Article July 6, 1907 Issue

Inasmuch as legislation is now proposed to compel every...

Albany (N. Y.) Journal

Inasmuch as legislation is now proposed to compel every poor devil to have a doctor when he falls ill, I suppose the next step will be to compel us to have a clergyman. Surely the axiom that the condition and future of one's soul is more important than the condition and future of one's body will not be antagonized. If, then, we are about to have a law enforcing attendance by a physician whenever any of us feels a pain in his stomach or his chest, why not prescribe that a doctor of divinity must make a visitation when we are inclined to smash any of the Ten Commandments?

Now I would like to inquire if people are not to be allowed to die, even if they happen to be members of the sect known under the title to which I continue to take vigorous exception? I have never heard that the Christian Scientists, so called, pretend that they can prevent death absolutely. When they do set up any dogma of that character, it will be time for them to receive rebuke and legislation at the hands of our distinguished coroner and his coadjutors in the Legislature—not before. Some people take quinine and regard it as a panacea. Other people hate quinine and would not touch it under any circumstances. Personally, I look upon that drug as most injurious, and I would not touch it, even if ordered to do so by a doctor. If I have a right to decline to touch quinine, and I have rejoiced certainly in the thought that I enjoy that liberty, why have I not an equal right to refuse to touch asafedita or "Carter's Little Pills"? What the Christian Scientist maintains, as I understand the matter, is that disease is a fiction of the imagination. In that he goes too far, according to my judgment; but if he does, remedial legislation can go too far also, and it is dangerous.

The thing that crowds the churches of this sect that looks to Mrs. Eddy is knowledge of "cures" which have been effected, certainly, without the use of medicine. I have not seen any evidence that these followers of the New England lady pretend that they are immortal; nor have I ever been convinced that any more of them die of disease, in proportion, than die among other denominations or among folks who swear by their doctors or by their drugs and medicaments. I am not a believer myself in the doctrine that illness is a fiction of the brain, but I do admit to counting among my friends one man who lives in happiness with a wife and three lovely little children under the age of seven, and who has not had a doctor inside of his house for about eight years. Knowledge of cases of that nature has ceased to be exceptional, since this sect counts its adherents by the million. Neither the man to whom I allude, nor his estimable wife, nor the tots either, has been ill for one day throughout the period above mentioned. How do you account for it? It is folly, in my judgment, as I say, to talk about disease being a phantasm only—but the fact that these estimable people, and many others, get on so well without drugs or doctors—that is not a phantasm. To the contrary, I regard it as a very extraordinary phenomenon, which is entitled to receive the respectful and considerate attention of all thinking citizens.

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Inasmuch as legislation is now proposed to compel every...

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