CORRESPONDENCE.

Thames Advertiser, Volume XX, Issue 6160, 31 July 1888, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

OCR correspondents aro tree, and wo do not hold ourselves responsible for the opinions they e» press Letters must invariably be accompanied by tho name and address of the writtrs, notford publication but for vcritlcation. We do not undertake to return uuused manuscript,)

MEDICAL MONOPOLIES, (To tho Editor) Sir,—As no poison is so bad as that which poisons the phytic, so no monopoly'is so oppressive as that which forces the sick poor into the power of sinister purposed healera, who jcannot only gratify personal feeling but ruin their patients by extracting enormouß fees out of all reasonable proportion to the services rendered to themor to their pecuniary circumstances. The study of medicine and the healing art should be encouraged by freeing it from all monopoly or class restrictions. If all were deposed from right to practice, who permitted patients to die under their treatment, without being able to give the most convincing, and satis factory reasons for it-then doctors would begin to feel some responsibility -and they would assuredly save many lives thev now | kill by their bundling, or negleet. lt is a gross and wide-sprcad superstition, that a doctor can discover disease by feeling the pulse, looking atthc tongue, etc.,—al though ,he knows nothing of the constitution or habits of the patients,-and the belief in this supposed means of knowing the secret, is fostered by the orthodox medicos. Another medium of cruel extortion is that ol encouraging the erroneous opinioti of the people that a doctor's certificate as to cause of death is needed, and that interment cannot legally take place without it, and concealing the fact that the Law requires only in case of death, that some one present during the last moments, or some inmate of the tenement in which the death has happened, must within five days after the event, give notice to the register of the district, and the informants must within eight days, to the be3t of his or her belief instruct the register on the following pointa —the day of death j the name and snrname, sext; age; rank; or trade, of the deceased; and the cause of death, The person giving the information must write in the registec his or her name, with such other note aa circumstances require for identification* No fee can be] lawfully taken from the person giving the information. .But however much, doctors know of this lay, or may have de« termined not to know, they have where-eve* located demonstrated that they do know enough successfully to appeal to the bigotted prejudices of ,the weak-minded in and out of office, and to exoite the sinister purposes of law makers, aud have obtained, and are still seeking to obtain by such discreditable means, the enactment of statutes whioh virtually amount to legal interdiction of all progress in remedial matters, and' an ex. elusive remanding into the professional (?) hands of allopathy and its allies, beyond appeal ot the dearest rights i,e, to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, of supposed free citizens. Similar efforts, unsuccessfully made in times past, for Hospital government, are, there is every reason to anticipate, about to be recommenced, " Throw out opium" says Dr Oliver Wendell Holmes in his Currents and Counter—Currents in Medical Science "—Throw out a few specifics whioh our art did not discover, and is hardly needed to apply; throw out wine, which is a food, and anasthetic vapors, and 1 firmly believe that if the whole materia mediea, as now nsed, could be 3unk tp the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind, and all the worse for the fishes," Was it not an orthodox, allopathic college-diplomated M.D, who, to the enquiry how he succeeded with his first patients, answered: " Nicely! nicely! the mother and child are both dead, but 1 am in strong hopes to pull the old man through" Medical practice, in each and all the diverse schools of medioine, is more or less oonjeo tural and experimental, Every system has its own special and peculiar method of treating disease; that is, its ewn system of therapeutics. This it employs to. the exclusion and not unfrequently in vilification ot all other modes. In none has a more virulent spirit been manifested on the part of its practitioners or more violent and harmful medicines been administered,' than in the regular allopathic practices Its characteristics have been apparent from very early times. Of whom, unless of the Regulars did patient suffering Joby complain when he said "ye are all physicians of no value, ye are forgers of lies 1" Whom, except to the Regulars, did Asa, King of Judah seek for the cure of his disease; and as a consequence slept withjhis fathers,Jand died 1 And \yho, unless the Regulars, profited t from all the living which the woman with* the issue of blood expended upon them—she who suffered man? things from them, and was nothing bettered, hut rather grew worse? The victims of the regular Allopathic practice ara innumerable. Their long and ghostly procession sketches back through the ages. Allopathic practice has ( devastated with fearful slaughter, both sexes, and all ages, ranks and conditions ot men. Tlie black flag and pirate ship on sea are supplemented by the Allopathic doctor, funeral hearse and despoiled grave on land, I : am etc,, A Subscriber,

'P. S, '—Although bold investigation may {llpm many A,llopathia doctors and their supporters, it would be paying too great a epmpliment to selfishness or credulity to forbear it on that account; the times antl the subject demand it tQ ha done. The suspicion that what is oalled the Kegular medical practiae i§ injurious, and the monopolies by which it is hedged round morally 'unjust, isbeooming very extensive in all povmtries, and it will be a oonsolation to men staggering under that suspicion, to sea the subject freely investigated,, and to demand, if found unjust, the abolition of all medical monopolies—S,