State v. Miller
| Decision Date | 19 March 1908 |
| Citation | 115 N.W. 493,138 Iowa 28 |
| Parties | THE STATE OF IOWA, Appellee, v. B. F. MILLER, Appellant |
| Court | Iowa Supreme Court |
Appeal from Blackhawk District Court.--HON. F. C. PLATT, Judge.
INDICTMENT charging defendant with the offense of practicing medicine without first obtaining a certificate therefor from the State Board of Medical Examiners. There was a verdict of guilty and from the judgment entered thereon defendant appeals.
Affirmed.
Reed & Tuthill, for appellant.
H. W Byers, Attorney General, and C. W. Lyon, Assistant Attorney General, for the State.
The evidence discloses without dispute that appellant, a resident of Waterloo, Iowa published an advertisement in a newspaper of that city offering to treat the sick and afflicted without drugs and without surgery, and asserting his ability to cure the ills to which human flesh is heir, including an alphabetical list of thirty-three forms of disease, beginning with appendicitis, and ending with throat trouble. As a witness in his own behalf, he conceded that within the time covered by the indictment he did practice magnetic healing and did profess to heal and cure the sick in and about Waterloo. He also put upon the witness stand persons who testified to treatment administered by him for the relief of pain and sickness, and offered to show by them the method and manner of the treatment and the beneficial results thereof. Exception was taken to proof offered by the State purporting to show that accused had published the same advertisement above referred to in another newspaper of said city, and there is room to doubt whether the showing made was sufficient to justify its admission, but, in view of the undisputed evidence of other publications and his voluntary concessions concerning his practice and profession, the error, if any, was without prejudice.
The point most strongly urged by counsel, and the only debatable one presented by the record, was whether appellant was entitled to practice his profession without a certificate from the board of medical examiners under that provision of Code, section 2579, which exempts from a compliance with the requirements of said statute all physicians "who have been practicing in this State for five consecutive years three years of which time shall have been in one locality." This statute appears to have been first enacted in the year 1886, and was re-enacted in substantially the same form in the Code of 1897. Appellant sought to bring himself within the terms of this exemption by offering to prove that he had practiced medicine, and publicly professed to cure and heal, and that he did in fact cure and heal, the sick within this State for a period of five consecutive years, three of which was in one place. Upon objection by the State this evidence was excluded, and error is assigned thereon. The record made in this respect is substantially as follows: As a witness appellant stated that his early life was spent in this State; that he had practiced magnetic healing since he was ten years old;...
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