Article November 5, 1904 Issue

Drugs and True Healing

LEWIS C. STRANG.

In the National Museum at Washington is a department devoted to the History of Medicine, which aims to present the chronological development of materia medica, and which affords a striking illustration of the erroneous derivation of the "science" which claims to heal suffering humanity by means of matter. It is graphically set forth in this exhibition that the practice of materia medica began with undisguised incantation. The first drugs were charms and amulets worn on the person. A direct descendant of these ancient superstitions is the habit of carrying a horse-chestnut in the pocket, which is supposed to ward off rheumatism, and of wearing an eel-skin around the leg, which is regarded as a preventive of cramps. Indeed, it is plainly, though perhaps unintentionally, indicated that the difference between the ancient tom-tom, beaten by the bedside of the sick to frighten away the devil, and the modern electric shock, given the body for the purpose of dislodging pain, is not so much one of kind as of time.

Nevertheless, definitely shown as these things are, the casual visitor customarily leaves the exhibition quite unimpressed by the lesson as to the false basis of materia medica so emphatically taught. Instead of noting the logical sequence between the charm of yesterday and the drug of to-day, the person whose preceptions have not been somewhat sharpened by an understanding of spiritual reality, marvels at the progress that medicine has made. Such a person seems to regard as of no consequence the suggestive fact that day after day honest medical men are frankly voicing their conviction that, from the standpoint of absolute science, drugging is a failure,—admissions which declare how generally the truth taught in Science and Health is striking off humanity's mental shackles.

An experience like the one just described has a compound effect upon the Christian Scientist. It strengthens him in his conviction regarding the basic absurdity of drug medication, and it further awakens him to the seeming hold that the false claim of its efficacy has on the human consciousness. The reason that the average person sees nothing in the medical exhibition at this museum to uncover to him the primitive and derivative error of materia medica, is because he is under the widespread mesmeric influence of the belief that materia medica is scientific. This mesmerism holds strong sway, not so much because humanity generally desires to be healed by material means, as because mortals fear that if they learn that these cannot heal them, there will be nothing to which they can have recourse for help. Mortals deliberately blind themselves to the failures of materia medica, because they fear to lose their faith in the only healing system they know anything about.