Article October 6, 1917 Issue

In reporting a recent meeting of the Young Men's Literary Club...

Clyde Johnson in—Cheyenne, Wyo.

Wyoming Tribune

In reporting a recent meeting of the Young Men's Literary Club, the Tribune said that a doctor who was resent made some startling statements regarding the physical condition of pupils in the Cheyenne schools and followed them up by saying that the "condition could be reduced to a minimum by a proper policy of medical inspection and treatment, beginning in the early grades." Now there is a wide difference of opinion among thinking as to what might constitute a "proper" policy of medical inspection and treatment. And besides it would be difficult to shape such a policy without flagrantly trespassing upon individual rights and playing into the hands of those who wish to dominate and control the thinking and general activity of their fellow men.

There is a large class of people who honestly and consistently believe that the best attention and instruction a child could possibly have is embodied in the succinct command of Christ Jesus, "Take no thought ... for the body." Christian Scientists believe in and practice bodily cleanliness, but they are ever mindful of the admonitions given by Mrs. Eddy in "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (pp. 382, 383): "We must beware of making clean merely the outside of the platter." "We need clean body and a clean mind,—a body rendered pure by Mind as well as washed by water."

It was also brought out at this meeting, the report continues, that among several influences that had operated to defeat medical inspection was the "prejudice of religious sects, organizations, and denominations which oppose the theory that there is any real disease at all." Christian Science most emphatically opposes the theory that disease is real, and this opposition is based squarely upon the Scriptures. If disease is real, God made it, and the Scriptures tell us that God made everything and saw that it was good. No one who has had any experience with it will make the assertion that disease is good. Christian Science plainly points out that disease is a human experience, and draws the line sharply between the real or God-created and the unreal or experiences of suffering, sinning mortals. It teaches mortals how to "gravitate Godward" (Science and Health, p. 265).

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