Article August 1, 1914 Issue

An anonymous writer, speaking of Christian Scientists...

Frederick Dixon—Wolverhampton, England

in Express and Star

An anonymous writer, speaking of Christian Scientists, declares that he has "investigated their methods and results,—many of them in the coroner's court,—and begs to say that should occasion arise, he would prefer a medical practitioner." Will you permit me to point out that the sort of investigation which is gained from reading reports of inquests, necessarily piecemeal, is a very fair specimen of what gentlemen like our anonymous correspondent regard as scientific. What is the truth of the whole matter? An enormous number of patients come to Christian Science practitioners only as a last resort, after they have been given up by the ordinary medical practitioners. When Christian Scientists fail, there is an inquest, and not infrequently they are told that medical aid would have saved or prolonged the life of the patient. I have known a man to be given up by two or three doctors as unable to live longer than a month. This man's life was prolonged for six years with Christian Science help, yet when he died the doctors did not hesitate to say that if he had had ordinary medical treatment he might have lived longer. This is by no means an exceptional case. It has happened several times, and we have always been told afterward that medical assistance would have prolonged the patient's life.

The whole trend of medical argument with respect to Christian Science is a case of "heads I win, tails you lose." If the patient gets well, we are informed that the diagnosis was a wrong one. This has happened literally thousands of times, and is itself a pretty severe reflection on orthodox medicine. If the patient does not get well, we are told that with proper medical help his life would have been prolonged or even saved, utterly disregarding the fact that he has lived longer than the physicians gave him any hope of doing. A very well-known doctor once told me, personally, that if a case of malignant cancer appeared to have been healed in Christian Science, as numbers of such cases have, it only proved a wrong diagnosis. If, he said, the case was healed, it was not the disease they thought it was. If it had been, it would not have been healed.

The anonymous correspondent—why is it that critics are so fond of being anonymous?—is, of course, perfectly at liberty to have a doctor if he wants one; no Christian Scientist would dream of persuading him to the contrary. But if he really thinks that doctors save the lives of all their patients, he had better study the obituary columns of the press. The vital difference is this that when a patient dies under ordinary medical treatment, a doctor gives a certificate, and no more is heard of it. If a patient dies under Christian Science treatment, a certificate cannot be given, and there is an inquest. The fact that only a mere handful of inquests have taken place, while thousands upon thousands of people have been treated during the twenty-five years Christian Science has been practised in England, is the greatest proof imaginable of the efficacy of its healing. Imagine the condition if there was an inquest on every patient who died under a doctor. The whole population would have to be impressed as coroners' jurors.

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