Article March 30, 1912 Issue

Commenting upon the President's recent modification of...

Alfred Farlow

Army and Navy Journal

Commenting upon the President's recent modification of his order regarding the practice of medicine in the Canal Zone, you say that "the demand to practise medicine without the proper permit, our medical contemporary maintained, aimed at the 'surrender of the wonderful results obtained by the toil and sacrifice of devoted, clear-headed, scientific men.'"

It should be noted that the stipulations of the President's modified order, which provide that "such sanitary laws, orders, rules, or regulations as now or hereafter may be enforced in the Zone" shall be complied with, maintain and safeguard that which is generally conceded to be real achievement along the lines under consideration. Christian Scientists have never opposed the most extreme measures of reasonable sanitation. They believe in the absolute cleanliness of both body and mind. They believe that if the people were as clean as they should be, morally and physically, there would be little sickness in the world.

However, as to the question of administering drugs, that is quite another thing, and it is with this proposition that the President's modification deals. No class of practitioners has thus far even approximated to a sure cure or has demonstrated a sufficient degree of efficiency to claim the sole guardianship of the public health. The practice of medicine is still experimental. Even among medical practitioners there is no general agreement, but on the contrary wide divergency. While this Science has been demonstrated with a large measure of success in all climates and under a great variety of conditions and circumstances, the unswerving adherence to it in time of sickness is not only a matter of religion, on the part of those who believe in it, but a matter of scientific practice and satisfactory results. Their faithfulness to Christian Science is not a matter of fanaticism, not merely a matter of being loyal to specific religious faith, but a deliberate adherence to that which they have proved by experience to be the best known remedy for human ills. The most rigid scientific rules and regulations which deal with the matter of cleanliness will meet the hearty approval of Christian Scientists. Such practice constitutes an application of Christian Science teaching, since the purest and best in the material most nearly approaches the spiritual.

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