Page:Trial of S.M. Landis.djvu/77

 done all in their power to put him down, simply and only because his daily life is a constant rebuke to their own. Doctor Landis has been a constant advocate of temperance. He believes in the Gospel of person al cleanliness and purity.

Ho teaches the thousands who flock to hear him, that you cannot honor God in a body debauched by pork, whiskey, drug-medicines or tobacco. He believes in having good muscle, sinew, nerve and bone, and wages perpetual war against all licentiousness and sin. Why sir, on one occasion I saw a minister stop in the midst of his prayer to put a large quid of tobacco in his mouth, and it so shocked me I have never quite recovered from it. He was a fraud. They, who revile this defendant and hold up their hands in horror at the mention of Dr. Landis' name, who pray God to sanctify them while their bodies are filthy and diseased from intemperance, will yet be found unworthy to unloose the latchet of his shoes.

.—Yon remember the answer of Sojourner Truth when she was asked by a person whether any thing unclean should enter into heaven, answered, "no, I do not expect there will," then said he how do you expect to take your unclean breath there? "Bless your heart," said she, "I expect to leave my breath behind me when I go there."

.—True your Honor—but had Sojourner Truth been properly educated she would have known that the spirit is depend ant upon the body, and the body is made up in part of what we eat. That tobacco, being one of the most subtle poisons known to man, acting principally upon the nerves, which are most closely connected with the spirit, damages the soul as well as the body through the close sympathy between them. That the body is the souls dwelling place, and should be kept so pure that it may be a fit temple for the holy (or whole) ghost to dwell in.

In the case of the Commonwealth v. Twitchell, 1 Brewster's Reports, 609, it has been decided by this Court, that a new trial should be granted in a case which will bear this threefold test, viz: 1. Was there any evidence to justify the verdict?

2. Is it clearly against the weight of the testimony?

3. Is there any reasonable hope that an other trial would produce a different result?

In regard to the first question, I answer emphatically,.

No witness called the obscene. The jury decided this case not by the evidence, but by the statement of the District Attorney and upon your Honor's opinion.

I think, the verdict was clearly against the weight of the testimony, as I have before shown. Could we have a new trial, I do not believe there is another jury to be found in Philadelphia that would convict this defendant.

On this point I have spoken throughout this argument, and therefore have but one word to say. The law permits us to examine experts. This was refused.

.—Have you found any one case at all in which a charge of this character was made, where experts were admitted?

.—There is no case on record, I think, where a medical book like this, sold under seal, which the law has privileged for the last three "hundred years, by the decisions of Coke, Ellenborough and Mansfield, and by nearly all the decisions to which I referred, was ever attempted to be restrained by such a proceeding as this. Some few years ago, the attempt was made in New York by an ignorant detective to restrain the circulation of this very book, but as soon as the judge saw it, he pronounced it a medical work, privileged by law, and dismissed the complaint.

.—What would be the influence of a medical work if it had been put in the hands of a young daughter, or in the hands of one of tender years, would it not be obscene then? Take such a book as you produce here, put it into the hands of a person of tender years, without any expression of opinion as to the intention, what would be the effect?