Article May 18, 1899 Issue

Startling Statistics

Some of the daily newspapers of New York and elsewhere are publishing a list of what they are pleased to call Christian Science casualties or deaths, occurring under Christian Science treatment. The researches of the statistician evidently extend all over this country and Europe, and the net result between May 1896 and May 1899—three years—according to their own showing, is thirteen. We are not familiar with all these cases, but with several of them, and we are aware that they were not all in charge of Christian Scientists at the time of their death. Some were in the hands of physicians. Harold Frederic is mentioned in the list. As a matter of fact, he had been in the hands of the physicians for a long time before the Christian Scientist took charge of his case, and had been restored to the hands of the physicians two or three days before his death. The same is true of some others of those mentioned. It is hardly fair, therefore, to charge them up to Christian Science. Nevertheless, if we were to accept the showing as they make it, we can conceive of no better advertisement for the virtue of Christian Science healing. Not nearly as good a showing could be made by any physician of considerable practice. We doubt if the best physician in the world can produce such a record for the same length of time. But let it be borne in mind, that the patients of a physician having the largest practice are few, as compared with the vast number that are being treated all over this country and Europe by Christian Scientists. It is estimated that in Chicago alone there are at least five thousand people constantly under Christian Science treatment. If Chicago furnishes a fair index for all, the number of persons who are being daily treated by Christian Science must extend up into many thousands. In Boston and suburbs, from our knowledge of the situation, we feel warranted in saying that there are not less than from fifteen hundred to two thousand persons constantly being treated by Christian Scientists.

In view of these well-known facts, according to the best showing that our opponents are able to make, the percentage of deaths among Christian Scientists is startlingly small. There is no other healing method known to the world that will bear comparison with it in this respect. The showing is all the more impressive when it is considered that the great majority of cases that come to the hands of Christian Scientists are among the incurable or hopeless cases, having been so pronounced by the attending physicians. We know that many hundreds, nay thousands, have been, to all intents and purposes, rescued from the grave through Christian Science practice.

The papers publishing said list announce also the fact, that there are one million followers of Christian Science in America, and at least ten thousand in Greater New York alone; that it has four churches in Manhattan, one at the Boulevard and Eighty-first Street which will cost $400,000, and one on West Forty-eighth Street which was originally Rev. Dr. R. Heber Newton's All Soul's Church, etc. All this is valuable information for the public, and no fair-minded, unprejudiced person can read these statistics without being deeply impressed with the wonderful work that Christian Science is accomplishing, and he must inevitably conclude that a healing system which is able to make a record so marvelous that even its strongest opponents, while attempting to break it down and prejudice the public against it, in reality place it at the very head of the entire list of healing systems, is indeed a healing power.

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