Article August 3, 1899 Issue

Can Afford to be Just

Haverhill Gazette

THE closing days of the nineteenth century are the days of women's achievement, but in all the remarkable record of the end-of-the-century woman there is perphaps no name that just now stands out more prominently than that of the quiet woman of Concord, N. H., whose thought directs the actions of thousands of followers throughout the country, and even throughout the world, Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Ever since the gathering of her followers in the Mother Church in Boston a few weeks ago, there has been manifest an increasing interest in these people and their works, and this has been increased many fold by the attacks of the medical practitioners of the country, who, it seems, are somewhat alarmed over the wonderful spread of the movement, and, for some reason or other, are aroused to offensive action against the cult.

There have been prosecutions and threatened prosecutions in various parts of the country directed against these so-called faith curists, but for the present the whole agitation has focussed in New York state, where the Medical and Legal Relief Society, as the association of old-line practitioners is called, have inaugurated an energetic crusade against faith cures and are endeavoring to enlist the sympathies of the public, professional and non-professional people alike, in support of a statute that shall be directed against the practising as healers of any except those who make use of the formulas and practices known to the medical profession. In fact, the attempt is to crush out of existence by law this religious body whose members are combating, it must be admitted with a degree of success, the generally accepted theories of disease. There promises to be a battle royal over the issue, and the interest in the result reaches all over the Union, but nowhere will it be more real than in Massachusetts, the cradle of Christian Science, and the home of so many of its followers to-day.

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