Doctor Curmudgeon® “Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose”
By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAP Doctor Eisman is in Family Practice in Aventura, Florida with her partner, Dr. Eugene Eisman, an internist/cardiologist
To quote from Wiktionary: An epigram by Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in the January 1849 issue of his journal Les Guêpes (“The Wasps”). Literally, “the more it changes, the more it’s the same thing”.
There is truth in that epigram.
I am brought back to the Butler Act of 1925, wherein the schools in Tennessee were not allowed to teach about evolution. This was signed into law.
Wikipedia describes it: “The Butler Act was a 1925 Tennessee law prohibiting public school teachers from denying the book of Genesis account of mankind’s origin. The law also prevented the teaching of the evolution of man from what it referred to as lower orders of animals in place of the Biblical account.”
How did this bizarre law get on the books?
Well, back in May of 1925, a school teacher was arrested, because he was committing the heinous act of teaching his students about evolution. The young man’s name was John Scopes and he was a well-respected high school science teacher.
There was of course, a trial and it became one of the most famous trials in the twentieth century.
The prosecutor was a presidential candidate, William Jennings Bryan.
The defense was led by two men: Arthur Garfield, the ACLU General Counsel and one of the most renowned criminal defense lawyers of the time, Clarence Darrow.
And the judge…well, he was not exactly impartial. He did not allow any scientific witnesses to be brought by the defense. And this very conservative Christian began each day with an extensive prayer.
But the brilliant and experienced Darrow did something quite unusual. He had the courage to call his opposing counsel to the stand.
Bryan had previously given a lengthy speech in court on the bible .As the judge was allowing the testimony of expert witnesses, Darrow accomplished this by naming William Jennings Bryan as an expert biblical witness.
Not having been personally able to attend court on that day, I have read reports that Clarence Darrow interrogated Bryan and humiliated him.
But the judge ruled that the testimony of William Jennings Bryan must be stricken from the records.
By this point, all Darrow could do was to request that Scopes be pronounced guilty. If there was a guilty verdict, Darrow could then take the case to the state Supreme Court and the ACLU hoped that it would then be declared unconstitutional. However, two years later, the ACLU lost and the Butler Act stayed in place.
The stacked trial jury took fewer than ten minutes to find Scopes guilty and John Scopes was fined one hundred dollars.
After the trial, Scopes landed a contract at the University of Chicago studying geology and then worked in the oil industry as a petroleum engineer.
Oh yes…why was it called the Butler Act? John W. Butler presented his bill to the Tennessee House of Representatives to make the teaching of evolution a misdemeanor. And in the House, it was quickly passed in less than a week, unanimously.
The Butler Act was finally repealed in 1967.
Yet, even today there are public school educators leery about the teaching of evolution over the objections of some politicians and parents.
“The more things change…”
(Editorial note from Galahad, the Siberian Husky who is Doctor Curmudgeon’s cousin and edits her writing: “Watch the interesting film, ‘Inherit The Wind’, made in 1960 and starring Spencer Tracy and Fredric March.’, a superb dramatization of the Scopes Trial”)
Dr. Curmudgeon suggests “Bitter Medicine”, Dr. Eugene Eisman’s story of his experiences–from the humorous to the intense—as a young army doctor serving in the Vietnam War.
Bitter Medicine by Eugene H. Eisman, M.D. –on Amazon
Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com
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