Changes

During the legislative session, the local newspaper, <i>The Morning Oregonian</i>, covered OSMA’s push for licensing. <i>The Oregonian</i>, the state’s largest newspaper, despite its support medical regulation published an article of a similar effort to license in Massachusetts. The Oregonian article an attorney speaking before the Massachusetts legislature testified that medical science failed in treating patients, and argued that the doctrine of supply and demand was the best way to regulate medicine. A letter to the editor of <i>Capitol Evening Journal</i> lambasted the so-called “quack bill” as an attempt to eliminate competition. Additionally, the writer was aghast that the bill invested enormous power with a three-physician medical board.<ref>“The Quack Bill,” <i>Capitol Evening Journal</i>, Feb. 27, 1889.</ref> These complaints were essentially the same ones that scuttled previous medical regulation. Oregon papers were skeptical medical regulations.

The bill passed and authorized the creation of a medical licensing board and established specific criteria to receive an Oregon medical license. The medical board consisted of three members who had the power to approve three separate types of licenses that would permit the practice of medicine. First, individuals who could establish that they received a diploma or license from a legally chartered institution of good standing could qualify. Second, the board could issue licenses to anyone, regardless of educational background, by administering a test that evaluated the qualifications of the potential practitioner. Finally, doctors and surgeons already practicing in Oregon at the time the act was passed could simply register with the office of the county clerk sixty days after the act’s approval and continue their practices.<ref><i>Oregon Sessions Law</i>, “An Act to Regulate the Practice of Medicine,” 1891, section 3.</ref> Anyone who practiced medicine in violation of this act was guilty of a misdemeanor.

Even though the bill had passed, the OSMA still feared that the governor would veto it. Governor Sylvester Pennoyer had expressed several concerns about the bill. If he chose to veto the bill late in the legislative session, it would have been at least two years before the bill could be reintroduced. Fortunately for the OSMA, Pennoyer decided not to veto it. Instead, Pennoyer issued a non-signing statement arguing that the bill should have been vetoed because it gave the medical board too much power to take away a physician’s diploma for unprofessional conduct. These broad powers were not circumscribed because the act failed to define dishonorable conduct, but Pennoyer instead decided “to obviate any difficulty by appointing as examiners men known to be cool-headed and conservative.”<ref> “The Governor Dodges. The Medical Bill Becomes a Law Without His Signature – His Excellency longed to a farewell shot at the bill, but he concluded to check the veto impulse and trust in luck.”<i>The Oregonian</i>, Feb. 28, 1889.</ref>

After almost fifteen years of failure, the OSMA finally succeeded in passing a regulatory act by paying a two-hundred dollar bribe from the “corruption fund” to a legislator who then passed an amendment to protect his own medical practice. Additionally, the remaining one-hundred-and-five dollars were distributed to other legislators on Pope’s suggestion. Despite Pope’s self-dealing, his modifications to the bill made it more palatable to Oregon physicians who were practicing without diplomas. Pope’s concerns were similar to other physicians in the state, and those doctors would have opposed the 1889 bill without those changes. The conclusion that the three-hundred-five dollars raised by the association was intended for bribes is unavoidable. It is not surprising that Strong was cagey about explaining what the money was for. Strong also acknowledged that even with Pope’s help and the OSMA members’ money, getting the bill passed was extremely difficult; “[i]f they knew the way that committee worked, the difficulties that arose, and the pressure brought to bear, the thumb screws we used here and there of one kind or another.”<ref><i>Proceedings Sixteenth Annual Meeting</i> (1889): 208.</ref>