give letters testimonial to those who might be found duly qualified. ”

“ In adverting to the conflicting views and differences of opinion, that exist and have ever existed in the practice of the healing art, it is not to call in question the value of learned, skilful and experienced physicians, but merely to show the error of attempting, in the present state of medical science, to recognize, as matter of law, any one system of practice, or of declaring that the practitioner who follows a particular system is a doctor, and that one who pursues a different method is not. ”

“ Amongst other symptoms of advancing civilisation proper to this period, was an effort towards the correction of unauthorised medical practice. ‘Persons without knowledge of the science of medicine’ were everywhere practising, ‘to the great and evident hazard of the lives and healths of many of our subjects;’ so declared the king. ”

“ Index, for p. 156-184, read 320-348.
i_b INTRODUCTION. Medical Jurisprudence [1] may be defined, a science by which medicine, and its collateral branches, are made subservient to the construction, elucidation, and administration of the laws; and to the preservation of the public health. ”

“ Without a proper discrimination with regard to the disease and the constitution of the patient, the most powerful medicine is more likely to do harm than good. Every one knows that the same physician who, by cold bathing, cured Augustus, by an imprudent use of the same medicine killed his heir. ”

“ Nothing in the above act shall prevent any person, not a British subject, who shall have obtained from any foreign university a degree or diploma of doctor in medicine, and who shall have passed the regular examinations entitling him to practise medicine in his own country, from being and acting as the resident physician or medical officer of any hospital established exclusively for the relief of foreigners in sickness ”

“ But it may be worth while to note that we have, in the variety of forms in which the same constitutional bad quality may present itself, evidence that what is actually transmitted is not a peculiarity affecting a particular organ, even though in several successive generations the disease may show itself in the same part of the body, but an affection of the constitution generally. ”

“ The fact that the physician does not prescribe does not defeat the privilege; if the information is acquired in the course of professional employment the statute operates, for the decision that neither advice nor medicine is needed is a professional act within the spirit of the law. ”

“ For a very considerable period a movement has been gathering strength, especially among the members of the medical profession, in favor of a concentration of the instruments of the National Government which have to do with the promotion of public health. ”

“ The legislator, on whom it devolves to preserve the health of the social organism, ought to imitate the physician, who preserves the health of the individual by the aid of experimental science, resorts as little as possible, and only in extreme cases, to the more forcible methods of surgery, has a limited confidence in the problematic efficiency of medicines, and relies rather on the trustworthy processes of hygienic science. ”

“ It accordingly resolves itself into two great divisions—into Forensic Medicine, comprehending the evidence and opinions necessary to be delivered in courts of justice; and into Medical Police, embracing ii_bthe consideration of the policy and efficiency of legal enactments for the purpose of preserving the general health, and physical welfare of the community.
Under no circumstances does medical science assume so imposing and dignified an attitude, as when regarded as a branch of legislation. ”

“ Surely, therefore, there is no individual or personal right more inherent and natural and more sacred and obvious or more surely guaranteed in Declaration and Constitution than the right to medical freedom of the body, the right to health and life and the right of the individual to select and decide freely for himself the medical treatment of his own body, and the right to guard it against any medical treatment or operation which in his own judgment and conscience may be unnecessary or undesirable or may involve great risk or suffering to himself or may seriously endanger his health or life. ”

“ This week in Washington, we have turned our attention to the goal of better health care for all Americans. I have asked Congress to send me a strong patients' bill of rights; one that provides immediate access to specialists, and an immediate appeal to a panel of doctors when an HMO denies care. ”

“ The same reasons which control in imposing conditions, upon compliance with which the physician is allowed to practise in the first instance, may call for further conditions as new modes of treating disease are discovered, or a more thorough acquaintance is obtained of the remedial properties of vegetable and mineral substances, or a more accurate knowledge is acquired of the human system and of the agencies by which it is affected. ”