Changes

Under the promulgated standards, Dickson postulated that graduates of forty of the existing one-hundred-and-thirty-five American medical institutions would be forced to take an exam under Oregon law. The 1891 revision also placed physicians who registered with the county clerks under the medical board's control. Under the 1889 Act, the board lacked jurisdiction over these physicians and could not discipline them for dishonorable conduct.<ref><i>Proceedings Eighteenth Annual Meeting</i> (1891): 177-180.</ref> The 1891 act remedied the problem and compelled all practitioners to submit themselves to the board for a license. Not only did the medical board draft standards, it immediately exercised its statutory authority and began rejecting applicants.

In 1895, Oregon again altered its medical licensing law by requiring all applicants to pass a licensing exam. The 1895 amendment also expanded the Oregon Medical Board's power to revoke a physician's license for unprofessional or dishonorable conduct, including any physician who was originally exempted in the first law. Soon thereafter, the Oregon board immediately targeted physicians in the state. The 1895 statute specified the grounds for unprofessional or dishonorable conduct: Taking part in a criminal abortion, employing “cappers” and “steerers,” obtaining a fee and claiming the ability to cure an incurable disease or condition, betraying a professional secret, using untruthful or improbable statements in advertisements, a conviction of any offense involving moral turpitude and habitual intemperance, and advertising medicines claiming to regulate the monthly periods of women.<ref><i>Oregon Laws</i>, 1895, 61-65, sec. 6.</ref>