People ex rel. Illinois State Bd. of Health v. Smith

• Decision Date: 17 February 1904
• Citation: 69 N.E. 810,208 Ill. 31
• Parties: PEOPLE, for Use of ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF HEALTH, v. SMITH.
• Court: Illinois Supreme Court

208 Ill. 31

69 N.E. 810

PEOPLE, for Use of ILLINOIS STATE BOARD OF HEALTH,

v.SMITH.

Supreme Court of Illinois.

Feb. 17, 1904.

Error to Appellate Court, Second District.

Action by the people, for use of Illinois State Board of Health, against Charles Lincoln Smith. From a judgment of the Appellate Court (108 Ill. App. 499) reversing a judgment against the defendant, the people bring error. Affirmed.

Whitmore, Barnes & Boulware, for plaintiff in error.

I. C. Pinkney, for defendant in error.

WILKIN, J.

This case was submitted at a prior term on appeal from the Appellate Court, and was remanded to that court, with directions, if it adhered to its judgment of reversal, to incorporate in it a statement of facts, in compliance with section 88 of the practice act. See 199 Ill. 20, 64 N. E. 972. It has again reversed the judgment of the circuit court, without remandment, and certified in its judgment the following statement of facts: ‘We find that appellant was engaged in the business of traveling optician; that he went from place to place in this state, including Peoria, where the acts in question were performed; that he fitted spectacles to persons of defective sight, first ascertaining, by tests, the kind of lens required by his customer, then procuring glasses to be ground accordingly, and placed in a frame and delivered to his customers, and receiving payment therefor; that he advertised himself in the public press as ‘the famous Chicago eye expert,’ and in such advertisements he invited persons afflicted with blurring, dizziness, neuralgia, headaches, spots before the eyes, inflammation, granulation, winking, trembling spells, cataract, burning and smarting of the eyes, and various nervous brain affections, to call upon him; that these advertisements stated that he did not give medical or surgical treatment; that in these advertisements he stated that his glasses, fitted and ground by his method, benefited his patrons, and had cured headaches, blurring, itching, and burning of the eyes, etc. We find that appellant's glasses relieved such troubles while they were used, but did not cure them. We find that appellant had no license from the State Board of Health. We find that appellant did not practice medicine or surgery. We further find that appellant did not treat, or profess to treat, operate on, or prescribe for, any physical ailment or any physical injury to or deformity of another, except in the manner and to the extent above stated. We find that the foregoing were the acts for which appellee sought to recover and recovered from appellant in this cause the penalty prescribed by the act entitled ‘An act to regulate the practice of medicine in the state of Illinois, and to repeal an act therein named,’ in force July 1, 1899. Laws 1899, p. 273. We hold that these facts did not give appellee a cause of action against appellant.'

Counsel for plaintiff in error have devoted a considerable part of their brief and argument to the contention that this is not a case in which the Appellate Court was authorized to incorporate in its judgment a finding of facts. But that question is settled by our repeated decisions to the contrary. Moreover, it was decided upon the former hearing of the case that, inasmuch as that court reversed the judgment of the circuit court without remanding the cause, it was its duty to find and recite in its judgment the facts, and the case was remanded for that purpose. It is also too well settled to be longer a matter of controversy that this court is concluded by the facts so found, and that we can only upon this writ of error determine whether or not the Appellate Court properly applied the law to the...