Article July 10, 1978 Issue

True self-care

GERTRUDE BAYLESS

The other day I opened my credit card bill to find printed on the envelope flap an advertisement for a home kit for checking pulse and blood pressure. Since then I've noticed that consumer groups are recommending other do-it-yourself medical gear, such as biofeedback machines and personal charts for keeping track of body rhythms. Even the public health profession of late has been encouraging the individual to assume more responsibility for his own health and physical diagnosis, instead of mindlessly taking his body to a doctor to get it fixed.

This trend is called self-care. It may be an encouraging sign when reliance these days on the state and on institutional medicine for health care is so common. Certainly Christian Scientists respect all sincere efforts to foster more individual responsibility for healing. They especially appreciate this humanitarian goal because they themselves share it and are striving for it—but in a very different way.

Indeed, Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer of Christian Science, predicts that spiritual understanding can make self-care possible for all. She writes, "When the Science of being is universally understood, every man will be his own physician, and Truth will be the universal panacea." Science and Health, p. 144; Instead of dwelling on corporeality, treatment based on Christianly scientific understanding progressively frees us from it and brings out true self-care.

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