Article February 19, 1910 Issue

In a late issue there appeared the following from a critic:...

Alfred Farlow

Knoxville (Tenn.) Journal and Tribune

In a late issue there appeared the following from a critic: "Christian Science does not publish failures. So I wrote to some doctors and other friends, asking them to tell me cases of the harm that it has done. I got back a long list."

The doctor forgot to mention that the most of the persons on his "list" had failed to obtain benefit under medical treatment before they applied to Christian Science. Here is another point too, which the doctor seems to have forgotten, that on this globe every year fifty millions of people die, more than one hundred and forty thousand each day, the most of them under the same sort of treatment which the doctor recommends. In view of such an array of failures, what can be the significance of the doctor's list of Christian Science failures? Is the doctor dissatisfied because a few persons have tried to find health under Christian Science after having failed elsewhere? Does he think it would be more to the credit of this class of persons for them to omit a possible chance of being healed by Christian Science and die in the first instance in the good old-fashioned way or does he expect that Christian Science, which he declares is not science at all, should succeed better than his method, which he denominates scientific?

Here is another thing which the public should note in regard to the doctor's so-called list, that it gives no names and dates; and this is rather an inconsistent thing in a man who twits Christian Scientists because of the brevity of their description of cures. If the doctor would apply the same criticism to the results of his own kind of practice that he has to the Christian Scientists, and accordingly publish such a list of medical failures as he may be able to procure from the same doctors who have given him the list of Christian Science failures, he would draw an interesting picture for the public. What the public want is the comparative value of Christian Science. It has never been claimed, even by the most sanguine Christian Scientist, that he has had no failures, although those who are at present interested in Christian Science are grateful that they have fared better with Christian Science than they formerly did without it.

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In a late issue there appeared the following from a critic:...

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