Page:Medicine and the church; being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick (IA medicinechurchbe00rhodiala).pdf/79

 of a really scientific investigation are somewhat severe. In the first place the diagnosis of the disease must be absolutely certain. This frequently necessitates microscopical or bacteriological examination. A medical man is not always infallible in his opinion of cases; and it may happen that a condition that has been thought to be cancer turns out to be merely a comparatively harmless inflammatory thickening. Such a condition might have recovered by natural processes without any treatment; to attribute such recovery to any particular treatment that the patient might be under-*going at the time would be rash; to use such a case as an advertisement for that treatment would be dishonest.

In the second place, a fair comparison must be made between the results obtained by the method under investigation, and by other means of treatment. Warts may disappear rapidly under many forms of treatment, or with no treatment at all. To attribute the disappearance of warts to Spiritual Healing would be very unsafe argument.

Thirdly, a careful distinction must be drawn between the cure of a disease and the relief of subjective symptoms.

It is in this matter of subjective symptoms that Spiritual Healing appears to have obtained