James Mohr, College of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of history and Philip H. Knight Professor of Social Sciences at the University of Oregon Eugene, will deliver the 12th John C. Burnham Lecture in the History of Science/Medicine. He will speak on "Licenses on Their Own Terms: The Supreme Court and the Constitutional Origins of the Medical Profession in the United States".
The idea that doctors must hold a license in order to practice medicine seems self-evident to modern Americans. But that idea was extremely controversial through the final decades of the nineteenth century, when licensing laws first began to appear. What some physicians and legislators defended as progressive efforts to upgrade medical care and protect the public, other physicians and legislators opposed as unconstitutional efforts to control the medical marketplace without any objective justifications or legitimate public rationales for doing so. When West Virginia passed the nation’s first genuinely restrictive physician licensing law in the early 1880s, a doctor who opposed mandatory licensing challenged its basic premises. His case eventually went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, where the stakes could hardly have been higher for the future of American medical practice. The decision rendered by the high court justices in 1889 had profound and far-reaching implications for the subsequent development of this nation’s uniquely situated medical profession. Professor Mohr will discuss the story behind that little known but crucially important case and address some of the enduring effects of the Supreme Court’s decision.
Reception begins at 4:00pm, followed by the lecture at 4:30pm.
For more information, visit the Health Sciences Library website.