LITMIR.BIZ

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      How do you define disease?

      When a patient presents himself to you, do you inquire concerning the causes of his illness?

      Do you investigate symptoms? (Symptoms, I stated, are the signs of disease.)

      Do you make diagnoses? (A diagnosis, I stated, is a consideration of symptoms by which one disease is distinguished from another or others.)

      In what does your treatment consist?

      In treating a patient, do you administer any material substance, and require that it be taken into the body as one would food?

      Do you consider cleanliness, good order, and the attainment of æsthetic effects in a patient's environment a part of treatment?

      Do you take any steps to isolate the patient sick of an infectious disease, or to protect those about the patient from the disease?

      Do you treat structural diseases, as cancer or locomotor ataxia? Do you consider you have cured such diseases? If so, how do you know you were treating a structural disease, such as cancer or locomotor ataxia?

      Would you treat cases of fracture of bones or violent injury? If so, what would you do in such cases?

      Will you give me the names of patients whom you have treated, with permission to inquire concerning their illnesses, your treatment of them, and the effects of your treatment upon them – upon the distinct understanding that their names are not to be published?

      Do you deny the existence of matter? In Science and Health it is stated that "all is mind, there is no matter." How is it possible, in treating disease, for you to separate mind from matter?

      Animals sometimes become sick; could they be cured by Christian-Science methods?

      From Mrs. Eddy I received no answer nor any communication whatever. But, some time afterward, Mrs. Stetson informed me that the matter had been turned over to Judge Septimus J. Hanna, Mrs. Eddy's "counsel." Just here I reflected how Jesus Christ, whose representative Mrs. Eddy declares herself to be, would have acted under those circumstances, and I wondered how he would have appeared in this odd atmosphere hedged about by "counsel" and other legal paraphernalia. Presently thereafter I had the honor to receive a note from Mrs. Stetson, appointing a time for me to call. When I did this, Mrs. Stetson gave me a letter which had been sent her by Judge Hanna, and which she permitted me to use as I should see fit. This is the letter:

      I wrote Judge Hanna a note of thanks, and in reply received a letter in which he stated: "I should have been very glad if I could have seen my way clear to answer your questions in such a way as could have been intelligible and satisfactory. But it was impossible for me to do so."

      Now, all this seems to me much worse than preposterous. I fail utterly to see why he who asks the question, "Do you isolate a patient suffering from an infectious disease?" would have to spend months or years in Nirvana-like abstraction before he would be able to appreciate an answer to it. No doubt Judge Hanna, who is evidently a lawyer, could, if he chose, tell the reason why.

      To all who had been "healed in Christian Science" whom I met I stated plainly my object – to investigate how they had been "healed." I stated that my findings would be published, but that no names would be printed. The cases were to be numbered. I stated that I did not wish to examine nervous manifestations of a hysterical sort or purely functional disorders. I wished to see cases of disease in which the structure of the organs was likely to be or to have been involved, such as Bright's disease or cancer. Having, to begin with, explained this fully, I took the subject's history and ascertained whenever possible the name of any physician who may have treated the patient before he or she went "into Christian Science." Almost all these physicians who live in New York I visited; to the others residing in New York and to those living out of town I wrote, the form of the letter being generally as follows:

      In each case, having set down the subject's statements and the physician's statement, I recorded my own observations of the subject's condition.

      I examined in succession and without exception the case of every willing Christian Scientist up to the number of twenty.3 All these cases were of their own choosing; no doubt, then, they would be considered to be among their "good" cases. Their "failures" I had no opportunity to examine. There were many others who refused to testify, no doubt justifiably. Others refused for reasons not easily comprehended, considering the fact that these people hold weekly "experience meetings," in which they "rejoice to testify to the power of Christian Science." It is difficult to see, therefore, why such cases should not invite scientific investigation.

      I could find in all these twenty cases no "cure" that would have occasioned the medical man the slightest surprise. What did surprise me was the vast disproportion between the results they exhibited and the claims made by Christian-Science healers. One of these cases may be cited as an example of the loose generalization upon which many of the claims of these healers rest. A lady stated that she had had pneumonia. I asked how she knew she had had pneumonia. She declared she knew, because her nurse "could tell at a glance she had pneumonia." No medical examination had been made. I asked what symptoms she had had – how she had suffered. She told me she had purposely forgotten – she had tried to dismiss from her mind all recollection of this distressing illness. Well,

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