Article February 2, 1929 Issue

I would appreciate the courtesy of a brief space in your...

Orwell Bradley Towne, Committee on Publication for the State of New York,—New York

American Medicine

I would appreciate the courtesy of a brief space in your columns to correct a statement in an editorial entitled "Healthful Religion," and published in a recent issue. The editorial charges Christian Scientists with disobeying the quarantine and health laws and exposing others to contagious and communicable diseases. This is not borne out by health officials, as is shown in the following references: Dr. Frank E. Allard, medical inspector of the Boston Mutual Life Insurance Company, stated in a letter of February 3, 1913: "From an experience of twenty years of active practice in the city of Boston I do not recall a single case, nor has one been brought to my attention by a colleague, in which a Christian Science practitioner has failed to promptly report contagious diseases to the Board of Health." On March 3, 1922, Dr. Charles E. Norris, chief medical examiner of the city of New York, and Dr. Gustave Fisch, stated in an interview in the New York Times, "There have been no complaints of any kind against Christian Scientists in this city in a long time." District Attorney Banton stated, no longer ago than November 11, 1927, in the New York World: "I do not know of any case during my administration in which a Christian Scientist was prosecuted, and I do not know of any law against the practice mentioned."

In citizenship and obedience to law and established authority Christian Scientists stand well. They are obedient to law and order because it is right that they should be so. Mrs. Eddy's instructions to her followers, in her Message to The Mother Church for 1901, are very specific on this point. On page 34 of the Message she says, "Obey strictly the laws that be, and follow your Leader only so far as she follows Christ."

As for disease being real, Christian Scientists do not ignore disease. On the contrary, they know that divine Principle, God, who created the perfect idea, sustains that perfect idea—God's image and likeness—and that He heals disease. Mrs. Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science. writes on pages 476 and 477 of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures": "Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick."

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