Hunt, for putting up bills for the cure of dis eases in the streets. The Council in the reign of James I. dispatched a warrant to the Magistrates of the city of London, to arrest all reputed empirics, and cause them to be examined by the Censors of the Royal Col lege of Physicians. Several were arrested and acknowledged their ignorance. In the reign of King William, a certain Fairfax was fined and imprisoned for injuring persons by his Aqua Coekstis, while in Stow's Chronicle it is recorded that a water caster was pun ished for exercising his quackery. He was set on horseback, with his face to the horse's tail, which he held in his hand, with a collar of urinals about his neck, led by the hangman through the city, and was whipped, branded and then banished. The old French jurisprudence felt some hesitation in pronouncing for or against medical liability, and Merlin believed that suits brought against physicians were rarely successful. He mentions a number of judg ments which acquitted the physician. The Parliament of Paris in 1696 gave the follow ing judgment in one case, the Court saying: "That surgeons are not liable for their reme dies as long as they have showed no evidence
OUGHT
CHURCH
of ignorance or rashness in their practice." And in summing up the case on which the Court had rendered judgment, the advocate general, Portail, said: "There is only one case where suit can be brought against the medical profession, and that is when deceit has been practised, in which case it is a true crime." In 1596, the children of a surgeon who had wounded a patient while bleeding him, were condemned to pay one hundred and fifty pounds damages by the Parliament of Bor deaux, and in another case a surgeon was condemned, because he cut a child for stone in the bladder without the advice of a phy sician, to pay damages amounting to sixty pounds, with the injunction of the Court never in the future to cut another patient for stone without the consent of some physician who was approved by and who had been re ceived by the Faculty of Medicine. Many other cases could be cited, hut I think from what has been said in this short p;iper that medical liability has been sus tained by all the courts of former times. The question of criminal malpractice I have en tirely left aside, hoping at a future date to discuss the history of this important subject.
PROPERTY
TO
BE
TAXED?
Bv DUANE MOWKY. THE taxation of church property is not a new question. And it is not the pur pose of this article to discuss the question exhaustively, but to submit some considera tions which show, or tend to show, that the question which entitles this paper should be answered in the affirmative. And first: What is a tax? Briefly stated, it is a pecuniary burden imposed for the sup port of government; it is an enforced pro portional contribution of persons and prop
erty, levied by the authority of the State for the support of government, and for all public needs and purposes.1 Not only are taxes the enforced proportional contributions for governmental support and use taken from the substance of the people, but also the arbi trary exactions of the government within constitutional limits, and to the making and enforcing of which the assent of the people, 1 Bouvier1! Law Dictionary, Title • " Tax." See also Cooley on Taxation.
