Legislative Quackery, Ignorance, and Blindness to the Future.
In Iowa, by the management of a medical clique, a law has been juggled through the Legislature, under which the founders of Christianity would have been criminals, and prolonged imprisonment might have been as effective as crucifixion. That any class of men could have been mean enough and shameless enough to ask for such a law is a sad commentary on the demoralizing influence of medical schools, from which they derived their inspiration; and that any legislative body could have yielded to the demand is another illustration of the well known corruption of political life.
The Iowa papers state that Mrs. Post, of McGregor, Iowa, has been twice arrested, convicted, and fined fifty dollars and costs for praying with the sick and curing them. European tyranny is eclipsed in Iowa. The old world is freer than the new, if the medical clique are allowed to rule. G. Milner Stephen performs his miraculous cures in London with honor, and Dorothea Trudell had her house of cure by prayer in Switzerland, which has been made famous in religious literature. All over Europe the people enjoy a freedom in the choice of their physicians which has been prohibited in Iowa.
The Legislature of Maine which adjourned March 17 was induced, by the newspaper comments on two bogus institutions which had been chartered some years ago, to depart from their settled policy and pass a law prepared by the medical clique, but not quite as stringent as that of Iowa. Gov. Bodwell, however, vetoed the bill, pointing out its objectionable features, and the Senate, which had passed it unanimously, after being enlightened by the governor rejected it by a nearly two thirds majority, showing how thoughtlessly a great deal of our legislation is effected.
Under the laws which the colleges and their clique seek to establish, Priessnitz could never have introduced hydropathy, Pasteur could not have inoculated for hydrophobia without danger of imprisonment, and the great American Medical Reformation, which abolished the lancet and mercurial practice, and which is now represented by seven colleges, would have been strangled at its birth, for its primitive origin was outside of college authority. There are other great ideas, great discoveries, great reforms, not yet strong enough to be embodied in colleges, which medical legislation is designed to suppress, to enforce a creedal uniformity.
Another piece of legislative quackery is revealed in the action of Congress as stated in the following paragraph concerning “a new bureau.”
“One of the acts of the retiring Congress has not been noted so far, but, though not a large item in itself, it is the entering wedge of subsequent legislation which will be of the highest importance to the country. It is the item in the legislative appropriation bill which allows of the expenditure of $10,000 by the bureau of labor “for the collection of statistics of and relating to marriage and divorce in the several states and territories, and in the District of Columbia.” This gives the opportunity, which has heretofore not existed, to obtain reasonably accurate statistics of what is going on as concerns the integrity of the family throughout the whole country. This will be a department under Col. Wright, in the work of the bureau of labor, and is one of the results of persistent work which the National Divorce League has done, under the direction of its secretary, Rev. S. W. Dike. Col. Wright has already formulated plans which are likely to make this new branch of the labor bureau the channel for one of the most valuable reports which have yet come from his hands. It will be the gathering of facts whose study will suggest wise legislation in the future.”
It may not be absolutely unconstitutional for Congress to collect such statistics, but it is contrary to the spirit of the constitution. Congress has nothing whatever to do with such social questions, which are exclusively matters of state legislation. It has allowed itself to be made a cat’s paw by the National Divorce League for its retrogressive policy. The welfare of society is deeply concerned in breaking up all unhappy, discordant marriages, which are simply nurseries of misery and crime. Every generous sentiment should prompt us to go to the relief of the large number of women who suffer in secret from tyranny and brutality, while from poverty, timidity, helplessness, and a dread of publicity or censure, they endure their wrongs in silence, and continue to bear children cursed from their conception with intemperance and brutality. And when they seek to escape, a barbarian law comes in to give the brutal husband the ownership of their offspring; and thus they are bound fast as galley slaves in their unhappy position.
The Legislature of Massachusetts had the opportunity of redressing this wrong at their present session; but, like other masculine legislatures in the past, they were deaf to the voice of mercy, and the press quietly reports (March 18) that “Inexpedient was reported by the House judiciary committee on equalizing the respective rights of husband and wife in relation to their minor children, and on equalizing their interest in each other’s property.”
The ladies who are so active in behalf of woman suffrage might have taken more interest in this vital question, which was so easily disposed of. A great wrong remains unredressed.