In England, it was, until 1869, considered that a parent’s duty to furnish necessaries for an infant child was a moral and not a legal one, so that he was not liable to pay for medicines or medical aid furnished to his child without some proof of a contract on his part either expressed or implied. And this still is the view where the child is over fourteen. The rule of law varies in the different States of the Union. In most of those in which the question has come before the courts the legal liability of the parent for necessaries furnished to the infant is asserted, unless they are otherwise supplied by the father; and it is put upon the ground that the moral obligation is a legal one, and some of the courts have declared this quite strongly. In other States the old English rule has been held to be law, and agency and authority have been declared to be the only ground of such liability. The authority of the infant to bind the parent for medical aid supplied him will be inferred from very slight evidence [74]. But a contract to pay will not be implied when the infant has been allowed a sufficiently reasonable sum for his expenses [75]. Where the services have been rendered with the parent’s knowledge and consent, he will generally have to pay for them. A boy left home against his father’s will, and refused to return at his parent’s command. Being seized with a mortal illness he did at last come back. His father went with him to a |38| physician to obtain medical advice, and the doctor afterwards visited him professionally at his father’s house. No express promise to pay was proved, nor had the father said he would not pay. The Court held the father liable to pay the doctor’s bill [76]. And in an English case, where a father had several of his children living at a distance from his own house under the protection of servants, it was held that if an accident happened to one of the children he was liable to pay for the medical attendance on such child, although he might not know the surgeon called in, and although the accident might have been received through the carelessness of a servant [77].