Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 44, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 11 April 1901 — A WEEK IN INDIANA. [ARTICLE]

A WEEK IN INDIANA.

RECORD OF HAPPENINGS FOR SEVEN DAYS. The Supreme Court of the State BeMt That Fraetlcinc Physician* In the AS•enoe of a Specific Contract Are Mot Bound to Respond to Calls. Doctor May Refuse Serrieea A licensed practicing physician is not legally bound to attend any patient for whom he is called, where he has not made any contract to do so, even though he may have served as family physician, and he is not liable in damages for the consequences of his refusel to answer such a call. The supreme court has so decided in affirming the judgment in the case of George D. Hurely vs. George W. Eddingfleld, appealed from Montgomery county. Dr. Eddingfleld was summoned to attend Hurley’s wife, but he refused to go. There was no other physician who could be obtained in time to be of any service, and he was called a second time by Hurley, and a third time by the neighbors, and at last a preacher who lived in the neighborhood called on the doctor and urged him to go, offering to pay his fees in advance. There was no apparent reason why he should not go, except that he did not choose to do so, but he proved obdur,ate, and it is charged that Mrs. Hurley’s death, soon after a baby was bom, was due to the lack of a physician’s aid. In affirming the judgment of the lower court Judge Baker said the act regulating the practice of medicine was only a preventive and not a compulsive measure. Aged Petitioner for a Divorce. In the Monroe circuit court Mrs. Mollie Fisher, aged eighty, appeared and asked for a divorce from her husband, William Fisher, aged elghty-one. Both were so feeble that they went to the witness stand with difficulty, and the father said he had been driven from his home many years ago because a son, then twenty-five years old, had treated him cruelly and abused him, and the mother took the son’s part. The old man had gone to the home of a daughter and now lives with her. The wife asked for a separation and $3,000 alimony. Judge Martin refused to take action and said that the trouble would soon be settled forever by the great Master, as both were on the verge of eternity. Mail Clerks to form Colony About twenty railway mail service clerks, with headquarters In Indianapolis, have decided on a unique colonization scheme on a twenty-acre tract of land in the city suburbs. Streets and drives are to be laid out and neat houses built, and a direct telephone wire will be run to the office of Chief Clerk C. E. Votaw in Indianapolis. As 200 clerks report at Indianapolis, several of them are off every day, and, in providing substitutes, there has been much inconvenience to the men. When the colony is established all the chief clerks will have to do will be to telephone to it and a clerk can be obtained. * Named by Governor Durbin. Governor Durbin has made the following additional appointments: Adjutant general—John R. Ward of Monticello, to succeed James K. Gore. Member public library commission— Jacob P. Dunn, Indianapolis, reappointed. Board of metropolitan police commissioners for Kokomo— ~V. D. Ellis, republican; George P. Wood, republican; Joseph S. Tarkington, democrat. The new adjutant is 29 years old. He is an attorney of Monticello, and was a second lieutenant in Colonel Durbin’s regiment in the SpanishAmerican war.

Indiana Teachers a* Andereoa. Thirty-two hundred teachers attended the nineteenth annual convention of the Northern Indiana Teachers’ association at Anderson. The meeting was opened by an address by Governor Durbin. Others on the programme were Mayor M. M. Dunlap, Walter Scott Perry of Brooklyn, N. Y., and Rev. William J. Long of Stamford, Cbnn. It is likely that South Bend will be chosen for the next convention. Among those spoken of for president are Superintendent Mott of Richmond, Professor Raimer of Lafayette and Professor Douglass of Logansport. Asks Pay from Labor Body. Charles Beebe, a flattener and member of the new Anderson assembly, Knights of Labor, has sued the old organization for $5,000. The action is the result of the fight with Simon Burns of Pittsburg, president of the old organization. Beebe is sustained by J. S. Parsons, who heads the new assembly. Beebe took up with the new organization and when the old body won, was blacklisted along with the others. He has since been unable to obtain employment in any of the factories. Indian* News Note*. Muncie’s postoffice receipts for the year ended March 31 were $45,432.78, an increase of $4,941.92 over the preceding fiscal year. Frank N. Kaunapell, a New Albany druggist, has filed a petition in bankruptcy, with assets of $1,500 and liabilities of $5,000. Scarlet fever is epidemic at Freelandsville, in the northern part of Knox county. Several of the oases are severe and the schools have been closed.