ively of the claims, interests, and policy of any special institu tion. NOTE. It is as wonderful as it is acceptable to see the immediate response that has been made by societies to the invitation extended to them in the January Journal. This invitation was to furnish for publication such portions of their proceedings as would be of interest to the profession at large. Local details and matters of business routine must be omitted. With this proviso all Society Transactions of value are respectfully requested for publica tion. Shall Medical Societies Enforce their Laws-Shall they Govern or be Defied? The College of Physicians and Surgeons and Dr. A. B. Cook. Profitable reading and wholesome lessons will be found in the following statements. The facts are of local importance; their application is universal: The professional and secular public of this city have had their attention prominently direeted, through tho newspapers, to the recent action which a large Medical Society here has instituted in regard to Dr. A. B. Cook. It appears from well authenticated facts, that at a period immediately subsequently to the meeting of the American Medical Association, in May last, the College of Physicians and Surgeous in this city, called through notices published in the daily papers a meeting of its members to take into consideration the expediency of adopting a recommendation made by the Association mentioned. This recommendation was to the effect, that physicians making examinations of those who propose to have their lives insured should charge companies making such insurance five dollars ($5) as a fee for the examination of such applicant for insurance. This recommendation was unanimously adopted, and the fee for such examinations was definitely determined should be five dollars. The insurance companies of the city made every effort possible to defeat the success of this legislation. Their efforts, however, were very properly, in the main, unsuccessful. It appears that Dr. Cook continued to make examinations for the original fee-viz: $3. When this fact was brought to the notice of the Medical Society charges were preferred against Dr. Cook for a violation of the laws of the Society of which he was a member. When summoned to appear before the committee, duly appointed to investigate the matter, he declined to appear, because the notice sent to him was not officially signed. This irregularlty being duly corrected, he was again notified to meet this committee acting under the laws and instructions of his Society. Dr. Cook declined to appear in person or reply in any manner to the charges made, assuming that he was not a member of the Society, because he had for sometime failed to attend its meetings or make any payments during the period of his absence. The Society, after duly considering the whole matter, and after generously giving Dr. Cook time for considering his action, unanimously passed a resolution of expulsion, and desired that the facts of such expulsion should be published in the newspapers and be made known to other societies: the State Medical Society and the American Medical Association. Such publication was made and such notices, as were ordered, duly given to the societies mentioned. Such are the facts, given with care and unquestionable justice. Dr. Cook has recently, in the newspapers, appealed to the general public, and invoked them to sustain his action; furnishing for their information reasons which, in his judgment, justify his own course and make unjust the course of his brethren. In such an emergency the medical press would be shamefully derelict, justly chargeable with a contemptible evasion of responsibility if it failed to duly notice a matter, the discussion of which is so essentially germain to its admitted province. This is particularly true in any case even of local importance, but when the principles involved are applicable to all societies, the matter ceases to be of local interest, and manifestly concerns every physi cian; indeed, every community in which similar relations exist. The medical press, under such circumstances, cannot avoid or evade the issue, unless those responsible for this press assume, as is assumed by a few medical editors, that it is convenient and profitable to be passive if action can entail responsibility or result in pecuniary loss. These are the editors who would fain degrade a medical journal into the position of a mere receptacle for doses and directions. Who would rob the press of all spirit. and independence and censorship? Who would typify the noble genius of medicine and the comprehensive mission of the physician by an image at once ludicrous, degrading and repulsive, viz: The image of a brainless monster crowned with the mortar of the apothecary and wielding his pestle as the appropriate baton of rank and authority. To those who think and act thus it is very convenient and very desirable to be silent, but to those who think differently, it is improper to evade action, however unwelcome such action may be. To the writer, it is one of the most painful acts of his life to make the following comments. Dr. Cook has always been to him a friend, kind, considerate and true, but such welcome private relations cannot justify the evasion of a duty which devolves upon every one responsible, even in the humblest manner, for the discharge of those obligations which the medical press owes to the character of medicine, the welfare and good report of its representatives. Dr. Cook's defence, in part, is, that it is inconsistent to punish him for the offence charged, when those inflicting such punishment have on other occasions infringed the laws of the Society with impunity. This is admitting a membership on his part which is elsewhere denied, and granting what those rebuked by him do not admit, official inconsistency, no one can claim immunity from the verdict of a legal jury, because these jurors may have been, at some period of their lives, violators, in other respects, of the laws which they are called upon to sustain. However wrong, in many respects, those voting for Dr. Cook's expulsion may have been (if they have been), their wrong unpunished does not make Dr. Cook's wrong less justly punishable. Dr. Cook claims that he did not obey the summons sent to him because it was not officially signed, implying that had this informality not existed, he would, as a member of this Society, have recognized its authority; yet when this informality was remedied he refused to appear, because he was not, as he alleges, a member of the Society. Why, if this plea was to be made, should the first have been urged? Dr. Cook claims that he had withdrawn from the Society, because he had not attended its meetings for sixteen months; yet he presided at a meeting of this Society many months subsequent to the period from which he dates his withdrawal. Again he alleges that the non-payment of dues vitiated his membership, but there were no payments required of members during this period. Even had he been absent for the period claimed, prolonged absence does not destroy or even impair membership. Dr. Cook declares that this fee of $5 was only recommended by the American Medical Association, and as any recommendations of this body haye never received practical recognition, it was unjust and inconsistent to punish him for not observing a law based upon this recommendation. The reply is simple; the recommendation was only the reason for the establishment of this law; it was not itself recognized as the law. It was the action of the Society of which Dr. Cook was certainly at the time a member which gave existence to this law. The Society could have enacted this same law independently of all suggestions. The enactment of the law was indisputable, and such enactment was conspicuously published. No one doubts the jurisdiction of the Society in the enactment of this law. No one doubts its jurisdiction over its members where any of the laws are violated. Dr. Cook's Society makes a law; Dr. Cook violates this law. Can any one doubt the right of a Society to inflict the punishment prescribed by the constitution which Dr. Cook voluntarily promised to obey. So much for what is undeniably true, while assuming that Dr. Cook was a member of the Society which expelled him. Admitting, however, that he was not a member, an admission which is not just or tenable, he would be no less culpable in disregarding the fees established by the physicians of this city. The code of medical ethics provides that fees thus established shall be observed by all physicians in good standing. Some might allege that he repudiates the code of ethics; but Dr. Cook cannot do this. He was voluntarily a member of three Societies in this State which accept this code as a part of their fundamental laws. He is now a member of two Societies, whose laws are constituted in part by this code of ethics. Adm ting that he no longer owes allegiance to the laws of the Society which he claims injured and expelled him, he is certainly a member of two other Societies, and is voluntarily amenable to their laws. These laws make it incumbent upon him to faithfully observe the schedule of fees established by a meeting of the physicians in his city, after due notice of this meeting had been publicly given. The termination of his membership at the College of Physicians and Surgeons therefore does not in any manner or degree absolve him from the fullest allegiance to the fee-bill duly and properly established by the physicians of this city. It may be pardoned, when the uninformed, the carpers, the jesters, the harlequins, professional and secular, affect to deride the code of ethics, but all physicians of good repute acknowledge a proper and just allegiance to it; certainly to that portion of it which empowers the physicians of a locality to determine their scale of fees. While physicians may differ somewhat in regard to the interpretation and justice of some clauses in this code, there is a full accord in regard to the clause which provides for the establishment of a fee schedule. Dr. Cook's opinions in this respect have been fully in accordance with those of the most reputable practitioners of this city, and his truest friends cannot but believe and hope that he will not persist in a course which must be fatal to his personal and professional welfare, and which must tend to stain the public record of a profession of whose honor and integrity he has always been a staunch and consistent supporter. As to his being unjustly or ungenerously treated, such a claim has been |