Editorial August 31, 1968 Issue

Consciousness and Health

Alan A. Aylwin

For over a century Christian Science has taught and proved that all sickness has its source in the human mind, that the symptoms and sensations of disease are mentally induced phenomena that should never be viewed or treated as physical conditions. It stresses that disease should be seen as an illusion similar to an experience encountered in a bad dream, and that healing is accomplished when this nightmare is dispelled by spiritual understanding. Mrs. Eddy writes, "The true consciousness is the true health."^{Miscellaneous Writings, p. 298;}

Students of Christian Science are interested in observing that a number of perceptive physicians are becoming increasingly aware of the mental cause of disease. A recent newspaper report tells of how a senior lecturer at the medical center of a large state university made a study of the incidence of common colds in a group of patients over a three-year period and found that in nearly every case these colds were preceded by states of mental depression. This report indicated that other experiments found no correlation between colds and exposure to drafts or cold temperature. Rather the severity of nasal inflammation was linked to the emotionally disturbed mental state of the patients.

Of course, it is one thing to perceive the mental cause of disease, but a very different thing to understand how to correct effectively the disturbed thought and thus bring about healing. At present, although they acknowledge the psychosomatic basis of some forms of illness, medical doctors still believe man to be an intricately constructed physical entity controlled by a personal mind resident in brain. And they still attempt to calm this personal mind by psychological techniques or by the use of sedatives.

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