e just those which
most often puzzle the physician, leading him to change his diagnosis
and the patient to change his doctor very frequently. Again, it is
just these functional nervous disorders which, affecting as they do
every part of the body and every organ, give rise to the false idea of
"many diseases"--an idea based on the patient's multitudinous
sufferings.

Organic disease often runs its course accompanied by very little
suffering, or with a very definite localization of the malady in one
part of the body. The patient with a genuine complication of diseases
does not often live to tell the story in a doctor's office or in a
Christian Science experience meeting. In the majority of the reported
cases the complication is in the patient's mind, not in his diseases.

For a similar reason the patient who has had "many operations" is
usually one whose (nervous) sufferings are so manifold and so various
that physicians are driven to seek relief by one measure after
another, and finally by a variety of surgical procedures.

It is a striking fact that, as one listens to the recital of
Christian Science "cures," one hears little or nothing of the great
common organic diseases, such as arterio-sclerosis, phthisis,
appendicitis--and still less of the common acute diseases, such as
pneumonia, malaria, apoplexy. Chronic nervous (that is, mental)
disease is the Christian Scientist's stock in trade.

_Similarity of Christian Science Testimony_

No one can study the printed records of Christian Science cures
without noting a remarkable similarity running through many hundreds
of them, a similarity in style, in phraseology, and in the general
structure of the letters.

For example, Mrs. Eddy's name was mentioned _within five lines of the
end_ in fifty-six out of seventy-five letters which I have recently
examined. I have excluded here all cases in which Mrs. Eddy's name was
mentioned earlier in the letter. It seems hardly likely that all these
writers would spontaneously bring in the name of their leader
precisely in this position in the letter.

In twelve out of seventy-five letters the rather unusual phrase
_materia medica_ occurs.

The price of treatment under Christian Science and under the previous
medical care is mentioned in a large proportion of these letters.

Not one of these letters mentions the name of any doctor connected at
any time with the case. From personal experience with similar stories
heard from