State v. Boston

• Decision Date: 15 February 1939
• Docket Number: 43483.
• Citation: 284 N.W. 143,226 Iowa 429
• Parties: STATE v. BOSTON.
• Court: Iowa Supreme Court

284 N.W. 143

226 Iowa 429

STATE v. BOSTON.

No. 43483.

Supreme Court of Iowa.

February 15, 1939

Appeal from District Court, Scott County; Wm. W. Scott, Judge.

Equity action to restrain defendant by injunction from alleged unlawful practice of medicine. From the decree of the trial court both parties appealed.

Reversed on plaintiff's appeal, with instructions. Affirmed on defendant's appeal.

Supplementing opinion in 278 N.W. 291.

John J. Mitchell, Atty. Gen., and Block, Block & Agnew, of Davenport, for the State.

A. T Holmes, of LaCrosse, Wis., J. M. Maloney, of Davenport, L. E Linnan, of Algona, and W. B. Sloan, of Des Moines, for appellee.

HALE Justice.

The facts are fully set out in the former opinion, reported in 278 N.W. 291, of which this supplemental opinion is now made a part.

The injunctive portion of the decree of the trial court is set out in the original opinion and only needs to be referred to here. In short, it forbids the use of certain appliances or modalities, but permits defendant to recommend to a patient changes in diet, under certain restrictions. From the decree except as to that part concerning diet, defendant appealed and from that part permitting advising as to diet, the State appealed. The appeal was heard and determined in this court, and was reversed on plaintiff's appeal, with instructions, and affirmed on defendant's appeal. State v. Boston, 278 N.W. 291, 292.

Rehearing was granted June 24, 1938, and the case is now before us on such rehearing.

The defendant in his reply to plaintiff's argument on rehearing alleges that there is only one issue in this case, and that is: " Do the things which the evidence shows the defendant did, constitute the practice of medicine and surgery?" Such was the question on the former hearing: " Whether the district court correctly held that the use of these things in the treatment of human ailments was not chiropractic, but constitutes practice of medicine."

This case was thoroughly argued and presented on the former hearing, and in the argument on this rehearing little has been added other than to amplify the arguments on the former submission. The defendant urges, as on the former hearing, that the statutes of Iowa make a chiropractor a member of the healing professions, with authority to use any agency in accomplishing this result of healing the sick so long as he did not violate the express statutory provisions found in the Code; and that our interpretation of the statutes permitting and regulating the practice of his profession is too narrow in restricting the persons so practicing to the provisions of section 2555 of the Code.

We repeat the provisions of that section, so far as applicable: " Persons who treat human ailments by the adjustment by hand of the articulations of the spine or by other incidental adjustments."

The statutory definition does not vary to any great extent from the well-known and generally accepted definition of this form of the healing art.

See 11 C.J. p. 758: " Chiropractics. A system of healing that treats disease by manipulation of the spinal column; the specific science that removes pressure on the nerves by the adjustment of the spinal vertebrae. There are no instruments used, the treatment being by hand only. The word is coined from two Greek words ‘ chiro’ and ‘ practicas,’ signifying something done with the hands." (Cases cited.)

Ballantine's Law Dictionary defines " chiropractic" as follows " The word is derived from the Greek, and means, primarily, to do by hand,-hand manipulation. Webster's New International Dictionary defines chiropractic to be a system of healing that treats disease by...