Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/322

280 dose of poison, Mrs. Eddy again called Dr. Noyes, this time to perform an autopsy. Dr. Noyes exposed the heart and exhibited the physical organ to Mrs. Eddy, pointing out the valvular difficulty. He found no traces of arsenic whatsoever, no cancer or other disease of the stomach.

In so far then as the surgeon’s knife can prove anything, Mr. Eddy died of heart exhaustion. But the surgeon’s knife cannot find everything; it cannot find love, for example, in the noblest heart that ever beat; nor can it find hate in the cruelest. Who can with authority deny Mrs. Eddy’s statement that poison mentally administered killed her husband? “Not material poison,” she declared, “but mesmeric poison.”

It may not be the term that natural science would admit, but natural science acknowledges readily that grief, disappointment, and profound depression will cause heart failure. Remembering the wicked charge of wilful attempt to murder falsely brought against Mr. Eddy, and the cruel assaults upon his wife, whom he loved and cherished, by the seceding students, and the attempt at a veritable overthrow of the work to which he was devoted, it may be very easily understood why Mrs. Eddy declared that her husband was mentally poisoned, and in that statement doubtless she was scientifically exact. It should be remembered that this happened in the early days of Christian Science practise and at a time when Mrs. Eddy was just awakening to the pernicious mental influence of hate. Christian Science presents a doctrine of love which antidotes