1919 - Medicine

Medicine

The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the Harrison Narcotics Tax Act of 1914 March 3, ruling 5 to 4 in the case of United States v. Doremus against physician Charles T. Doremus, who prescribed 500 tablets of morphine to a known addict in violation of Section 2 of the law that forbids anyone from dispensing of narcotic drugs except by a written order on a form issued by the Commissioner of Internal Revenue. A lower court had held this section to be unconstitutional as an invasion of state power, Chief Justice White dissents from the majority opinion, as do Justices McKenna, Van Devanter, and McReynolds; courts in the next few years will send thousands of physicians to prison for violating the 1914 law, but underworld sources will continue to supply addicts with opium, heroin, and morphine.

The Eastman School of Medicine and Dentistry is founded at the 70-year-old University of Rochester with a gift from photography pioneer George Eastman, whose company supplies the fledgling motion picture industry with its raw film stock.

Pediatrics pioneer Abraham Jacobi dies at Bolton Landing, N.Y., July 10 at age 89; Sir William Osler at Oxford, England, December 19 at age 70.