Ira Collins v. State of Texas
| Decision Date | 19 February 1912 |
| Docket Number | No. 165,165 |
| Citation | 223 U.S. 288,56 L.Ed. 439,32 S.Ct. 286 |
| Parties | IRA W. COLLINS, Plff. in Err., v. STATE OF TEXAS |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Millard Patterson and John F. Woodson for plaintiff in error.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 288-290 intentionally omitted] Mr. Jewel P. Lightfoot, Attorney General of Texas, Messrs. James D. Walthall and C. E. Lane, Assistants to the Attorney General, and Messrs. James N. Wilkerson, Timothy J. Scofield, and Frank J. Loesch for defendant in error.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 290-294 intentionally omitted] Mr. Justice Holmes delivered the opinion of the court:
This is a writ of error to the Texas court of criminal appeals upon a judgment denying the plaintiff in error a release by habeas corpus. The plaintiff in error is held upon an information charging him with practising medicine for money by treating a named patient for hay fever by osteopathy, without having registered his authority, as required by a Texas statute of 1907, chap. 123. He denies the constitutionality of the act.
The statute establishes a board of medical examiners, and requires 'all legal practitioners of medicine in this state, who, practising under the provisions of previous laws, or under diplomas of a reputable and legal college of medicine, have not already received license from a state medical examining board of this state,' to prove their diplomas, or existing license, or exemption existing under any law; whereupon they are to receive a verification license. § 6. By § 7, applicants not licensed under § 6 must pass an examination, conditioned, among other things, on their being graduates of 'bona fide reputable medical schools;' to be considered reputable 'whose entrance requirements and courses of instruction are as high as those adopted by the better class of medical schools of the United States, whose course of instruction shall embrace not less than four terms of five months each.' By § 9 the examinations are to be fair to every school of medicine, are to be conducted on the scientific branches of medicine only, and are to include anatomy, physiology, chemistry, histology, pathology, bacteriology, physical diagnosis, surgery, obstetrics, gynecology, hygiene, and medical jurisprudence. Those who pass are to be granted licenses to practise medicine. By § 10 nothing in the act is to be construed to discriminate against any particular system, and the act is not to apply to dentists legally registered and confining themselves to dentistry, nurses who practise only nursing, masseurs, or surgeons of the United States Army, Navy, etc., in the performance of their duties.
The only other material sections of the act are §§ 13 and 14, the former of which declares that By § 14 any person practising medicine in violation of the act is punished by fine and imprisonment, and is not to recover anything for the services rendered.
The facts charged against the plaintiff in error are admitted. It also is admitted that before the passage of the statute he had spent $5,000 in fitting up his place, and was deriving a net income from his calling of at least the same sum. He held a diploma from the chartered American School of Osteopathy, Kirksville, Missouri, after a full two years' course of study there, but it does not appear that he presented this diploma to the board of medical examiners, or attempted to secure either a verification license or license in any form. The board, in passing upon qualifications, does not examine in therapeutics or materia medica, which, it will be observed, are not mentioned in the act. On these facts we are of opinion that the plaintiff in error fails to show that the statute inflicts any wrong upon him, contrary to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. If he has not suffered, we are not called upon to speculate upon other cases, or to decide whether the followers of Christian Science or other people might, in some event, have cause to complain.
We are far from agreeing with the plaintiff in error that the definition of practising medicine in § 13 is arbitrary or irrational, but it would be immaterial if it were, as its only object is to explain who fall within the purview of the act. That it does, and of course we follow the Texas court in its decision that the plaintiff in error is included. It is true that he does not administer drugs, but he practises what at least purports to be the healing art. The state constitutionally may prescribe conditions to such practice, considered by it to be necessary or useful to secure competence in those who follow it. We should presume, until the Texas courts say otherwise, that the reference in § 4 to the diploma of a reputable and...
To continue reading
Request your trial
-
Davis v. Beeler
...prior to the enactment of the statutes. Dent v. West Virginia, 129 U.S. 114, 122, 9 S.Ct. 231, 32 L.Ed. 623; Collins v. Texas, 223 U. S. 288, 295, 32 S.Ct. 286, 56 L.Ed. 439; Lawrence v. Board of Registration, 239 Mass. 424, 132 N.E. 174, 176. The state may change the qualifications from ti......
-
Pate v. Bank of Newton
... ... The ... charter of the Bank of Newton was a contract between the ... state of Mississippi and the incorporators. Stone v. M ... V. R. R. Co., 62 Miss. 607; Forsdick v ... 106, 28 S.Ct. 22; So. R. Co. v. King, 217 U.S. 524, ... 54 L.Ed. 868, 30 S.Ct. 594; Collins v. Tex, 223 U.S ... 288, 56 L.Ed. 439, 32 S.Ct. 286; Standard Stock Food Co ... v. Wright, ... ...
-
Mancuso v. Taft
...— which are not before us — demonstrate that plaintiff was in any respect denied equal protection.2 In Collins v. Texas, 223 U.S. 288, 295-296, 32 S.Ct. 286, 288, 56 L.Ed. 439 (1912), where an unregistered osteopath challenged state registration laws for doctors, Mr. Justice Holmes said, "O......
-
Aptheker v. Secretary of State
...852; Yazoo & Mississippi Valley R. Co. v. Jackson Vinegar Co., 226 U.S. 217, 33 S.Ct. 40, 57 L.Ed. 193; Collins v. State of Texas, 223 U.S. 288, 295—296, 32 S.Ct. 286, 288, 56 L.Ed. 439; People of State of New York ex rel. Hatch v. Reardon, 204 U.S. 152, 160—161, 27 S.Ct. 188, 190—191, 51 L......
-
Inconvenient Federalism: The Pandemic, Abortion Rights, and the Commerce Clause
...and demanding different standards of conduct from those which are traditional in the competition of the market place”); Collins v. Texas, 223 U.S. 288, 297 (1912) (“An osteopath undertakes to be something more than a nurse or a masseur, and the difference rests precisely in a claim to great......
-
To pay or not to pay: Medicare and the preventable adverse event: a rational decision or dangerous philosophical change?
...for more effectively"). (184) 42 U.S.C. [section] 1395 (1965). (185) Id. (186) See supra notes 75, 183. (187) Collins v. State of Texas, 223 U.S. 288, 288 (1912) (finding osteopathic physicians subject to licensing (188) See, e.g., Gonzales v. Oregon, 546 U.S. 243 (2006) (finding that physi......