CHRISTIAN SCIENCE An Exposition of Mrs. Eddy's Wonderful Discov- Lecturer in the University and Bellevue Hospital Medical College, and to Medical Practice, one of the Authors of "A System of Legal Medicine" 1.02 "Christian Science demonstrates that the patient who pays whatever he -From Preface to Miscellaneous Writings of Mrs. Eddy. Copyright BY E. B. TREAT & Co 1900 X1301 P98 1900 PREFACE. IT has seemed worth while to collect these papers, expounding the dangerous teachings of our latter-day delusion, Christian Science, and the theory and limitations of medical legislation, if only for the sake of children and helpless adults. Thanks are due to the Proprietor and Editors of the North American Review for permission to reprint the articles written for that periodical at the instance of my friend David A. Munro, Esq., and to the publisher and editor of the Medical Record, and the New York Sun for the use of the matter copyrighted by them. They have proved less tenacious of their copyrights than is the discoverer of Christian Science of hers. The papers have not been altered from their original form in order to avoid in the bound volume repetitions due to treating the same subject before different audiences. When line upon line and precept upon precept are needed repetitions are not vain. Four of these papers deal with the exposition of Mrs. Eddy's teachings, her own account of herself and the status of her cult before the law. Another treats of the educational effect and policy of medical legislation, and the last shows how by enforcement of medical laws not consonant with public opinion the apothecary in England became a general practitioner of medicine. The best proof that the articles in the North American Review are fair expositions of Mrs. Eddy's biography and teachings is that their accuracy has not been denied, so far as their author knows. How could it be when they consist for the most part of her own words quoted by book and page so that error might be easily corrected? No willful misstatement has been made, and none, it is believed, unwittingly. The patient reader will see that there is here no denial, but rather explicit and repeated admissions of the extraordinary influence of suggestion, expectant attention and mental excitation however caused upon the body. It is not denied that hysterical patients, the morbidly introspective, the worriers, the malades imaginaires, the victims of obscure nervous ailments have been helped by Faith Cure, Christian Science, Mental Healing, Mesmerism, Hypnotism, Vitapathy, and the like. But it is denied that every post hoc is a propter hoc, and that because, for instance, asthma, which often yields to a change of residence, or wears out by lapse of time, and childbirth, a normal function, sometimes run successful courses under such methods, therefore gross ignorance and presumption are to be substituted without restraint or liability in daily life for demonstrably efficient skill and science. We know that a surgeon can staunch the gush of blood from a severed artery, that the physician has sweet oblivious antidotes for pain, and, if called in time, can, often counteract the deadly work of poison. Eddyism cannot do these things. Will Mrs. Eddy or any of her disciples venture by personal experiment under test conditions to prove that Christian Science can counteract by its arguments the effects of morphine, atropine or strychnine? What must be obvious to any one who will think but a moment is that suggestion, expectant attention and such mental stimuli cannot operate upon babies as they do upon adults; and accordingly, as one would |