The Proposed Department of Health
This is a soul-stirring, nerve-harrowing time; especially in the political world is everything at high tension. Every candidate for prominent office is afraid of every other candidate. Men are borrowing trouble over various measures before Congress and legislatures to a degree never before known. Just now there is a great deal of opposition to the “Owen Bill” which provides for a new department in the Government known as the “Department of Health,” which shall combine the Public Health Department and the Marine Hospital Service (now in the Treasury Department), the Bureau of Vital Statistics (now in the Department of Commerce and Labor), and the Bureau of Chemistry (now a branch of the Department of Agriculture). The League of Medical Freedom, the smaller medical schools, Christian Scientists, and many others are said to be strongly opposing the bill. Yet the Journal of the American Medical Association declares that no one can be injured except the medical frauds in patent medicines, adulterated drugs, etc.; that it will not interfere with any “healer” in any State. The bill does not add new laws, but puts three bureaus, now existing, under one department, making them much more effective.