Article January 22, 1910 Issue

The writer in American Medicine, whose remarks on...

Willard S. Mattox

New Orleans (La.) Item

The writer in American Medicine, whose remarks on Christian Science are quoted in a recent issue of a New Orleans newspaper, gives himself unnecessary anguish when he assumes that his readers need to be warned against Christian Science. As a rule the public is intelligently informed as to what Christian Science really is and what it is doing. Christian Science is healing thousands of all manner of disease. This statement is so susceptible of proof that it is not open to contradiction or argument. Christian Science never killed anybody, and it is not a menace to public health.

Your readers may not entirely enjoy the criticism leveled at them by the writer of that article, when he declares that the human race is subject to "psychic depravity." There are hundreds of intelligent men and women in New Orleans who have tested the efficacy of Christian Science, and who know that its mission is entirely benevolent, and that it has to its credit sundry healings of mind and body which medicine made unavailing attempts to cure. If a man who has been reseued from hopeless disease, or from chronic sin, is a psychic degenerate; if to believe in the power of God to redeem the human race race from all the ills to which it is heir, is an indication of "psychie depravity," then the editor of American Medicine is welcome to make the most of that phrase in its application to Christian Scientists.

The writer of that article makes the mistake of supposing that the phrase "malicious animal magnetism," and the mental phenomena which it designates, are the inventions of Mrs. Eddy. A little historical research would have saved him from this mistake. Even the phrase "malicious animal magnetism" is not novel to Christian Science, but was in current use before Mrs. Eddy's book was written. Christian Science does not teach that animal magnetism is a reality, a force, or a baneful influence. On the contrary, Christian Science is at great pains to expose the fallacy of this belief, and to equip man to protect himself from the false claims of evil. Christian Science calls the belief in animal magnetism sheer superstition, and warns its students against the ignorance which would ascribe intelligence and power to something besides God.

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