Editorial May 23, 1908 Issue

THE RIGHT OF THE INDIVIDUAL

Archibald McLellan

The Atlanta Georgian reports a case recently decided in the courts of Georgia, and in comment on this case says: "In the meaning of legal statutes of Georgia, 'divine healing' is not the practice of medicine, and one who practises it is not required to take out a license before the legally constituted boards to practise medicine. This is the interpretation placed on that question by the Court of Appeals in an opinion written by Judge Hill." The quotations from the judge's opinion amply justify this conclusion.

In speaking of the so-called irregular methods, and of the rights of individuals to employ them for the healing of disease, Judge Hill said, "Practical legislation has nothing to do with them. If they are part of a man's faith, the right to their enjoyment cannot be abridged or taken away by legislation." He says again, "To the iconoclast who denounces these things as the figment of superstition, or to the orthodox physician who claims for his system all wisdom in the treatment of human malady, we commend the injunction of him who was called 'the great Physician,' who, when told that others than his followers were casting out devils and curing diseases, said, 'Forbid them not.' What matters the system, if in fact devils are cast out and diseases are healed."

In this decision the court seems to take the very broad ground that the rights of the individual in the pursuit of health cannot be abridged by legislation, and in this regard Christian Scientists are entirely in agreement with the court. They do not wish to impose their views upon others, nor do they desire that others shall impose their views upon them. To deprive a human being of the right to seek any means by which he has hope of being cured of the diseases from which he suffers, would be to deprive him of his constitutional right to the pursuit of life and happiness, and this would be most emphatically true in a case which the doctors had pronounced incurable.

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