Editorial April 5, 1913 Issue

KNOWLEDGE IS POWER

Archibald McLellan

An editorial writer in the Chicago Inter Ocean, in commenting upon the efforts of organized physicians to secure legislation which will bar from the work of healing the sick all systems other than the one which they practise, says: "There is one fact that the advocates of statutory compulsion to what they regard as the only medical orthodoxy, would do well to remember. There is nothing, except his religion, which the average man regards as so entirely his own business as his health and that of his family. That is why legislative efforts to repress what the self-styled 'orthodox' call 'quacks' have always failed." He also says: "There is too much sectarianism among physicians—too much of a tendency to condemn because of a difference in theories or 'systems' and regardless of benefical results."

This writer might have gone farther and said the empiricism of medical science—so called—is so apparent to even the layman that the advocates of the self-styled "regular" system presume too much upon the credulity of the people when they base their demand for such legislation upon the theory expressed by a certain physician, who, speaking in a representative capacity, said: "The public must be educated to take our advice in medico-political matters as they do our pills and powders, without knowing of their contents or effects, but with an abiding faith in their potency."

If the regular school physicians were healing every one of their patients, the public would soon recognize this as a fact and legislation would not be needed to compel every sick person to take "regular" treatment. On the other hand, it is being proved every day that Christian Science heals the sick, and a very large proportion of those who have embraced this religion are persons who have been healed by it after fruitless attempts to be healed through medical treatment. The unescapable conclusion to be drawn from this fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of persons living today in perfect health who, had they not turned to Christian Science for relief, would now be "incurably" sick or in their graves.

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