Article November 14, 1908 Issue

AN INTERESTING STATEMENT

David Oliver

[A statement of the following very interesting case was sent to a popular magazine which has published the medical opinion that Christian Science has never healed any so-called organic diseases. The magazine did not see fit to publish Mr. Oliver's statement, but we are glad to do so, and venture to quote briefly from a report of this case which appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association, under date of July 27, 1907. The article, which was written by one of the physicians who had attended Mrs. Oliver, began with this explanatory statement : "The following case is reported because it is, I believe, the first instance recorded of recovery from generalized blastomycosis." The conditions are then described in detail, one statement being, "The lesions in some instances as on one of the fingers, destroyed the bone." The general report bears out the husband's statement, except where it says that she "lived much of the time out of doors." The article gives the names (which we omit) of a number of physicians who attended Mrs. Oliver, and concludes as follows:-

"No medicine was taken after March 23, 1906. In August, 1906, the last sore had disappeared. I have seen the patient several times since, and she is apparently, at the date of this writing, July 12, 1907, in perfect health. She writes me under recent date, 'I am better now than I have ever been in my whole life, and can endure anything and never have an ache or pain.' The diagnosis of blastomycosis was made, not only on the clinical symptoms, including the naked eye appearance of the lesions and the exclusion of other diseases, —tuberculosis, syphilis, etc., — but by the microscopic examination of the pus from the wounds with a cultural development of the blastomyces. The culture experiments were made by Dr. ______. The patient was seen at various times by Drs. ______, ______, and ______. These agreed in the diagnosis of generalized blastomycosis."

This case of healing in Christian Science recalls the following statement in the Gospel of Matthew: "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people. And his fame went throughout all Syria: and they brought unto him all sick people that were taken with divers diseases and torments, and those which were possessed with devils, and those which were lunatic, and those that had the palsy; and he healed them." — Editor.]

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