People v. Parish

CRAIG, J.

The defendant was convicted of “practicing a system and mode of treating the sick and afflicted without a valid, unrevoked certificate from the state board of medical examiners.” He appeals from the judgment pronounced and order denying his motion for a new trial.

Appellant first claims as a ground for reversal that the evidence fails to disclose any diagnosis of disease by the defendant and that one who does not diagnose does not practice medicine within the meaning of the Medical Practice Act (Stats. 1913, p. 722). Appellant is entirely correct as to this abstract proposition of law.

(People

v.

Jordan,

172 Cal. 399 [156 Pac. 451].) Appellant stresses the point that defendant at no time made representations to those seeking treatment as to the nature of their various ailments or that he would cure them. This is offered to show an entire lack of diagnosis. But diagnosis may be established by acts and conduct as well as by any representations which might be made to a patient.

People

v.

Jordan, supra,

has decided that it is impossible to dissociate diagnosis from the practice of the art of healing by any physical, medical, mechanical, hygienic, or surgical means. There is evidence in this record that the defendant used physical means in adjusting the vertebrae of witnesses. Hence, under the Jordan decision, the jury might lawfully have drawn the inference that defendant made a diagnosis in connection with the treatment of this witness, Stewart.

The following instruction is assigned as reversible error:

“You are instructed to disregard any statement or suggestions of counsel that chiropractors, or the practitioners of any other system of healing the sick, cannot procure a license to practice their system of healing in this state. And you are further instructed that it is no defense in this case for the defendant to argue or attempt to argue to you that the board of medical examiners of this state has discriminated against him. And in this connection you are instructed that the law of the state, besides other forms of license, provides for the issuance of a certificate which entitles the holder thereof to practice the chiropractic system of healing the