Article August 17, 1912 ISSUE

Dr. Bernard Hollander of London, England, has given...

Alfred Farlow—Melbourne, Australia.

Reporter

Dr. Bernard Hollander of London, England, has given out a statement alleging that his investigation has shown him many patients who have become insane on the subject of Christian Science. In the same breath the doctor declares that Christian Science can "make a certain class of people happy." Who ever heard of persons becoming insane because of an influence which made them happy? "Doth a fountain send forth at the same place sweet water and bitter?" According to a report which appeared in the New York Times just subsequent to Dr. Hollander's statement in the London press, Dr. Albert Warren Ferris, who for four years had been president of the New York state commission in lunacy, when asked whether he had found that Christian Science had been a factor in insanity, replied that he had never found a case in his state that could be attributed to Christian Science. He said: "The few cases where we have found Christian Science in connection with forms of insanity have been those where the patient took up Christian Science after insanity had come upon him." He also said: "I have never found it a cause in a single case. There are forms of insanity that are accompanied by religious enthusiasm of an abnormal type, and Christian Science is sometimes the form this takes. I should not call Christian Science in any way a cause of insanity, and during the past few years we have studied causes very closely." It should be noted that Dr. Ferris is a man with experience and ability equal to that of Dr. Hollander, and that his testimony is directly opposed to that of Dr. Hollander.

In April, 1910, Dr. F. H. Packard of Boston, in an address before the Harvard Medical College, said that "numbers of individuals, probably naturally of somewhat unstable mental make-up, are totally upset mentally through their efforts to understand and practise Christian Science and other unscientific things." On April 21, 1910, the following answer to Dr. Packard was published in the Boston Post:

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