Life, 1908-12-31 · page 7 of 21
Life — December 31, 1908 — page 7: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This illustration depicts a figure standing on an abandoned car in a desolate winter landscape, gazing toward a distant church and rural settlement. The cartoon's title, "The Call of the Wild," pairs urban/industrial imagery (the broken-down automobile) with pastoral wilderness, suggesting tension between civilization and nature. The accompanying article "Legality of Healing" discusses medical practitioners and legal regulation of healing practices. The cartoon appears to satirize the appeal of abandoning modern urban life—represented by the failed automobile—to return to simpler, rural existence. This likely reflects early 20th-century anxiety about industrial progress and nostalgic romanticization of agrarian life, a common satirical theme in Life magazine's social commentary.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
Legality of Healing FTER interminable sifting and refining of the pros and cons of the mental healing boom, a keen ob- server has finally taken the whole subject by the scruff of the neck by asking: “Is mental healing legal? "” It is clear that a man should not be cured of what ails him unless it is done strictly according to law, regardless of who made the law, even if the lawyers, for appropriate fees, of course, have to en- “THE CALL OF THE WILD.” gage in litigation, aye, even unto the Supreme Court itself, to discover what the law is The course of procedure, therefore, should be as follows: When a man is suspected of either healing himself or being healed by others in a manner con- trary to law, some defender of Black- stone should immediately get out an in- junction against him, and every other proper and improper effort should be made to hold him in statu quo until the authorities can decide whether he should get well or not, and, if so, in just what w If, in spite of this injunction, old Doc tor Nature, who practices without a diploma, shows a disposition to interject corrective measures, extra-legal, as it were, orthodox ministers should be called upon for prayers and other supernatural assistance in the interest of regularity, just as, before the reign of law, prayers for the suffering were offered both before and after the medicine man had thrown up the sponge. If the patient should happen to die in the meantime, at least we would know that he died in a regular manner, and that precedent had not been outraged. Ellis O. Jones. comicbooks.com