Medical Licensing.

The mutual hostility between allopathic and alternative practitioners was played out at both the political and the philosophical level. The context for the Thomsonian cartoon was that movement's assault on the state medical licensing laws that had been enacted throughout the country in the early 1800s. Although the laws were only casually enforced, they did confer the blessing of government on allopathic medicine. Alternative healers regarded this legislation as undemocratic violations of both their right to pursue the calling of their choice and the public's right to select whom they wanted as their doctors; they also regarded this legislation as transparent attempts by allopaths to corner the medical market. Denouncing the laws as elitist and monopolistic, alternative practitioners

(Thomsonians, particularly) succeeded in getting virtually every state licensing law wiped from the statute books by mid-century. Licensing provisions for allopaths would be revived, however, in the 1880s and 1890s, as the impact of the germ theory renewed public respect for the power of allopathic medicine. Alternative physicians would then campaign for the passage of separate licensing laws to govern their systems too, and although they were generally successful in their quest, licensing was obtained only very gradually, and painfully, through vicious political struggles waged state by state.

The first osteopathic licensing law, for example, was adopted in Vermont in 1895; by 1901, 14 other states had followed suit. Chiropractic, by contrast, did not win its first licensure battle until 1913 (Kansas), but then another 31 states passed chiropractic laws within a decade. Not until 1973, however, were osteopaths fully licensed in every state, and it was the following year before the same could be said of chiropractors. Naturopathic licensing has developed more slowly; presently only 12 states issue ND licenses.

Until winning legislation in their individual states, alternative medicine practitioners were subject to fine or imprisonment for practicing medicine without a license. Not even the leaders of the major systems were exempt: Benedict Lust was arrested in 1899, and D. D. Palmer was jailed seven years later. In the early part of this century, there was also a good bit of courtroom conflict between osteopaths and chiropractors, the former often succeeding in getting the latter prosecuted for practicing osteopathy without a license.

Battles over the adoption or expansion of alternative medical licensing privileges continues to enliven the deliberations of state legislatures. Meanwhile, practitioners of therapeutic approaches that have not managed to achieve licensure status deplore (much like the alternative physicians of the 1830s did) the infringements on “medical freedom” practiced by the “medical/pharmaceutical complex”