State v. Pratt

Citations

• 80 Wash. 96
• 141 P. 318
• 1914 Wash. LEXIS 1274

Syllabus

<p>Physicians and Surgeons—Practicing Medicine—Regulation— Statutes—Validity—Equal Protection of the Laws. Rem. & Bal. Code, § 8400, requiring a state license for the practice of medicine and surgery, osteopathy, “or any other system or mode of treating the sick,” includes, and warrants a conviction for, the treatment of the sick by the laying on of hands, with suggestions from the mind of the operator to the mind of the patient; hence does not deny the equal protection of the laws in failing to specifically mention such system, along with “medicine,” “surgery,” and “osteopathy.”</p> <p>Same—Practicing Medicine—Regulation—Statutes—Construction. Rem. & Bal. Code, § 8405, providing that nothing-in the chapter relating to licenses for practicing medicine and other modes of treating the sick shall apply to or regulate any kind of treatment by prayer, does not exclude from the operation of the chapter the practice of suggestive therapeutics, a system of treating the sick by the laying on of hands with suggestions from the mind of the operator to the mind of the patient; since the same is not any kind of treatment by prayer.</p>