Article May 17, 1919 Issue

The statement in The Times that a coroner's jury was to...

Robert G. Steel—Detroit, Mich.

The Times

The statement in The Times that a coroner's jury was to be impaneled to inquire into the case of a death from influenceza-pneumonia under Christian Science treatment, is very surprising in view of the fact that a dispatch from the state board of health printed in the daily papers of the same date announced that there had been forty deaths from the same disease in the previous two days in Detroit alone, presumably under medical treatment, without even the suggestion of an official investigation.

That sufferers from the disease said to be causing the present epidemic are amply justified in seeking other than material methods of healing is plain when the statements of medical authority are considered. Dr. Rupert Blue, of the United States public health service, is quoted in The Times of December 10, as stating that "there is no known preventive." Dr. V. C. Vaughan, of Ann Arbor, head of the medical school of the University of Michigan, in an interview published December 17 is quoted as follows: "There has been practically no progress in the treatment of pneumonia in a hundred years." The Journal of the American Medical Association in a recent issue stated that "unfortunately we as yet have no specific serum or other specific means for the cure of influenza, and no specific vaccine or vaccines for its prevention."

That Christian Science treatment is sufficient care in case of illness has been affirmatively decided so many times, and is so generally accepted to-day, owing to its success in healing sickness, often after all other methods have failed, that the present attempt to bring its practitioners into court savors very much of medical persecution. Courts and public officers should not lend themselves to such methods.

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