Changes

To limit opposition and debate within the medical community, the legislative committee refused to draft a bill “until shortly before it was sent to the legislature.” Strong wanted to avoid telling members specifically what type of medical bill they were planning to propose. After receiving the fundraising solicitation, several physicians who had been practicing in Oregon “ten, fifteen or twenty years without a diploma, began to ask, ‘What kind of bill are you going to pass? Are you going to shut us out?” Strong evaded this question by sending postcards to any members who requested information about the bill; the cards stated that “the Committee ha[s] not as of yet drafted a bill. We have substantially agreed that a bill must be a reasonable in all its provisions; and it has proposed to not disturb the present relations of anyone practicing medicine and surgery at the time the bill becomes a law.”<ref><i>Proceedings Sixteenth Annual Meeting</i> (1889): 205-206.</ref>

The legislative committee approached legislator and Regular physician, Dr. James V. Pope, to introduce the Oregon association’s bill in the House. Pope studied medicine in St. Louis and worked as a physician during the Civil War, but he was not a medical school graduate.<ref>O. Larsell, <i>The Doctor in Oregon: A Medical History</i> (Portland, Oregon State Historical Society 1947), 210.</ref> After Pope introduced the bill, he abruptly threatened to scuttle it. Strong wrote, “[N]ow came the point to find out where the shoe pinched with Dr. Pope; but I knew it pinched somewhere, and surmised that probably he wanted the credit of introducing and passing the Medical Bill, and wanted it to be known as Pope’s bill.” Strong also stated that rumors had spread in the legislature that the OSMA raised a lot of money to smooth passage of the bill.<ref><i>Proceedings Sixteenth Annual Meeting</i> (1889): 206.</ref>