Editorial March 17, 1973 Issue

Reconstructing the Body

Naomi Price

When through a mishap a toucan lost the upper half of its beak not long ago, officials at the zoo where it lives arranged for a false beak to be made and stuck on so that it could eat. To the astonishment of the veterinary officer, within a year the toucan had grown a new beak underneath the false one and was restored to its original, natural wholeness. "How," the report continues, "could it evolve the ability to grow a new one?"

The animal kingdom provides us with numerous examples of reconstruction of parts of the body. A crocodile grows new teeth to replace those that are lost. Without any difficulty a lobster will grow a new claw and a starfish a new arm. But men and women resign themselves to the loss of a limb or a bodily organ and mentally reject the possibility of renewing them—that is to say, they do if they have not been stirred through the teachings of Christian Science to question the limitations of mortal belief and to grasp to some extent the vast possibilities of the understanding of divine Truth to heal and reconstruct the physical body.

In Science and Health Mrs. Eddy writes: "If the Science of Life were understood, it would be found that the senses of Mind are never lost and that matter has no sensation. Then the human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster's claw,—not with an artificial limb, but with the genuine one."^{Science and Health, p. 489;} Elsewhere in the same book she refers to a woman of ninety who grew several new teeth, and to cases in her experience in which, through Christian Science, the substance of lungs was renewed and shortened limbs were lengthened.^{See pp. 247, 162;}

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