The January Number ends the first volume of the JOURNAL OF MAN. Back numbers can be supplied to new subscribers who do not delay too long. Number 1, Volume 2, for February, will be sent to all subscribers, but a remittance will be expected before the March number is sent.
Mrs. C. H. Buchanan continues to apply her skill in the description of character and disease, with general impressions as to past and future. Her numerous correspondents express much gratification and surprise at the correctness of her delineations. The fee for a personal interview is $2; for a written description $3; for a more comprehensive review and statement of life periods, with directions for the cultivation of Psychometry, $5.
Is realizing the reaction of public opinion against all forms of monopoly. There is some plausibility in the demand that all who heal should educate themselves, if we had a true system of education, which we have not. But there is no justice in the demand that those whom nature has gifted with great healing powers should be prohibited from exercising their natural gifts, or giving advice to their neighbors, whenever they happen to know anything that is useful. To interfere with such acts of benevolence, which are really the performance of a religious duty, is a crime, and it is none the less criminal when it is the act of legislators, who are careless enough to allow themselves to be made the tools of an avaricious monopoly, which would make it a crime for a farmer's wife to give her neighbor's children a blackberry cordial or hoarhound syrup. When the law makes benevolence a crime, laws and legislators become objects of contempt, and a dangerous spirit of rebellion is fostered.
In Illinois a law has been obtained from a careless and unthinking legislature, which makes all healing a crime, when not performed by graduated, licensed and registered practitioners, but the law is so odious that it is not enforced against those who are not administering medicines. In Iowa an equally disgraceful law has been obtained, designed to establish a similar monopoly, but the prosecution against a lady for assisting a patient with her prayers resulted in her acquittal, and the medical societies have been paralyzed as to its enforcement. Dr. R. C. Flower, of Boston, has made several addresses to large audiences in that State, in opposition to medical legislation, and the report of his very spirited and effective lecture in the Des Moines _Register_ shows that he carried his audiences with him, and roused enthusiasm in opposition to the law. Dr. F. related some terrific cases of malpractice by eminent physicians, and portrayed the horrible effects of the law in upholding quackery.