Abstract
There may be no more exemplary story of the development of natural healing within chiropractornaturopaths than the story of Henry J. Schlichting, Jr. of Midland, Texas. Schlichting was trained as a chiropractor in Oklahoma, and moved to Texas in 1941, setting himself up as a naturopath. At the time, neither chiropractors nor naturopaths were licensed in Texas. Schlichting became a leader within natural healing professionals, first within Texas, and then nationally. He became a trusted ally of both Robert Carroll and of Dr. Budden at Western States College. He and his Texas naturopaths achieved licensed status in 1949. In the early 1950s all looked bright; and then it all turned dark. This is Part 2.
1947-1950 and Forward
When Robert V. Carroll passed away unexpectedly in May of 1951 the natural healing profession that he had helped build with 20 years of diligent work was trending upward. When Dr. Carroll passed from the scene national leadership was then held by Henry J. Schlichting, Jr., of Midland, Texas and by A. R. Hedges of Medford, OR. Educational leadership was in the hands of W. A. Budden of Western States College, Portland, OR, and Joseph Janse of National College of Chicago, Il. Texas had licensed naturopaths and chiropractors in 1949 as part of a legislative “deal” in which the Texas legislature also adopted a Basic Science law.
In 1950 the Georgia legislature had licensed naturopaths and the Nevada legislature had also adopted licensing statutes in 1951. In the negative column at the time of Carroll’s passing National College had dropped its formal ND degree program in 1950 under pressure from the National Chiropractic Association’s Council on Education and the governor of the state of Nevada had vetoed the Nevada legislation just after the legislature adjourned. Joe Janse would proudly call himself a DC, ND, well into the 1960s and preside over a broad, “liberal” chiropractic curriculum at National, but the National College decision reduced legitimate, 4-year residency ND education to only Western States. (Journal of the ANA June, 1951 (Vol. 4, No.6); Reno Evening Gazette, March 6, 7, 15, 1951; The Atlanta Constitution, February, 17, 1950; Keating, Joseph C., Jr., Callender, Alana K., and Cleveland, Carl S. III (1998) A History of Chiropractic Education in North America, (Scottsdale, AZ, Council on Chiropractic Education))
In Texas, Henry Schlichting—“Doc” to the Midland, TX community—sat on a 3-member naturopathic board that had processed and accepted over 400 applications for licensing on a “grandfather” basis that was part of the 1949 legislation. Texas became both the largest state membership base for the Western American Naturopathic Association and the largest licensed state in naturopathy. The natural healers seemed to have weathered the Tennessee scandal by 1951, and to have absorbed the lesson that H. Riley Spitler called “Remember Tennessee.” (Attorney General’s opinion Letter V-1486, July 29, 1952 to Henry J. Schlichting, ND, Secretary, Texas Board of Naturopathic Examiners; Journal of the ANA for September, 1948 for Dr. Spitler’s remarks on Tennessee.)
Naturopathy in Connecticut could have suffered much more than it did in the aftermath of the Tennessee scandal (The Connecticut story told here is taken from coverage by The Hartford Courant for the following dates: June 6, August 20, 1946, March 20, April 24, May 7 & 29, July 16, 1947, and January 22 & 23, 1948). The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in April, 1947, that the Connecticut State Board of Naturopathic Examiners–not the State Commissioner of Health, a Medical Doctor–was the legal decision-maker in licensing.
As early as 1942 the Connecticut Health Commissioner had delayed the issuing of licenses approved by the Board when the approval was under licensing reciprocity statute with South Carolina, a state with no Basic Science law and which had approved schools that were not on the Connecticut Board’s approved schools list. The Commissioner’s position was that the reciprocity statue required licensing by a state with licensing requirements comparable to those in effect in Connecticut.
By 1946, when this issue emerged into public awareness, licenses issued in Tennessee—where the diploma mill and licensing fraud scandal was first coming to light—also started appearing in reciprocity applications. By the time two applicants-both with diplomas from Lust’s American School in New York (which had lost its state charter in 1935) and with licenses from South Carolina and Tennessee—prevailed in the Connecticut Supreme Court the legislature had repealed the reciprocity statutes at the urging of the governor, and the state attorney general had begun a review of all existing licenses to determine whether evidence of fraud existed in the application process.
The Board revoked 17 licenses on its own and the attorney general achieved the revocation of several more after a trial that focused on the scandal in Tennessee and the loose practices in South Carolina in its own handling of the reciprocity issue. Extensive testimony was introduced by the attorney general’s office about the Tennessee licensing scandal from depositions taken in Tennessee, and also about the extent to which South Carolina “rubber stamped” reciprocity applications in 1945 and 1946 supported by Tennessee licenses.
In the long run the Connecticut Board emerged with its licensing authority intact for applicants that graduated from properly approved schools, and after successful passage of licensing examinations. The same proved to be true in South Carolina but only after the Board there went through a major legislative scrutiny process and adverse publicity of its own. (South Carolina story is taken from the coverage of the Charleston (SC) News and Courier for June 27, 1946, April 24, May 14 & 28, November 15, 1947 and April 11, 1949.)
During the 1947 South Carolina legislative session the state House of Representatives passed a “concurrent resolution” asking for a an inquiry into “examinations and personal qualifications required of applicants to practice naturopathy in this state and the propriety of granting licenses therefor.” This action was not taken up by the South Carolina Senate during the legislative session.
During the 1948 legislative session a full resolution was addressed between the House and the Senate (which was more favorable to the naturopaths) instructing the state Naturopathic Board to clean up its own house and report to the legislature by the 1949 session. As reported in the press “The assembly …asked the State Board of Examiners to look into this situation, remedy it if possible.”
In February, 1949, the Board reported to the legislature “that it had revoked a number of reciprocity licenses, giving the holders a chance to regain them by taking state examinations…Most did and were relicensed…But at least one holder of a license refused to accept the board’s order and has brought court action against it.” The Board requested stricter licensing laws and stronger disciplinary powers and the legislature obliged.
After the Scandals
These two states were the most directly affected by the Tennessee scandal. Connecticut was “purged’ by the actions of state authorities; South Carolina was purged by aggressive action of the State Naturopathic Board. Licensing in both states survived Tennessee infection. As a reflection of post-Tennessee reality, the 1949 licensing of naturopaths in Texas included a specific reference in its “grandfather” provisions that provided that licenses issued in the state of Tennessee were not to be considered for any purpose, recognizing that the Tennessee legislature had acted to invalidate any licenses that had been issued. (Attorney General’s opinion Letter V-1486, July 29, 1952 to Henry J. Schlichting, ND, Secretary, Texas Board of Naturopathic Examiners.)
With a substantial base to work with in Texas Schlichting decided that the naturopaths should address their own education issues by establishing a legitimate four-year residency college within the state to be supported primarily by the Texas profession. Lack of “Class A naturopathic colleges” Schlichting wrote in announcing the founding of SCNM, “is a threat to the perpetuation of our profession.” In 1951 the Southern College of Naturopathic Medicine (SCNM) was chartered and an agreement was made with the newly-named Texas Southmost College—a 25-year-old institution previously known as Brownsville Junior College and located in Brownsville, Texas - to serve as the home for SCNM.
The administrative offices for SCNM were located in a building on the Texas Southmost campus and the premed and Basic Science courses for SCNM students were taken through cross-enrollment at Texas Southmost. The first major event sponsored by SCNM was a 2-week postgraduate seminar co-sponsored with the Texas Naturopathic Physicians Association and held on the Texas Southmost campus. (Journal of the ANA August, 1951; Journal of the ANPSA October and November, 1951)
A Change of Identity
The summer of 1951 was eventful for the naturopaths for several reasons. Meeting in Miami Beach, FL, the Western ANA changed its name to the American Naturopathic Physicians and Surgeons Association (ANPSA), re-elected Dr. Schlichting as its President, established a new Iowa corporate charter and relocated its headquarters to Des Moines in that state. The reasons behind this organizational restructuring were explained in articles by Schlichting and by A. R. Hedges in the September, 1951, issue of what was now the Journal of the ANPSA.
The changes were necessitated, they said, by the last resistance to the newly-unified ANA which was continuing to lay claim to the name American Naturopathic Association. The unified group felt strong enough to take on a “post-Lustian” identity in representing the natural healing professions.
Robert Carroll would likely have never accepted this one step. He proudly carried the banner of the ANA and felt—correctly—that he was entitled to do so. But Schlichting and Hedges felt that the profession could use the new strength that came with licensed status for naturopaths in Texas, added to the existing licensed states, to support a modern profession, a reinvigorated educational system and a staunch commitment to the vital force. Carroll had always preached the value of science in explaining the theory of natural healing; the value of supporting work like Cannon’s vision of homeostasis. Schlichting preached the value of a professional identity as “family physicians” in a general family practice that included minor surgery and obstetrics.
The new professional organization, he pointed out, was formed in order to “promote the public health and to perpetuate and advance the science, art and practice of the naturopathic school of medicine; to accomplish such objectives by attaining high standards of naturopathic education and by constantly stimulating and furthering the profession’s interest in and knowledge of the diagnosis, treatment and prevention of …disease and ill health…” As things trended upward for scientific natural healing in 1951 it was through this vision. (Journal of ANPSA, September, 1951)
Medical Dominance Arises
But all of this began to change dramatically in 1953, and what seemed so promising at the beginning of the 1950s was totally eroded by the end of the decade. No developments demonstrated this as much as the history of natural healing in Texas over just 10 short years. The force of medical dominance began to rear its head in 1953 at the annual convention of the American Medical Association. A resolution was introduced by the Alabama delegation to the House of Delegates to attack chiropractic and naturopathy at their “weakest point,” their school and colleges.
At the behest of AMA leadership this topic was referred to the AMA educational committee rather than passed on by the House of Delegates. The educational committee felt that the AMA should refrain at the time from weighing in directly on the schools and colleges of other professions for political reasons, but the sentiment of the resolution was taken by AMA leadership as a strong interest by the medical profession in moving politically against these remaining “healing cults.” The matter was passed back to the state medical societies to deal with at the state level, with the full support of the national association. (Proceedings of the House of Delegates, American Medical Association Annual Meeting, 1953).
Historian Monte Poen called the American Medical Association “the country’s richest and most influential post-World War II lobby.” In assessing the powerful effect of the AMA’s lobbying from his research in the 1970s Poen opined that “… as to the role played by organized medicine, I have become more impressed by the medical community’s ability to influence public opinion” in the post WWII 1940s and 1950s. (Poen, Monte M., Harry S. Truman Versus the Medical Lobby, University of Missouri Press (Columbia, MO, 1979), Preface)
At the state level organized medicine used its ability to influence public opinion to sway the views of mainstream newspapers, government officials and state legislators. This was important because professional legitimization is established in the United States on a state-by-state basis. This has been true since 1889 when the US Supreme Court decided Dent v. West Virginia. The history of this first medical licensing case is the subject of James Mohr’s Licensed to Practice: The Supreme Court Defines the American Medical Profession.
Dent, the petitioner in the case, was an Eclectic physician at a time in history when there were 3 schools of medicine; the Regulars (allopaths according to Samuel Hahneman), the Homeopaths (as homeopathy was conceived by Hahneman) and the Eclectics (which included the Physio-Medicalists). The Regulars in West Virginia founded the West Virginia Medical Society in 1867 and were the moving force behind the state licensing law adopted by the state legislature in 1882. By adopting legislation that required an education at a Regular school, the licensing law barred practitioners from the 2 other schools of medicine from practicing in West Virginia.
As David Korostyshevsky summarized the key aspects of the situation in his review of Mohr’s book in the journal of the History of Medicine:
Grounding his analysis in both legal and medical historiographies, Mohr argues that while the American public supported public health efforts to control epidemic disease, medical licensing was not a popular reform. It was instead ‘a consciously engineered policy, drafted and passed through the concerted efforts of a specific subset of physicians, the elite Regulars’ of the Medical Society of West Virginia (156 of Mohr). Mohr also challenges the interpretation that medical licensing was a response to the growing complexity of scientific medicine. Because scientific medicine did not produce tangible results until the 1930s, the push for medical licensing is a consequence of economic and political factors, not strictly scientific ones. Finally, Mohr shows that the Supreme Court upheld a version of medical licensing that relied on the quality of a physician’s education as the only measure of competence…”
As the Regulars were the largest of the 3 schools of medicine in 19th-century America, the Dent decision allowed the Regulars to achieve elimination of the 2 other schools state-by-state by the early 20th century. This went a long way toward eliminating the other schools.
The Texas Medical Wars
All of this became relevant to events in Texas just as the naturopaths under Schlichting’s leadership had begun to achieve success professionally and to create an educational institution that would fill the void left by the NCA decision to require chiropractic schools to abandon the training of naturopaths. As Schlichting transferred the presidency of the ANPSA to Hedges in 1952 he focused even more on his position as Secretary of the Texas State Naturopathic Examining Board. After Robert Carroll’s unexpected passing, Budden and Hedges secured natural healing in Oregon even more—and tried to secure natural healing throughout the Pacific Northwest. Schlichting tried to do so in Texas at the same time, hoping to secure the Southwest (Texas in addition to Arizona) for natural healing as well.
The success of the naturopaths in Texas was targeted by the Texas Medical Association and the Texas Medical Board in 1953. The medical campaign against the naturopaths began in a remarkable way. When the 1949 legislature adopted the Texas Naturopathic Act (Article 4950d, Vernon Codified Statutes) passage was during the term in office of Texas Attorney General Price Daniel (1947-1953). In 1952 Schlichting as Secretary of the Texas State Board of Naturopathic Examiners sought guidance from the Attorney General on the “grandfather clause” of the Naturopathic Act. That guidance was provided under AG Opinion V-1486, dated July 29, 1952, which was directed to Schlichting as a state official seeking a necessary interpretation of state law. Such guidance to state officials was – and is – a function of the AG’s office under the Texas Constitution and Texas law.
In 1953 Price Daniel—later a US Senator (1953-1957), Governor of the Texas (1957-1963) and Justice of the Texas Supreme Court (1971-1978)—was succeeded as Attorney General by john Ben Shepherd. Shepherd’s office received a letter requesting consideration of 2 questions challenging the validity under the Texas Constitution from the Criminal District Attorney of San Antonio, Texas. That District Attorney was considering bringing action against naturopaths in Bexar County, Texas, if the Naturopathic Act should be invalid. This action was being requested by the county medical society and state medical association.
In this situation the Texas Attorney General can—on a discretionary basis—serve a unique function, that of “an alternate Supreme Court.” (See Sabota, Leo M. and Martin, J. David “The Texas Attorney General-An Alternate State Supreme Court,” in Kraemer, Carin and Maxwell (1975) Understanding Texas Politics (West Publishing Co., St. Paul, MN).)
This function is discretionary, but with the matter under consideration by a new AG briefs were solicited by the AG’s office and submitted on the issue. In spite of “three very able briefs” arguing in favor of the enforceability of the Naturopathic Act, Attorney General’s opinion S-60, dated June 29, 1953 was issued finding the act to violate the Texas Constitution: “SUMMARY: The Naturopathic Act, Article 4590d. V.C.S. violates the provisions of Art. XVI, Sec. 31 of the Constitution of Texas in that it gives a preference to one segment of the healing arts. To rule otherwise would require a holding that the Act is uncertain and indefinite and thus unconstitutional. State Ex. Rel. Halsted, 182 S.W. 2d 479 (Tex. Crim. 1944).”
The complete loss of naturopathy in Texas and the end of the Texas career of Henry J. (“Doc”) Schlichting, Jr., ND, would not be final for another 5 years. But this was the beginning of the end and in the next five years Georgia, South Carolina, Florida and Utah would be lost as well. Medical Dominance as wielded by organized medicine was under way.
Coming next issue: Dr. Schlichting and Texas naturopathy, part 3; Medical Dominance in the 1950s; the Pacific NW fight for the survival of natural healing.
Biography
George W. Cody, JD, MA, BA, received his undergradute degree from Stanford University, his law degree from Willamette University, and his master’s degree from University of Washington. He practiced law for 25 years and has worked in public affairs, health policy, and medical history research. His original history of natural medicine is part of The Textbook of Natural Medicine.