which makes something and nothing of it in a single breath. Engineers and architects differ much in their estimates, and the state could, consequently, neither teach engineering or architecture; and whoever thinks the state might teach law because it is more perfect and certain than medicine, had better get once in its toils, and he would speedily return to medicine for something fixed and definite. Would it not have been more rational for a society of medical men to have offered some proof to correct the false notion that medicine is unworthy to be ranked among the sciences, than to have helped to fasten this stigma long ago unjustly placed upon it by other professions? On what fact of history did this committee base its assertion?

If the State should teach anything, it should teach medicine, for as Spencer has truly declared, "first in importance to the individual is that knowledge necessary to self-preservation." "If it be possible to perfect mankind, the means of doing so will be found in the medical sciences," was a declaration of Descartes more than two centuries ago, and the learned Whewell in the last generation said: "Medicine is one of the greatest divisions of human culture, and must be considered as taking in the whole of physical sciences." And still later another noted writer declares, that the "study of medicine is the one best. suited to the development of the intellectual life." Does it become our profession to defame their own studies as too narrow, vague, and s ctarian to be patronized by the State? Then, indeed, if the State can not discriminate what to teach in medicine, it can not discriminate what to employ. No medical charity can be sustained by the State. There can be no medical superintendent for an insane asylum, almshouse or State hospital. No State Board of Health can be maintained, at any rate in this State, since one of the duties of its Secretary, as defined by law, is to collect knowledge respecting disease, and all useful information on the subject of hygiene, and through an annual report, or otherwise, to disseminate such information among the people. The Secretary of our State Board of Health was on

the committee reporting this resolution, and voted for its passage.

Is it a wonder that an intelligent press should declare that. these men forgot they were in the nineteenth century and thought they were in the fifteenth?

When the fourth resolution is considered, absurdity outdoes itself. If there was a violation of ethics, either in letter or spirit, by the admission of these homoeopathic students into the lecture rooms of the regular medical department, it was Dr. Rynd, a Regent of the University, and the members of the regular medical Faculty, who belonged to the State Society, who should have been disciplined. Was this attempted? No. It would not have been so efficient in frightening students away from the regular school. Instead of this they propose to refuse fellowship with the regular graduates of the University. Why? Because they have been taught or believe medical heresy? No. Is it because they have done or declared their intention to do wrong? No. Is it because they are not as well qualified in their profession as others? No; but because their teachers had revealed our art to others than the elect, in violation of the old law, originally proclaimed by the priests of the temples of Æsculapius, who, having turned the therapeutic knowledge they possessed into a source of revenue and extortion, proclaimed that purely commercial policy that was lately ratified by the Michigan State Society. So these graduates, who, by their own acts, only offend by sitting in the same room with irregular students, whom they never invite to sit with them, are to be ostracized by men who for the past three years have been affectionately courting irregulars with a view to a closer union.

Let us briefly consider what effect this frightening of regular students or the destruction of the regular department would have upon regular practice throughout the State and country. The homœopath would argue, and many would believe, that it was because regular medicine could not stand the comparison. It would be said when homoeopaths were admitted they had only twenty

students and the regulars more than three hundred, now the regulars have none, but the homœopaths have a flourishing school. Does any man doubt that such a result would bolster up homœopathy, and increase, at the expense of the regular, the homoeopath's practice. In discussing this subject, the editor of a weekly paper, perfectly neutral on the question of homoeopathy, declared that in his opinion, if the "regulars" were afraid to compete in the same University with the "irregular" practice, they would act just as they did at their last meeting of the State Society.

Another editor declares that: "In this State homoeopathy owes a debt of gratitude to the men who passed these resolutions." Another says: "Such action as theirs goes far to prove to the people that if either school must be abolished in the University it should not be the homeopathic." It is a good rule in morals to avoid not only evil but the appearance of evil, and it would be wise for our profession to avoid not only bigotry but the appearance of bigotry.

Some, seeing the absurdity of urging the faculty to resign, strive all the same to force them into it, by joining their assailants, giving as an excuse for their attack that the faculty should have protested.

The faculty have been protesting for more than twenty years, and had succeeded in keeping homeopathy out of the University by representing that the profession were so adverse to any false system of practice that they would not tolerate any "compromise" with irregular medicine, and that its introduction into the University, in any form, would be regarded as an insult to the regular profession, and alienate them from the Medical Department. Seeing that the faculty were successful, these men who had determined to ruin the school, by the report of Dr. Pratt to the Board of Regents, and the activity with which they engaged in, and gave prominence to the "Board of Censors" bill, gave the lie to the faculty's protest, helped homeopathy into the University, and then in derision call on them for another protest. Such impudence is only equalled by their passage of resolutions

declaring our position to be inconsistent with honor, and then blandly assuring us that they intended no ecnsure, and that it illbecomes us to resent their treatment!

Is it a protest these men want? The faculty made one for them and they repudiated it. Let them now make their own protests. Let their protest be worthy of liberal men, who are more desirous to elevate their profession than to aid private medical schools. Let them ask the Legislature and Regents to eliminate all sectarianism from the University, and there will again be Union in our profession, and this contest, so disgraceful, will be at an end. And, if it so be that an investigation shall prove, as the State Society in effect asserts, that regular medicine is too narrow, bigoted and sectarian, to be worthy a place in a public educational system, though in sorrow for this degradation of our science, cheerfully for myself will I leave a position the duties of which for the past years, by the reason of these attacks of base rivals, and defense needful for existence, have seemed to me more like Paul's fighting beasts at Ephesus than the legiti mate work of a beneficent profession.

ANN ARBOR, August 28, 1876.

GEO. E. FROTHINGHAM, M. D.

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MICHIGAN STATE BOARD OF HEALTH.

HENRY B. BAKER, M. D., Secretary of the Michigan State Board of Health:

Dear Sir.—I have this day received a letter asking for information in regard to the prevailing diseases in my field of practice. I have not been engaged in practice for several weeks and consequently can give no information on this subject that would be sufficiently accurate to serve your purpose.

In view of the labor I have on hand for the coming winter, I cannot undertake to correspond with your Board, though I am in hearty sympathy with the object for which it was created. Although opposed to the appropriation of public funds in

support of sectarian medicine, I yet believe that one of the chief duties of the State is to protect its citizens, and to cultivate and disseminate all knowledge that has a tendency to lessen disease, or promote the physical welfare of our race. This science of preventing, curing, or alleviating diseases, is known as the science of medicine, and as I understand the object of your Board, it is to cultivate and teach this knowledge to the people. The injurious effects of alcohol, your Board faithfully taught, regardless of the denunciations of those who declared that State funds should not be used for teaching such subjects.

At the time, I regarded the establishment of your Board as one of the triumphs of advancing civilization, and I am now grieved that any of its members should openly advocate principles that would lead to its abolishment. Or especially that your President should "deem it an outrage" to teach this art to any one who is to take into custody human life, and who, by receiving such instruction, will be better qualified to relieve and prevent disease.

Hoping that a regard for that noble principle of our Code of Ethics, which commands us to continue our labors for the alleviation of the suffering, even at the sacrifice of our own lives, and that leads us, through the labors of our Boards of Health, to remove sources of disease at the sacrifice of professional business and profit, will lead all the members of our profession, in your Board, to sacrifice prejudice, and all principles of policy that affect simply the welfare of a single class, and to educate even quacks up to "par" with the most skilful of our profession, if by so doing you can prevent the suffering of the people who would otherwise be tortured by their malpractice, I remain Truly yours,

G. E. FROTHINGHAM.

DETROIT, August 25, 1876.