Article September 7, 1912 Issue

The committee of one hundred is working hard to secure...

New York (N. Y.) Commercial

The committee of one hundred is working hard to secure the organization of a federal health bureau, against which some opposition has developed on account of the fear that it would pass into the hands of a certain school of medicine and would be abused by the doctors of that school. Its most active opponents are the Christian Scientists.

It would be well to protect people from the acts of others, but it is easy to overstep the mark and interfere with the liberty of the individual in things that affect only himself and his family. We must be protected from food and drug adulterators by strict enforcement of the law, and quarantine against contagious diseases is indispensable. This is generally conceded; but the trouble is that the doctors seek to obtain power to make physical examination and even perform operations without the consent of the patient, or of his parents when he is a child.

Pure food, pure milk, pure water, pure air, all come within the proper scope of a public health act; but the advisability of performing an operation for the extirpation of a cancer certainly does not. The public health should be safeguarded by prevention, but the matter of cure must be left to the individual until at least the time comes when the doctors can agree on some elementary facts and principles. The enforcement of pure food and quarantine laws and the gathering of vital statistics give health officers enough to do. Plenty of surgeons can be found who advocate that every one have his vermiform appendix cut out to prevent appendicitis. We must stop somewhere short of that sort of thing.

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