8o8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



about the nature of disease to recognize symptoms which indicate 

 the fitness of this agency, too little of science in general to realize 

 that a means suitable to remove one condition may be entirely 

 inadequate or unsuitable to counteract another. Hardly a means 

 of healing is known but had extravagant claims and prophecies 

 made for it when it was first brought into use, which afterward 

 settled down into a very moderate compass. Take, for instance, 

 the transfusion of blood. The early transfusionists reasoned, in 

 the style of the Christian Scientists, that the blood is the life. 

 Take the bad blood out of a man and put new blood into him, 

 and you draw off his diseases and infirmities and put new life into 

 him. They even hoped to dispel insanity by this infusion of new 

 life, and some went so far as to prophesy that moral infirmities 

 would be cured in this way. The theory of Christian Science may 

 seem very beautiful to persons of a highly religious and highly 

 emotional nature, but it has no more connection with the cure of 

 disease than a rainbow has with the multiplication table. It is a 

 pretty fancy, and one hardly has the heart to dispel the illusion, 

 but it is " as false as it is fair." Many of the most sanctimonious 

 healers, who make the most impressive appeals to the piety of 

 their victims, are in the business simply for the money they can 

 get out of it. Others are honest, but are themselves deceived. It 

 is fortunate that the patients of the Christian Scientists generally 

 go back to the physicians when anything serious is the matter 

 with them, or we should see a greater slaughter than has already 

 occurred. About ninety-five per cent of the believers in this doc- 

 trine are women, and to their sensitive feelings the above may 

 seem like ill-natured and hasty language. But it is neither. It is 

 an earnest and deliberate effort to use the tests of science so as to 

 show how unsubstantial is this rainbow-bridge upon which they 

 are asked to trust their lives. 



The Christian Science craze will have its day and then die out, 

 like the blue-glass delusion and other crazes of like character. 

 Already signs appear that it has reached its highest limit in the 

 eastern part of the country, and that its decadence has begun. It 

 is not occupying so much space as formerly in the newspapers ; 

 and it is becoming less profitable to those who practice it. A lady 

 and her husband who set up a Christian Science school and hospi- 

 tal in New York recently found themselves a thousand dollars 

 out at the end of the winter and gave up the business. In the 

 West, however, where it appeared later, the movement still main- 

 tains considerable vigor. 



It will have done good if it compels physicians to adopt mental 

 healing, not as a panacea, but as an addition to the curative means 

 now at their command, and for occasional intelligent use. This 

 done, the sooner Christian Science, as a distinct mode of treat- 



