Page:Valid Objections to So-called Christian Science (1902).pdf/54

 lowed up in the multitude of failures, and the memory of them drowned in the wails and cries of anguish arising from an afflicted humanity despairing of relief. The discoveries made to alleviate pain would be cast back into oblivion. The death bed of many, which now is peaceful, alleviated by the aids which modern medicine has afforded, would too often be a scene of horror; and the final struggle a spectacle of heart-rending agony. The simple operations of surgery, which now so often save, would entirely be discarded, and the anesthetics which make them painless would be flung away. The lame, the halt, and the blind would crowd upon us, and the cry of their suffering fill the open spaces of the world.

It is hardly possible for us who have lived in this enlightened age to realize what the giving up of the benefits we have attained to, through the progress of modern science, would mean. The substitution of the processes of Christian Science healing would throw us back to the conditions which exist among the lowest and most depraved of savage tribes, whose method of treating disease is exactly similar in theory to that of these modern fanatics. The practice of exor-