Article March 4, 1916 Issue

Quoting a writer in another paper of your city recently,...

Thorwald Siegfried

North Yakima (Wash.) Herald

Quoting a writer in another paper of your city recently, it was stated that among the Yakima Indians the practice of attempting to cure ailments by commanding the victim to make peace offerings of horses, cattle, or sheep still continues, and that this process of healing is, in part, an Indian form of Christian Science, "twisted and distorted."

May I have space in your columns to point out that this is the very antithesis of Christian Science, bearing no analogy to it whatsoever? If it is analogous to anything in the healing art as practised by the Caucasian race, it bears some resemblance to the attempt to heal by making a loud noise and a bluish-green flame inside an X-ray tube, by administering drugs which in past ages have been usually filthy and repulsive, and in the present age tend to be poisonous and full of danger, or by cutting, steaming, cooling, and molding the human body, which fluctuates in the very hands of its manipulators with the variations in the beliefs of which it is the expression.

The good faith of the physician is not to be questioned merely because the doctrines he believes call for the use of ridiculous and unintelligent devices for healing the sick. Indeed the fact that many Christian Scientists agreed with the physicians until their introduction to Christian Science, is proof that their objection is not to their brothers who practise medicine, but to the untenable beliefs which control them and which controlled these present Christian Scientists before they became such. Even the Indian's sincerity is entitled to our acknowledgment, as well as that of the doctors. The Indians attempt to build up a blind belief of health in the human mind by all sorts of fantastic means; the doctors of material medicine do the same by means somewhat more artful and refined but in many instances no less fantastic.

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