Editorial November 5, 1904 Issue

"Throw up your windows and stand in the draft

Editor

"Throw up your windows and stand in the draft. It may be your salvation; the fear of it has caused thousands of deaths."

This counsel, which, according to press report, was given in a lecture before the Chicago Academy of Science, by a distinguished physician, gives a good illustration of the surging contradictions of belief and practice which have ever characterized the history of medicine. The honored dictum of yesterday is the "folly" of to-day, and after a while the people will all see it, and discard its dominion.

Our friend the lecturer squarely breaks with tradition as to drafts, but under prevailing mental conditions, his advice is likely to prove quite as harmful as the fear he condemns, for he encourages the flaunting of a red rag in the face of a rampant belief, whose ability to harm he little kens, and those who are governed by his counsel "without understanding" are liable to be smitten, and that sorely. The predispositions of unconscious mentality are not rendered null and void through venturesome bravado, by any means. Error is defeated not by indifference to it, but by the apprehension of the truth about it, and by that alone. A Christian Scientist neither fears error nor trifles with it in a spirit of braggadocia. He understands the nature and subtlety of its claim, and while firm in the declaration of his freedom at the call of duty or higher privilege, he knows that he has too many necessary problesm on hand, to authorize the precipitation of those that are unnecessary, just to startle the uninitiated with his daring. The demands upon us for earnest overcoming are numerous, and the needless excitation of error is therefore to be wisely avoided.

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