State v. Pratt
State v. Pratt
Opinion of the Court
Appellant was convicted in the superior court of the crime of practicing medicine without a license.
It is further shown by the evidence in this case that the complaining witness went to the office of the appellant seeking or pretending to seek treatment for one Augerson, who accompanied him, and who declared to appellant that he was suffering from a private disease. Appellant made a physical examination and diagnosis confirming the opinion, or pretended opinion, of Augerson, and thereupon, after assurance that he treated by prayer only, treated his patient by the same physical methods and in the same manner as described in the former case.
Appellant contends that his treatment falls within the proviso of the statute; that he treats diseases, and did so in this case, only by prayer. Appellant further contends that he makes no charges, and testified as follows:
“People who come in here, the majority, are used to paying a dollar a treatment or some pay five dollars for six treatments and then we don’t get any more from them for a week.”
After the treatment had been concluded, appellant gave the patient some advice as to diet.
While we are not disposed to define either a form of prayer or an essential posture for those who invoke it [vide, “The Prayer of Cyrus Brown” by Sam Walter Foss], and while prayer, accompanied by the laying on of the hands finds
The only distinction we can see between this case and the other one is that appellant has renamed his method of suggestion. Formerly he conveyed his own suggestion of mind through his hand to the mind of the patient, and the patient cured himself, or believed that he was healed. Now he would, by the employment of the same methods, invoke the will of the Supreme Being as a direct curative force. There has been no change in appellant’s methods, either in form or substance.
The judgment of the lower court is affirmed.
Reference
- Full Case Name
- The State of Washington v. T. F. Pratt
- Status
- Published
- Syllabus
- Physicians and Surgeons — Practicing Without a License — Statutes — Evidence—Sufficiency. One who treats the sick by a method called “Suggestive Therapeutics,” consisting of the laying on of hands and giving mental suggestions, cannot escape conviction for practicing without a license, under Rem. & Bal. Code, §§ 8400 to 8405, by the fact that, before treatment, he assured the patient that the treatment was by prayer only, as that is a mere subterfuge to bring the case within the proviso to the statute.