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119. Remarks on Osteopathy
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384 MARK TWAIN SPEAKING· 119 · In Albany, a legislative committee hearing on the Seymour bill to license osteopaths in the state of New York was talkative and acrid. Five physicians from the New York County Medical Society opposed the measure and berated Mark Twain for speaking in support of it. Dr. Frank Van Fleet caustically dismissed him as merely afunny man whose condemnation ofAmerican policy in the Philippines would have got him mobbed if anybody had taken him seriously. Dr. Robert T. Morris maintained that a humorist had no place in a sober discussion ofa matter involving life and death. Dr. Henry T. Didema said that Mark Twain's common sense should not permit him to endorse such a bad piece of legislation as the Seymour bill. Mark Twain, apparently unruffled by these assaults, held the floor for almost an hour. His approval of osteopathy brought a reprimandfrom the Times, February 28, 1901, which called him "a defender ofquacks," deplored his "capacityfor makinggrave mistakes in serious matters," and said that in advocating the cause of "this band of ignorant pretenders. ... Mr. Clemens is engaged in a very bad business. He is setting himself up in exact opposition to all decent authority, and, however unintentionally , he is assuming the role ofa public enemy." Remarks on Osteopathy Committee on Public Health, New York General Assembly, Albany, February 27,1901 Dr. Van Fleet is the gentleman who gave me the character. I have heard my character discussed a thousand times before you were born, sir, and shown the iniquities in it, and you did not get more than halfof them. Now, gentlemen of the committee, when I came here, I came with a purpose ofsome kind, but it is difficult for me to find out nowjust what it was. These debaters have knocked it all out of my head. They have put my mind in a sort of maze with their scientific terms. I must say that I was both touched and distressed when they brought out that part ofa child. I suppose the object of it was to prove that you cannot take a child apart in that way, and I suppose we must concede that they have proved that. MARK TWAIN SPEAKING 385 Why, sir, when I listened to all those remarkable names of diseases which our learned medical friends have thrown out to us here this afternoon it made me envious of the man who had them all. I don't suppose I shall ever enjoy the felicity of having them all in the span of life allotted to me, but I am truly thankful for those I have had. I am an experimenter. I have had a number of diseases, but am willing to take more, but I want to distribute them among not only doctors but the mountebanks. I am so constituted that I want to give everybody a chance. I want to give the mountebank a chance, ifyou please. And I do not want to have any restrictions put upon my free will when I have that disposition. I could not stand here and advocate osteopathy without knowing much more about it than I do. One of the gentlemen who spoke referred to my having acquired such knowledge ofosteopathy as I had in Sweden. That is true. About a year and a half ago in London I met Mr. Kellgren, who I believe is the most noted practitioner of this kind abroad. He calls himself Mr. because he has not acquired the privilege of giving a certificate when a patient dies on his hands. He has been practicing in London for twenty-seven years. My meeting with him was quite by chance. I heard of him through a friend of mine whom he had cured- of dysentery after eminent physicians had failed to give any relief, and after my friend had been brought close to the point of death. The friend I speak of is Poultney Bigelow. Now, of course, there may have been some flaw in Mr. Bigelow's cure, but he seemed to me to have been restored to full strength and health, and he himself insisted that he was. I thought he ought to know, though doubtless our medical friends will not agree with me on that point. Now I am always wanting to try everything that comes along. It doesn't matter much what it is, I want to try it. And so I went to Mr. Kellgren, was treated by him in...