Article January 12, 1924 Issue

Christian Science practitioners do not personally attend...

Van Buren Perry, Committee on Publication for the State of South Dakota,—Sioux Falls

Argus-Leader

Christian Science practitioners do not personally attend known cases of disease subject to quarantine or isolation; nor is it necessary for them to do so. Personal presence is no more essential to healing now than it was when Christ Jesus healed the centurion's servant.

Merely claiming to be a Christian Scientist does not, of course, secure immunity from disease. In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mrs. Eddy writes (pp. 184, 186): "Belief produces the results of belief, and the penalties it affixes last so long as the belief and are inseparable from it;" and, "Christian Science destroys material beliefs through the understanding of Spirit, and the thoroughness of this work determines health."

Vaccination has been compulsary in the Philippines for years, the Health Service reporting 24,436,889 such operations between 1911 and 1920. With a population of 9,569,939 in 1920, there was an average of nearly three vaccinations per person. Notwithstanding this, there were 169,991 cases of smallpox with 75,339 fatalities, occurring mostly in 1918 and 1919. Of these a very large percentage had been "successfully vaccinated." It is estimated that with about twenty-six times as much vaccination as in the United States, population considered, there was about 226 times as much fatality. According to the Melbourne Herald of July 1, only about 2½ per cent of the population of Australia are "protected" by vaccination; yet in the whole history of the island, with about 5,000,000 poulation, exclusive of aborigines, less than one person per year has had smallpox fatally.

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