The court soon extended this rule to optometry, holding that "the practice of the [optometry] profession is limited to individuals, and that corporations cannot be chartered to engage therein."

Hence he cannot properly act in the practice of his vocation as an agent of a corporation or business partnership whose interests in the very nature of the case are commercial in character.

Under statutes and upon facts more or less similar, it has been held that the employer is practicing optometry illegally, even though the competent optometrist employed by it is fully free to exercise his own judgment in making examinations and prescribing glasses.

—the Jewelry Company originally employed a licensed optometrist in connection with its optical dispensary, but after protest was made, the defendant company changed its method of doing business and rented to Jacobs, a licensed optometrist, space in its store.

While corporations do in fact furnish medical care in every state, the courts of only a small minority of the jurisdictions have openly approved of the corporate practice of medicine.

—optometry is a learned profession and that sound public policy forbids its "commercialization", is supported by some authority, a proper analysis, such as that in this and the few companion cases representing the minority rule, shows the fallacy of that contention by pointing out that optometry is a mechanical art, and empirical rather than learned.

In the first place, the state charged the defendant was practicing optometry at its place of business, which it was not licensed to do, and which a corporation could not be licensed to do

In such decisions there is absent a statute such as § 148.56, which requires the presence of an optometrist in the dispensing establishment of the optician.

In Goldman, we said: "It is our judgment that under our statutes, the legislature, having in mind the protection of eyesight is just as important as the protection of property rights and advice thereon, as the protection of the teeth, as the protection against improper and unauthorized methods of healing, by the enactment of the statutes with reference to optometry recognized …

Most of the cases which have held illegal the corporate employment of persons licensed to practice optometry are based on more restrictive statutory provisions than ours.

[PDF] THE CORPORATE PRACTICE OF MEDICINE BAR AND INTERGRATED DELIVERY SYSTEMS: A …