Article July 22, 1922 Issue

Many people have wondered why readers of newspapers...

Clifford P. Smith, Committee on Publication for The Mother Church,

Springfield (Mass.) Republican

Many people have wondered why readers of newspapers are supposed to be interested in the unfavorable opinions of Christian Science which are expressed by some representatives of other religions. News which does not consist of personal information has been defined as that which is important or unusual. Such expressions of adverse opinion are becoming somewhat unusual, but they never were important. Furthermore, the one who is disposed to speak ill of other people's religion is not likely to be a reliable witness.

The foregoing observations are applicable to the book against Christian Science which was reviewed in the Republican of a recent issue. Your heading for it, "Hostile Analysis," was apt, but the review did not discriminate between what was merely hostile and what was positively unfair and untrue. The author's description of Christian Science as "non-sense" reminds me of a letter from a prominent Boston physician in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal for January 12, 1922. He had a patient who had undergone two operations for the removal of a cancer. It had returned after each operation. He prepared for a third operation, and examined the patient, under ether, in a Boston hospital, but concluded that a third operation would be useless. He took some of the tissue in question and had it examined by a competent pathologist, who pronounced it cancer. Three years and three months afterward he heard that the patient had been cured by Christian Science. Then he again examined her and found her "clinically without signs of cancer."

After saying that she claims to have been cured by Christian Science, the treatment having been commenced while she was still in the hospital for the third operation, and the cancer having disappeared after four months, the physician continued as follows: "There are several conceivable explanations, among which are: (1) the patient on whom I operated is not the patient whom I examined recently; (2) the tissue which was examined by a competent pathologist and pronounced cancer is not the tissue I removed by curettage; (3) the pathologist made a mistake; (4) the patient still has cancer. While it will never be possible to check up the second point, the others have been gone over most carefully, and checked up. ... The most obvious conclusion, then, that can be drawn, is that this patient who, over three years ago, had cancer of the cervix which was deemed ineradicable, is now clinically free from all signs and symptoms of cancer."

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