Shifting Sands

Archibald McLellan

Only a few years ago, people were taught to believe that sewer-gas was a dangerous and dreaded foe to the health of mankind. Today a physician who is a professor of epidemiology in a leading Western university, is quoted in the Berkeley (Cal.) Daily Gazette as saying:—

"The methods of health departments have changed materially in the last few years, though they cling to many antiquated practices. These practices are legacies from a time when even health officers believed that sewer-gas was dangerous and that diseases were transmitted through the air. In accordance with this belief, measures for the control of disease formerly dealt with the environment. Our plumbing ordinances require many feet of needless vent-pipe, since these ordinances are based on sewer-gas superstition."

This is simply another proof that the theories of the medical profession are as the shifting sands of the desert, so frequently changing as to be unsafe guides for legislation which would bar every person from seeking to preserve or secure his health by means other than those prescribed by this same medical profession. There never was a time when so much attention was given to the study of disease as at present, nor a time at which the physician was more helpless in the presence of certain diseases than he is today; yet the clamor for legislation which would make doctors of medicine the only legalized healers of disease, is becoming more and more insistent,—a clamor raised not by the people, but by the doctors themselves.

Until these doctors of medicine can show an unbroken record of success in healing even one disease, and until their theories of the cause and cure of disease become more permanently settled than at present, it becomes them, it would seem, to be more modest in their efforts to bring every person, whether he be sick or well, under bondage to them. Will legislators take the responsibility of passing such laws as have been demanded of them, when faced with testimony that hundreds of thousands have been healed by Christian Science, many of them after all medical means had failed? Would they have a right to take this responsibility, if even only one person should prove that Christian Science had healed him? Every week thousands of persons all over the world are publicly declaring that Christian Science has healed them. Thousands of testimonies have been given to the reading public through the columns of the Sentinel and Journal. To cite one instance, a lady wrote to this office some time ago: "It is through the understanding of Christian Science as taught by Mrs. Eddy that I am living today. I had reached that stage where the physician said I was dying and would probably be gone in an hour's time. ... The physician said, 'Nothing in this world can save her; she is beyond all human aid.' "

This is plain and simple testimony to the efficacy of Christian Science over medical methods, yet there are still those who refuse to believe there is any other recourse for a sick person than to depend upon medical aid. They would even, as did the Pharisees of old, when Jesus healed the blind man, try to convince such a one that there is some mistake, that either he never was sick or else he only thinks he is healed. But there is no gainsaying that triumphant refutation: "One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see."

Christian Scientists have no quarrel with the physicians of any school. They have been tautht never to be aggressive, to obey the law, and in all things to strive to observe the golden rule. It does not necessarily follow that they are to acquiesce in or submit without protest to efforts to make laws which would deprive them of their inalienable rights, especially when such measures are advocated by a system whose fallibility is frankly admitted by its own exponents. It is one of the unexplainable things that in the face of these fallacies the public should be expected to adopt unquestioningly each new theory that is promptly advanced to take the place of the one exploded.

The day has gone by for accepting a dictum from any source when unsupported by facts. Christian Scientists have proved the efficacy of the truth discovered by Mrs. Eddy to their own satisfaction. Yet they do not proselyte; they do not seek legislation to force this teaching upon their fellows, however confident they may be that it would work for their betterment. They ask, and have a right to expect, that the same liberty be accorded them which they are ready to extend to others.

Archibald McLellan.

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