Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 34.djvu/822

800 operation like the erection of a tower or the calculation of the path of a cannon-ball will result in success or failure according as it is or is not performed in complete agreement with this law.

Now, the Christian Scientists are continually making failures. Patients whom they have treated for a long time still have poor health. The healers plead that these patients have been helped some, but the gain is doubtful; and, besides, their theory does not leave room for any partial successes. “The rule, and its perfectness in my system, never vary,” says Mrs. Eddy. There are other patients who might have been numbered among the successes of Christian Science if they had not unfortunately died under the treatment. Such instances furnish frequent items for the newspapers. “The Medical and Surgical Reporter” gives this case: The wife of a physician in Cincinnati had a cancer. The growth was removed, but after some months the disease reappeared, and everything that the best medical skill of the country could do for the patient proved in vain. She was urged to try the faith-cure, but her husband naturally refused to allow this. When, however, it began to be whispered about that, because she was married to a physician, she must die for want of freedom to avail herself of all methods of cure, he could resist no longer. Under his protest she went to the faith-healers, and every day they told her that she was getting better, while she was really growing worse, and soon died.

“The New York Herald” prints the following:

Chicago, Ill., February 21, 1888.—F. Benedict, late an employé at W. W. Kimball & Company's piano ware-rooms, lies dead in the La Burnham flats, a victim to “faith-healing,” and to-morrow Dr. C. R. Teed, the editor of the Christian Science organ, “The Guiding Star,” will be called upon to answer charges of criminal malpractice in connection with the case.

From the “Boston Herald” I learn that Mrs. Lottie A. James, of West Medford, Mass., died April 20, 1888, in childbirth, under the treatment of her mother, who was a Christian Scientist. The child also died. Her husband was absent. The mother was charged with manslaughter, but the grand jury failed to indict her. The following item appeared in the “New York Tribune”:

Springfield., Mo., May 28th.—Mrs. John Truesdale last night drowned herself in a reservoir. She had acted strangely for the last two or three weeks, owing to strict adherence to the teachings of a Christian Scientist, James Reed. He told Mrs. Truesdale that he could teach her the science of healing by prayer so that she could heal her husband, who is an engineer, but has been ill with consumption for several months. Grasping at anything that promised any hope for her husband, she visited Reed frequently, and the general opinion is that out of her experience grew the despair that caused her to kill herself.