184 



A Last Word About Christian Science. 



Dr. Eggleston, of Chicago, in a recent number of the North Ameri- 

 can Review, says we have too many physicians, and that c t } 1 c 

 could easily attend to all the cases of sickness now distributed among 

 three. Most physicians are dependent on their practice for a liveli- 

 hood, which fact might force them of necessity, under existing cir- 

 cumstances, to magnify their calling, exaggerate the gravity of 

 disease, extol the virtues of medicine, and decry the power of nature. 

 Medicine has been prostituted to the level of a trade, and the business 

 methods employed in it have become a reproach. In the United 

 States the relative number of physicians to the whole population is 

 one to six hundred, in Germany one to three thousand, in Kussia one 

 to six thousand, and it is not known that either Germany or Kussia 

 suffers thereby. In Germany there is general complaint of a surplus 

 of physicians. 



Is not our education largely at fault, in teaching a reliance on drugs 

 or other foreign support rather than on ourselves and nature ? The 

 oldest and wisest physicians, it is said, give the least medicine, and do 

 most remarkable cures with bread-pills. Many of our diseases are 

 comparable to our prejudices; they come without reason, continue 

 without reason, and neither reason alone nor medicine will dislodge 

 them, but Christian Science may, the water of Lourdes, the faith- 

 cure, or any sufficiently strong mental influence. Our diseases, more- 

 over, are sometimes our only occupation, and we are therefore not 

 disposed to give them up. Many confirmed invalids, under constant 

 medical treatment, are such only because their mental constitution, 

 and its effect, on the body, is not understood by the friends or physi- 

 cian, and what might easily be cured by proper means is thus suffered 

 to go on for years under a total misapprehension. It is these cases 

 principally which furnish to Christian Science and mind-healers their 

 most astonishing cures. Hysteria may simulate almost every form of 

 disease — spine and joint affections, paralysis, blindness, deafness, fits, 

 loss of feeling, shortening of limbs, dyspepsia, etc.— any one of which 

 may therefore be cured instantaneously by any strong mental impres- 

 sion, as shock, fright, expectation, the command to "rise and walk," 

 or the delirium of Christian Science. 



I need not speak here of the too frequent mistaken judgment of 

 medical men of all schools as to the exact disease present in any given 

 case. Many mistakes are made, and sometimes not till after death 

 is the real cause known. There is no doubt also that many fall victims 

 to injudicious medication —unnecessary or excessive medicine — pre- 

 scribed by legally qualified men. 



Mental pain— as anxiety, disappointment, annoyance, dissatisfaction 



