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59 Me. 181

Bibber v. Simpson

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine

Decided July 1, 1871

Supreme Judicial Court of Maine · decided 1871-07-01

Ox exceptions to the ruling of Goddard, J., of the superior court for the county of Cumberland. Assumpsit on account annexed, for $51 for services rendered the defendants’ intestate, at his special request, by the plaintiff as a clairvoyant.

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1871-07-01

How this case has been cited

Cited by 11 later decisions — most recently March 1953

11 state decisions

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Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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Appleton, C. J.

¶1The services rendered were medical in their character. True, the plaintiff does not call herself a physician, but she visits her sick patients, examines their condition, determines the nature of the disease, and prescribes the remedies deemed by her most appropriate. Whether the plaintiff calls herself a medical clairvoyant, or a clairvoyant physician, or a clear-seeing physician, matters little; assuredly, such services as the plaintiff claims to have rendered, purport to be and are to be deemed medical, and are within the clear and obvious meaning of R. S. 1871, c. 13, § 3, which provides that “ no person, except a physician or surgeon, who commenced prior to Feb. 16, 1831, or has received a medical degree at a public medical institution in the United States, or a license from the Maine Medical Association, shall recover any compensation for medical or surgical services, unless previous to such services he had obtained a certificate of good moral character from the municipal officers of the town where he then resided.” The' plaintiff has not brought herself within the provisions of this section, and cannot maintain this action.

¶2Nonsuit confirmed.

Kent, Walton, DickeRSOn, Barrows, and Talley, JJ., concurred.
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