Going beyond placebos

There have been a number of reports recently on the surprising effect that placebos have in treating sickness. Tests prove that in certain instances unmedicated pills can have as much effect on patients as medicated ones do.

In Science and Health Mary Baker Eddy reminds readers of an experience the famous chemist Sir Humphry Davy had. He unexpectedly "cured a case of paralysis simply by introducing a thermometer into the patient's mouth. This he did merely to ascertain the temperature of the patient's body; but the sick man supposed this ceremony was intended to heal him, and he recovered accordingly" (p. 152 ). Think about this for a moment. The patient was paralyzed. His belief that the doctor was treating him caused him to be cured. It had to be his belief that changed him, because the thermometer didn't do anything.

Medical science would offer a range of explanations. The problem may have been psychosomatic, or perhaps the thermometer triggered a "response expectation." As an article in The New York Times explained a while back, "The doctor's white coat, nurse's voice, smell of disinfectant or needle prick have acquired meaning through previous learning, producing an expectation of relief from symptoms" (Oct. 13, 1998).

The point is, today there is growing agreement that the thoughts or beliefs of the patient can have a notable impact on his or her recovery.

But another fact was brought to light through Mrs. Eddy's early experience with homeopathy. The thoughts or beliefs of the physician also have an impact on the patient, Indeed, the patient is often acutely sensitive to the doctor's thoughts—and responds accordingly.

These facts struck Mrs. Eddy, the Discoverer and Founder of Christian Science, in a way that was similar to the impact the "falling apple" had when it struck Newton. The insights she gained from them made her acutely conscious of the mental nature of disease, and of the mental elements that inhibited or encouraged recovery. Today, when most people talk about mind over matter or the mind/body connection, they are exploring ground that was investigated by this woman in the 1850s and early 1860s. Today's researchers tend to focus more on the body/physiological aspect than on the mind element; but it was the very idea that disease and its effects could be mental rather than physical that engaged the attention of Mrs. Eddy.

In 1866, she had an experience that totally changed the focus of her research. Desperately ill herself, and surrounded by those who believed she was dying, she turned to her Bible. She had a lifelong, unshakable conviction that the central fact of God's nature is love. To her, divine Love had to be present, had to be a help in her great need. That day as she read accounts of Jesus' healing work, she found her own consciousness flooded with God's power unlike anything she had ever known before.

It wasn't just a feeling of inspiration, but an awakening to the Mind of Christ. She didn't just feel God's love, as significant as that is. The nature of God and the perfection of His creation became the substance of her own thought—so much so that the sense of distress and death were removed from her consciousness, and she got up from her bed healed.

The apostle Paul urges us to have the mind of Christ (see Phil. 2:5). This Mind of Christ is not a brain-based mind that is conscious of God or aware of God or in communion with God; it is the consciousness that God bestows, and it is filled with His ideas. These ideas have the reality and power that God gives them. Isn't this what Jesus meant when he said, "Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I speak unto you I speak not of myself: but the Father that dwelleth in me, he doeth the works" (John 14:10 ).

Divine Mind has no consciousness of sickness or disease, of anything evil. The divine Mind is entirely spiritual and good, filled with thoughts of health, life, and perfection, and it expresses this same consciousness in man. When we fully accept the Mind of Christ as our Mind, we are conscious of the activity and presence of health, and health alone. Of goodness and of goodness alone, because God is all good.

But that's not all. In Rudimental Divine Science, Mrs. Eddy spells out the implications of the allness of good: "This brings forward the next proposition in Christian Science,—namely, that there are no sickness, sin, and death in the divine Mind. What seem to be disease, vice, and mortality are illusions of the physical senses. These illusions are not real, but unreal. Health is the consciousness of the unreality of pain and disease; or, rather, the absolute consciousness of harmony and of nothing else."

This point is a key to Christian healing. The book goes on to explain how Christian healing differs from healing efforts based on the beliefs of the human mind or the placebo effect: "In a moment you may awake from a night-dream; just so you can awake from the dream of sickness; but the demonstration of the Science of Mind-healing by no means rests on the strength of human belief. This demonstration is based on a true understanding of God and divine Science, which takes away every human belief, and, through the illumination of spiritual understanding, reveals the all-power and ever-presence of good, whence emanate health, harmony, and Life eternal" (p. 11).

There is a fundamental and important difference between the action of the human mind and the divine Mind. To have the Mind of Christ is not a question of being distracted from disease for a time or of triggering some healing mechanism in the body, but of being conscious of the actual impossibility of disease in the universe of Mind where we "live, and move, and have our being" (Acts. 17:28 ). People were startled, even antagonized, when Jesus healed a man whose hand was withered (see Matt. 12:10-15). It was hard for them to accept an event that went so far beyond any "placebo" effect. But even though it made the Pharisees take action against the Master, it wakened many to the supreme power and will of God.

Jesus' deeds unveiled the healing power of divine Mind, or what Christian Science defines as an ever-operative Principle. It is at work in our age as well as it was in his. Mrs. Eddy, as the first teacher of Christian Science, gave clear proof through her own healing work that this was so.

She was called to see a boy in Lynn, Massachusetts, who had a degenerative shinbone. He was being given morphine every two hours to dull the pain. The day Mrs. Eddy came, the doctor was preparing to amputate the boy's leg. She treated him immediately and no operation was necessary. She wrote in a letter, "The next day after my visit he was out on the street, took no more morphine, and that winter attended the dancing school."^{Yvonne Caché von Fettweis and Robert Townsend Warneck. Mary Baker Eddy: Christian Healer (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society. 1998), pp. 86-87.} This ever-operative healing Principle continues to be demonstrated by those practicing Christian Science today. It remains a source of hope and healing to those who have been told, "We've done all we can."

Efforts to heal by placebos rely on the action of the human mind and, it is often argued, can affect only certain types of cases. Christian healing relies on the divine Mind, and it heals all sickness and disease. Not only does it restore the body but, more important, it awakens us to the presence of Christ, to the spiritual reality of God with us. It sets us free from all illness and from the influence of the human mind.

We live in a time when we all can reach out for and experience this healing power of the divine Mind.