This is a writ of error to the Texas court of criminal appeals upon a judgment denying the plaintiff in error a release by habeas corpus. The plaintiff in error is held upon an information charging him with practising medicine for money by treating a named patient for hay fever by osteopathy, without having registered his authority, as required by a Texas statute of 1907, chap. 123. He denies the constitutionality of the act.
The statute establishes a board of medical examiners, and requires 'all legal practitioners of medicine in this state, who, practising under the provisions of previous laws, or under diplomas of a reputable and legal college of medicine, have not already received license from a state medical examining board of this state,' to prove their diplomas, or existing license, or exemption existing under any law; whereupon they are to receive a verification license. § 6. By § 7, applicants not licensed under § 6 must pass an examination, conditioned, among other things, on their being graduates of 'bona fide reputable medical schools;' to be considered reputable 'whose entrance requirements and courses of instruction are as high as those adopted by the better class of medical schools of the United States, whose course of instruction shall embrace not less than four terms of five months each.' By § 9 the examinations are to be fair to every school of medicine, are to be conducted on the scientific branches of medicine only, and are to include anatomy, physiology, chemistry, histology, pathology, bacteriology, physical diagnosis, surgery, obstetrics, gynecology, hygiene, and medical jurisprudence. Those who pass are to be granted licenses to practise medicine. By § 10 nothing in the act is to be construed to discriminate against any particular system, and the act is not to apply to dentists legally registered and confining themselves to dentistry, nurses who practise only nursing, masseurs, or surgeons of the United States Army, Navy, etc., in the performance of their duties.
The only other material sections of the act are §§ 13 and 14, the former of which declares that 'any person shall be regarded as practising medicine within the meaning of this act. . . . (2) Or who shall treat or offer to treat any disease or disorder, mental or physical, or any physical deformity or injury, by any system or method, or to effect cures thereof, and charge therefor, directly or indirectly, money or other compensation.' By § 14 any person practising medicine in violation of the act is punished by fine and imprisonment, and is not to recover anything for the services rendered.
The facts charged against the plaintiff in error are admitted. It also is admitted that before the passage of the statute he had spent $5,000 in fitting up his place, and was deriving a net income from his calling of at least the same sum. He held a diploma from the chartered American School of Osteopathy, Kirksville, Missouri, after a full two years' course of study there, but it does not appear that he presented this diploma to the board of medical examiners, or attempted to secure either a verification license or license in any form. The board, in passing upon qualifications, does not examine in therapeutics or materia medica, which, it will be observed, are not mentioned in the act. On these facts we are of opinion that the plaintiff in error fails to show that the statute inflicts any wrong upon him, contrary to the 14th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States. If he has not suffered, we are not called upon to speculate upon other cases, or to decide whether the followers of Christian Science or other people might, in some event, have cause to complain.