Commonwealth v. Lindsey

• Decision Date: 09 March 1916
• Citation: 223 Mass. 392,111 N.E. 869
• Parties: COMMONWEALTH v. LINDSEY (two cases).
• Court: United States State Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts Supreme Court

223 Mass. 392

111 N.E. 869

COMMONWEALTH

v.LINDSEY (two cases).

Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Worcester.

March 9, 1916.

Exceptions from Superior Court, Worcester County; George A. Sanderson, Judge.

Willard M. Lindsey was convicted of unlawfully practicing medicine, and he excepts. Exceptions overruled.

The following is defendant's requested instruction No. 2, which was denied.

‘(2) If the people who consulted the defendant believed him to be a clairvoyant and the defendant purported to treat them by that method of treatment or if he purported to ascertain their physical condition by means of clairvoyance, it is not important for the jury to decide what constitutes clairvoyance.’

J. A. Stiles, Dist. Atty., of Gardner, and E. T. Esty, Asst. Dist. Atty., of Worcester, for the Commonwealth.

J. W. Ramsey and S. R. Cutler, both of Boston, for defendant.

CARROLL, J.

These two complaints are for the violation of R. L. c. 76, § 8. They each allege that the defendant, on November 30, 1914, unlawfully, did practice medicine, not being lawfully authorized and registered as required by law.

1. Near the street door of the building, in which the defendant carried on his business, was the sign, ‘Dr. Willard M. Lindsey, Inc.’ This was the name of a corporation of which he was the president. He also, was the president of another corporation, The Magnetic Sanitarium Company.

Three women testified as witnesses for the commonwealth. Each called at the defendant's office on two or more occasions. He did not permit any of them to tell him her symptoms. On each occasion, he stated to them their ailments; to one of the witnesses he said, ‘Do not tell me what ails you. I will tell you myself. Don't tell me a thing.’ On the first visit each of the witnesses paid him $2.75, receiving from him a bottle of medicine on which were the directions, the defendant saying to one of the women, ‘One dollar [is] for the office call and $1.75 for the medicine.’ On all other visits, the witnesses paid $1.75, and received a bottle of medicine.

One of the witness testified that, on one occasion she told the defendant her brother was sick. The defendant said he could help him, and she ‘got a bottle of medicine for her brother and paid $2.75 for the same.’ The brother also, was a witness for the commonwealth. He testified, that after his sister's visit to the defendant, he called on him and was told ‘to bathe himself with witch hazel’; ‘that he could get it at a grocery store.’ Nothing was paid by him to the defendant.

James T. Davidson, an inspector of the Worcester police, testified that on November 24, 1914, while in ‘a small alley-way leading to a freight elevator,’ from which there was a door to the defendant's office, over which was a transom, he heard the defendantsay: ‘You are the next. Step in this way. You see these?’ as if the defendant lifted something; he then heard a noise of ‘something falling as if into a tray or receptacle of some kind.’

The defendant was the only witness in his own behalf, he said that the things described by Inspector Davidson, ‘were taken from the bodies of different people, they were cancers, tumors * * * gall stones and gravel stones which the medicine had taken out of people through the power which he possessed.’ He claimed to be a clairvoyant and magnetic healer. ‘People came in and sat down; that he looked at them and told them everything that had happened to them from childhood to the grave, which he had power to do, that is born in his body.’ On cross-examination he testified that ‘in selling medicine he was acting as president for the Magnetic Sanitarium Company or the Dr. Willard M. Lindsey, Inc., * * * that he charged $2.75 for the first bottle because the first bottle of medicine cost him more than the rest to manufacture.’ He also said ‘that he had twenty-five or thirty different kinds of medicine, all of which were patented by him; that he determined what medicine * * * to give by his judgment reached through clairvoyancy.’

There was additional evidence, introduced by the commonwealth, tending to prove the defendant's guilt. From this brief recital of the testimony, it clearly appears to have been for the jury to decide the question: Was the defendant violating the statute by unlawfully practicing medicine? There was no error in refusing the first request. If the defendant was a clairvoyant and as such came within the exception of the statute, he could not prescribe medicine for the cure of disease, even if the diagnosis of it and the kind of medicines prescribed were revealed to him through clairvoyance. Com. v. De Lon, 219 Mass. 217, 106 N. E. 846. It was plainly for the jury to say whether, in the sale of the medicines he was acting entirely as the agent of the corporations, or was engaged at the time in the practice of medicine.

2. The defendant's second request was not given in its exact language. The defendant's guilt or...