Article September 3, 1932 Issue

Kindly allow me space to make a few comments on an...

Phillip King, Committee on Publication for the District of Columbia,—Washington

Daily News

Kindly allow me space to make a few comments on an article appearing in your issue of May 2 dealing with a report on nonmedical healers issued by the Committee on the Costs of Medical Care. The report asserts that the laws are inadequate because they do not prescribe the same high standard for what it calls unqualified practitioners as it does for medical practitioners.

As far as Christian Science is concerned the writer of the report seems to forget that there is a clause in the Healing Arts Law of the District which exempts from its operation the practice of Christian Science. This same exemption or a similar one is contained in the laws of nearly all the states in the Union. The exemption reads as follows: "This act shall not apply to persons treating human ailments by prayer or spiritual means as an exercise or enjoyment of religious freedom."

The Christian Science practitioner does not prescribe drugs or operate surgically; therefore it would be absurd and unwise to require him to go through the same course of preparation as is required of a medical practitioner. The medical practitioner or matter-physician is not in a position to judge the standard of a Christian Science practitioner or metaphysician, for the latter approaches the healing of disease from an opposite position. On this subject Mary Baker Eddy, on page 423 of her textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," says: "The Christian Scientist, understanding scientifically that all is Mind, commences with mental causation, the truth of being, to destroy the error. This corrective is an alterative, reaching to every part of the human system. . . . The matter-physician deals with matter as both his foe and his remedy."

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