756 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



In religious matters Christian Science lias divided many homes, 

 and has destroyed not a few through the mischief produced by its 

 propaganda. It is claimed that Christian Science has cured many 

 who have not been benefited by the efforts of regular practition- 

 ers of medicine. On the other hand, many have died during the 

 exclusive ministrations of Christian Scientists. Moreover, Chris- 

 tian Science considers itself entitled to disregard such sanitary 

 laws, including those concerning infectious diseases, as have been 

 found effectual to preserve intact the general health of communi- 

 ties and peoples. 



Christian Science, then, is a cult unusually powerful and far 

 reaching in its influence, and it is therefore entitled to and should 

 invite correspondingly careful investigation of all its various 

 aspects. 



I have been interested in Christian Science from the view- 

 point of the medical man, and I have felt quite unaffected, for 

 the reason which I shall presently give, by Mrs. Eddy's stricture 

 that " a person's ignorance of Christian Science is a sufficient rea- 

 son for his silence on the subject." The system of medicine, as 

 it is taught in the great medical colleges of to-day, is an epitome 

 of the accumulated study and experience of mankind from the 

 time human beings first became ill up to the present day. All 

 systems of cure, or of alleged cure, have been examined by men 

 who have made it the work of their lives to treat the sick. What- 

 ever has been found curative has been retained, and unsubstan- 

 tiated claims to cure have been discarded; so that the regular de- 

 gree of doctor of medicine states that its recipient has acquired a 

 knowledge of the system of treating disease which is a crystalliza- 

 tion of the world's best medical thought, study, and experience. 



As the possessor of such a degree, I have been engaged during 

 several months in an investigation of the cures which Christian- 

 Science healers are said to have accomplished. 



Before beginning this work I reflected that mental suggestion, 

 or the influence of the mind of the physician upon that of the 

 patient, is a potent factor in the treatment of such diseases as are 

 not characterized by permanent pathological changes in the tissues, 

 and I remembered that when judiciously influenced by the physi- 

 cian's mind, the mind of the patient can affect his body favorably 

 both in functional disorders and in disorders which may result from 

 nervous aberration such as hysteria in all its protean forms, the 

 purely subjective, as headache and hypersesthesia, and also those 

 exhibiting objective manifestations, as hysterical dislocations and 

 paralyses. 



I knew that medical men, in their own unadvertised work, 



