Article April 8, 1911 Issue

May I point out that if a sick man desires to be attended...

Frederick Dixon

Bath (Eng.) Daily Chronicle

May I point out that if a sick man desires to be attended by a Christian Scientist in preference to an ordinary medical man, it would be absolute tyranny to attempt to prevent him. He knows perfectly well what he is doing, and has a perfect right to choose his own means. The attempt might just as well be made to settle what church he was to go to. Yet people do not seem to see that, in having overcome a theological tyranny, they are tending to drift under a medical tyranny. It is all very well to call a man a quack because his treatment is different to that employed by the ordinary medical doctor, but the ordinary doctor would have been called a quack fifty years ago. It is only necessary to point out that just the same attempt was made to stamp out homeopathy as is now being made to stamp out Christian Science, to substantiate this. The homeopathist was called every name under heaven, and dragged into the police courts, for no better reason than that certain people who did not like his treatment objected to the people who did like his treatment and utilized it.

Why the Christian Science practitioner should not be paid, it is rather impossible to say. A clergyman is paid for doing his duties, which include praying for the sick, and a doctor is paid for doing his which are confined to the effort to heal the sick. The one person whom apparently it is wrong to pay is the Christian Scientist who, to the utmost of his ability, is attempting to fulfil the command of Christ Jesus to preach the gospel and to heal the sick.

Send a comment to the editors

We'd love to hear from you!

Easily submit your testimonies, articles, and poems online.

Submit

May I point out that if a sick man desires to be attended...

We'd love to hear from you!

Sign up for unlimited access