Article June 5, 1902 Issue

Christian Science and Suggestive Therapeutics

Clarence A. Buskirk

The Richmond (Ind.) Sun-Telegram

Editor of Sun-Telegram.

Your issue of March 29 has an article entitled, "Hypno-Suggestion the Future's Cure," which I ask the privilege of answering from the standpoint of Christian Science. The main purpose of the article is the exploitation of suggestive therapeutics. Its allusions to Christian Science are contained in the following excerpt:—

"So-called Christian Science, at once anti-Christian in its pantheism, and unscientific in its technic, has seized upon suggestion as a means to achieve its seemingly wonderful yet perfectly understood cures. It were idle to deny that Christian Science procedures relieve the sick. ... Both Christian Science healer and Psychotherapist seek to alleviate or remove pain by impressing the mind of the sufferer—the one with the idea that it actually does not exist; the other, that the subliminal mind will so regulate the outflow of nerve energy to the affected organ or tissue as to induce a nervous diversion, naturally accompanied with deadened perception of the pain or entire insensibility to it. The principle that 'belief in pain explains pain' is daily exploited by Christian Science doctors, whose claim to credit for the 'healing of incurable organic diseases' argues either dementia or a deliberate intention to bait gudgeons."

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