Article October 28, 1905 Issue

We fail to see any good grounds for the enactment of laws...

Dell Rapids (S.D.) Tribune

We fail to see any good grounds for the enactment of laws prohibiting Christian Science healers from practising, or charging fees for their services, or prohibiting people from employing them if they wish to do so. Such laws are based on the ground that people should be protected from their fallacious belief. as non-believers would term it, in Christian Science, and from charlatan healers; but we don't see why the State should feel called upon to adopt such a course. There would seem to be less reason to prohibit Christian Science healing, in which no drugs are used, than to prohibit deleterious and positively injurious beverages, medicines, and adulterated foods. The laws permit the sale of almost anything in the shape of parent medicines, and permit the people to buy and drink them; then why should the State interfere and prohobit Christian Science or any other healers, who, if they do not do any good, at least do not give their patients anything to injure them?

While we may not believe in Christian Science, nor care to employ Christian Science healers in case of illness, why should the State step in and forbid any person employing such healers if he does have faith in them and wishes to be treated by them? The law permits people to eat and drink what they please, to wear such clothes and live as they see fit, regardless of the effect upon their health, so long as they do make themselves objectionable to society ; then why not permit people the same liberty of action in the employment of healers of the sick under restrictions prohibiting dangerous practice and the use of dangerous drugs in incompetent hands? Whether or not there is any merit in Christian Science healing, there is good reason to believe thet less harm is liable to result from it than from the indiscriminate use of injurious patent nostrums and deleterious beverages and foods, and that there is no urgent necessity for laws prohibiting its practice. —Dell Rapids (S.D.) Tribune

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