Editorial April 11, 1903 Issue

The Right to Act

Editor

Dubuque (Ia.) Telegraph-Herald

LEGISLATORS with misguided zeal have introduced in various state legislatures bills prohibiting the practice of healing by Christian Science. In New Hampshire, the only state in which the measure has been voted upon, it was defeated by an overwhelming majority, a fact that attests the absence of bigotry among the people of a state which seldom comes into the public eye.

That Christian Scientists have as much right to attempt healing as a Catholic has to attempt the preservation of his health by living in accordance with the decrees of the divinity, is a proposition that admits of no room for discussion. That the Scientists have failed to effect cures in some of the cases treated by them, is not to their deteriment, and is no reason why the law should prohibit them in the exercise of a liberty which is theirs. The doctors lose patients, yet there is no agitation for prohibiting the practice of medicine. The popular notion is that when a person becomes ill he requires medicine to get well, but, as a matter of fact, honest physicians discourage the taking of medicine in most cases.

The ability to heal is a matter of faith, a religious conviction, with the Christian Scientist. Religious bigotry disappeared with the birth of the new world, and it is written in the constitution of the United States that man shall be free to worship as he pleases. Legislatures are properly without the right to interfere with this form which the Christian Scientists' worship takes.

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