Editorial January 18, 1947 Issue

Claim Man's Immunity from Epidemics!

John Randall Dunn

Every so often these days our medical brethren, doubtless with the best intentions, sound the alarm of approaching epidemics. At the moment, fear is expressed that a visit of the influenza scourge is imminent, and some parents have been asked to permit their children to be immunized therefrom through certain inoculations. Now, of course, if the laws of a state or province require that children or even adults submit to certain so-called immunization by serums, the Christian Scientist will "suffer it to be so now" (Matt. 3:15), albeit, many times, with wholesome protest.

Mary Baker Eddy in answer to a question by a newspaper correspondent said (The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Miscellany, p. 344): "I say. 'Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.' We cannot force perfection on the world. Were vaccination of any avail, I should tremble for mankind; but knowing it is not, and that the fear of catching smallpox is more dangerous than any material infection, I say: Where vaccination is compulsory, let your children be vaccinated, and see that your mind is in such a state that by your prayers vaccination will do the children no harm. So long as Christian Scientists obey the laws, I do not suppose their mental reservations will be thought to matter much. But every thought tells, and Christian Science will overthrow false knowledge in the end."

Many of our readers may have heard little or nothing about the healing work of Christian Scientists during the widespread influenza epidemic at the end of World War I: hence a brief summation of their outstanding achievements may not be amiss. An item in a Midwestern United States newspaper dealing with national statistics covering the influenza epidemic of 1918 shows that while one in every sixteen cases under medical treatment passed on, under Christian Science care only one case out of every five hundred and thirteen proved fatal.

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