Article April 22, 1916 Issue

A critic in a recent article is quite generous in placing...

Carl E. Herring

Omaha (Neb.) World-Herald

A critic in a recent article is quite generous in placing under the ban of disapproval every religion, ancient or modern, that undertakes to heal the sick, and at the same time calls attention to the fact that no religion was ever founded that did not include the healing of the sick. He also hints at instability because Mrs. Eddy found it necessary to revise the first edition of Science and Health; and suggests that Christian Science must stand on the expression of this truth as it first dawned upon Mrs. Eddy.

It is not possible to find a departure in any later edition from the fundamental teachings of Christian Science as first presented; but that Mrs. Eddy gained in clearness of expression is probably true. That this should be so is in obedience to the law of progress, which natural science recognizes as fully as does Christian Science. We are not so unfair as to intimate that any student of medicine would or should be obligated to rely upon the first expressions of medical treatment as a foundation for public confidence now; for if we went back to first sources the student of medicine would be confronted with the fact that his healing art included elephant's bile, dried spiders, toads, lizards, snakes, and such tidbits, as standardized remedies.

Passing the age of Hippocrates, the father of medicine, who prescribed dog meat, cabbage juice, copper, and lead, down to the nineteenth century, we shall find that the medical writers complain "of the enormous doses of medicine given, which interfered to an alarming extent with the process of healing." Within our own memory the fever patient was deprived of water and supplied with drugs, while under the present germ theory and serumtherapy the entire learning of the past has been swept aside, and probably not a reputable physician today relies on a medical work that is not of very recent date.

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