1877, March 20. Gift of "Agitation of Thought is the beginning of Wisdom." CIVIL AND RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK. THE following is the act passed May 11th, 1874, and entitled: "Chap. 436-An Act to Regulate the Practice of Medicine and Surgery in the State of New York": The People of the State of New York, represented in Senate and Assembly, do enact as follows: SECTION 1. Every practitioner of medicine or surgery In this State, excepting licentiates or graduates of some medical society or chartered school, shall be required, and they are hereby commanded to obtain a certificate from the censors of some one of the several medical societies of this state, either from the county, district or State Society; which certificate shall set forth that said censors have found the person to whom it was issued qualified to practice all of the branches of the medical art mentioned in it. And such certificate must be recorded in a book provided and kept for the purpose by the county clerk of each county in the State. SEC. 2. The censors of each medical society aforesaid shall notify all practitioners of medicine and surgery of the terms and requirements of this act, and shall request such persons so notified to comply with those requirements within thirty days after such notification; and if such persons shall not, within the time specified in the notice, or within such further time as may be allowed by special arrangement with said censors, not exceeding ninety days, comply with the requirements herein made of physicians or surgeons, as the case may be, such persons shall thereafter be subject to all theprovisions and penalties prescribed by this act for any violation of the same, and the president of the society waking such request shall and he is hereby required to at once commence the proceedings authorized by this act against such person. SEC. 3. It is hereby declared a misdemeanor for any person to practice medicine or surgery in this State, unless authorized so to do by a licenso or diploma from some chartered school, State board of medical examiners, or medical society, or who shall practice under cover of a medical diploma illegally obtained; and any person found guilty of such a misdemeanor shall for the first offence be fined not less than fifty nor more than two hundred dollars. For any subsequent offence not less than one hundred nor more than five hundred dollars, or by imprisonment not less than thirty days, or by both imprisonment and fine; and all such fines shall go into the county treasury of the county bringing such action. I see by Father Beeson's letter in the Banner of Light of Jan. 15, 1876, that the M. D.s of New York have commenced broadening their opportunity for mischief in their death-dealing pro. fession by taking the initiatory step to stop by fine and imprisonment a mediumistic doctress from healing the sick after the fashion and order prescribed, practiced and commanded by Jesus Christ, of the imparting health and vitality through "the laying on of hands." I know not what provision there may be, if any, in the State Constitution of New York, either to protect or to punish religious liberty; but if there is any-pro or con., in that ring governed State, and if the truth can be offered in evidence in her Field, Tweed & Co.'s ruled-mocking tribunals of Justice, ("God save the mark,") -would it not be well, let me ask, that Spiritualists should establish a fund by subscription and make Mrs. Holmes's a test case? Let the defence be rested solely on the ground of her right, by virtue of national American citizenship, to religious liberty, and to practice it in the broadest sense, even though it be after the unpopular mode pursued by Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, and Peter the fisherman of old, that has become so hateful to the doctors of medicine and of the Christian or anti Christian churches (or of whatever mixed order) in the present day, that they with their deluded followers are combining to bring it to an end by the infliction of fine, imprisonment, and, if possible, death, as did their prototypes, the Doctors of the Temple and Sanhedrim at Jerusalem, nineteen centuries ago. Let Mrs. Holmes's defence be wholly and entirely based on the ground-that "the healing of |