Article September 7, 1907 Issue

DR. ALLAN MC LANE HAMILTON TELLS ABOUT HIS VISIT TO MRS. EDDY

New York Times

"There really is no mystery about Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy. Her case is a perfectly simple one, and the sensational stories which have been disseminated about her have no foundation in fact—although they can be very easily traced to a spirit of religious persecution that has at last quite overreached itself."

Dr. Allan McLane Hamilton, the expert alienist who has devoted the last month to an exhaustive investigation of the mental condition of the Founder of Christian Science and whose final testimony, given a few days ago, forms an important factor in the withdrawal of the suit against Mrs. Eddy, expresses himself as having no sympathy with the religious teachings of the latter, at the same time that he is emphatic in his belief as to her sanity. Seen yesterday in his picturesque study, forming a long rambling wing in the charming bungalow which he has built for himself amid the Berkshire Hills, one might, it is true, be tempted to take him for a follower of some of the mystic cults of antiquity, whose shadowy influence penetrates various transcendental fads of the day. At the threshold of his home sits a stone idol from India, while in various niches of the room, interspersed with long rows of learned books, are curious relics from Eastern temples, culminating in an ancient statue of the inscrutable Buddha himself. But in spite of these rather suggestive surroundings, mysticism plays no part in the intellectual equipment of the medical expert who has figured in so many famous cases during the last thirty-five years.

"I studied Mrs. Eddy without regard to the peculiar religious system with which she is identified," he said in explanation of the work he has just completed in Concord, "and viewing her in this way, simply as a woman, I have come to the conclusion, as stated in my official report of the case, that she is absolutely normal and possessed of a remarkably clear intellect."

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