Article May 28, 1938 Issue

Recently De Avondpost contained a detailed review of...

Dr. David A. Giel, Committee on Publication for Holland,—The Hague (translation)

De Avondpost

Recently De Avondpost contained a detailed review of a booklet wherein the author comments unfavorably on various healing methods, which differ from the methods with which he, as a medical doctor, has always been associated. The doctor simplifies matters by calling those healing methods which differ from his own method, quackery. In his remarks on Christian Science, he ignores the pure divine Principle underlying its cures, thinking to have refuted its healing power sufficienlty by enumerating some cases of failure. He seems to regard these failures as something remarkable, thus paying unconscious homage to Christian Science. For who would find failures or mistakes occurring in the medical practice remarkable?

Those who turn to Christian Science for physicla healing, as a rule, do so either when the doctor has given them up, or when they find their healing indefinitely protracted. Or else when they shrink from a surgical operation deemed necessary. In the first two cases, therefore, medical failures came first. If the patient derives benefit from the Christian Science treatment, it is only natural for him gradually to come to trust all his difficulties to Christian Science help.

A co-operation of the Christian Science healer and the doctor is as a rule doomed to unfruitfulness, because of its inner contradiction. While the efforts of the Christian Scientist are directed to removing the picture of the disease from the patient's thought by wakening him to the realization that disease does not originate in God and therefore is unreal, the medical method treats the disease as real. Consequently, the patient is drawn simultaneously in two directions. Therefore, in Christian Science the patient is left free to choose whichever method he prefers.

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