Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/544

484 for she has not only constantly stimulated the healing department of her church, but, year by year, she has restrained and modified its practice, until to-day Christian Science is scarcely more radical in its methods than are the regular schools of her best hated enemy, materia medica. Physicians have been forced to take into account, more and more, in their dealings with the sick, the condition of the patient's mind, and to use it as a co-operative force with their medical treatment; and in America this is largely owing to the stir made by Mrs. Eddy's healers in the sick world. In Europe this result has been obtained, not through mystery and revelation and quackery, but in the course of regular scientific study and experiment, and in the schools of the foremost European neurologists, psychical treatment for certain disorders has been for many years a recognised and established method.

There is now in America a benevolent attempt on the part of certain churches to introduce a kind of reformed Christian Science, and to establish "clinics" where sick cases may be diagnosed by regular school physicians, while the pastors in charge of the clinics administer the psychical treatment in an effort to aid in the cure. They aim, at these clinics, to conduct the treatment on as scientific a basis as is possible, and their failures as well as their successful cures are honestly recorded. These church movements are an indirect outcome of Mrs. Eddy's activities. Her own congregations are built up at the expense of those of the orthodox churches, and it is largely as a means of self-preservation, as well as owing to a laudable desire to increase the benefits of mental healing, that these churches are taking up the practical side of Christian Science, and are