in the _Christian Science Journal_,
that many patients have been driven into Christian Science by a
multitude of shifting and mistaken diagnoses, by the gross abuse of
drugs, especially of morphine, and by the total neglect of rational
psychotherapy on the part of many physicians. No doubt these causes
account only for a certain fraction of the desertions to Christian
Science. There are many patients who have so little patience and so
much credulity that they desert their doctors for no good reason
whatever; but I believe that these cases are in the minority, and that
the success of the Christian Science movement is due largely to the
ignorance and narrow-mindedness of a certain proportion of the medical
profession.

I can see some foundation even for such an exaggerated charge as that
the doctors "are flooding the world with disease"--a favorite
expression of Mrs. Eddy's. No one who has seen much of the nervous or
hysterical affections following railway accidents and of the methods
not infrequently used, not only by lawyers, but by doctors, to make
the sufferers believe that they are sicker than they really are, can
deny that there is some truth in Mrs. Eddy's charge. Even in her
irrational denunciations of hygiene, one cannot help seeing some grain
of truth when one reads or hears of the multitude of petty prudences
and "old womanish" superstitions not infrequently exploited by school
teachers, parents, and teachers of physical culture, under the name of
"hygiene."

_The Classic Methods Used by Christian Science_

Believing, then, as I do, that most Christian Science cures are
genuine--genuine cures of functional disease--the question arises
whether the special methods of mental healing employed by Christian
Scientists differ from other methods of mental healing, such as are
employed by the best neurologists, both in this country and in
Europe.

Of the classical methods of psychotherapeutics, namely, explanation,
education, psychoanalysis, encouragement, suggestion, rest-cure and
work-cure, the Christian Scientists use chiefly suggestion, education,
and work-cure, though each of these methods is colored and shaped by
the peculiar doctrines of the sect.

The quack who sells magic handkerchiefs supposed to be endowed with
miraculous healing powers by the touch of his sacred hand, the priests
who exploit the "healing springs" at Lourdes, and the doctor who gives
a bread pill or a highly diluted homeopathic drug,