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Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures
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150:1be found living witnesses and monuments to the virtue and power of Truth, as applied through this Christian 3system of healing disease.
To-day the healing power of Truth is widely demonstrated as an immanent, eternal Science, instead of a 6
The main
purpose
phenomenal exhibition.
Its appearing is the coming anew of the gospel of on earth peace, good-will toward men. This coming, as was promised 9by the Master, is for its establishment as a permanent dispensation among men; but the mission of Christian Science now, as in the time of its earlier demonstration, 12is not primarily one of physical healing. Now, as then, signs and wonders are wrought in the metaphysical healing of physical disease; but these signs are only to demon15strate its divine origin, to attest the reality of the higher mission of the Christ-power to take away the sins of the world.
18The science (so-called) of physics would have one believe that both matter and mind are subject to disease,
Exploded
doctrine
and that, too, in spite of the individual’s pro21test and contrary to the law of divine Mind.
This human view infringes man’s free moral agency; and it is as evidently erroneous to the author, and will be to 24all others at some future day, as the practically rejected doctrine of the predestination of souls to damnation or salvation. The doctrine that man’s harmony is gov27erned by physical conditions all his earthly days, and that he is then thrust out of his own body by the operation of matter, even the doctrine of the superiority of matter 30over Mind, is fading out.
The hosts of Æsculapius are flooding the world with diseases, because they are ignorant that the human mind 151:1and body are myths. To be sure, they sometimes treat the sick as if there was but one factor in the case; but 3
Disease
mental
this one factor they represent to be body, not mind.
Infinite Mind could not possibly create a remedy outside of itself, but erring, finite, human mind 6has an absolute need of something beyond itself for its redemption and healing.
Great respect is due the motives and philanthropy of 9the higher class of physicians. We know that if they un
Intentions
respected
derstood the Science of Mind-healing, and were in possession of the enlarged power it confers 12to benefit the race physically and spiritually, they would rejoice with us.
Even this one reform in medicine would ultimately deliver mankind from the awful and oppres15sive bondage now enforced by false theories, from which multitudes would gladly escape.
Mortal belief says that death has been occasioned by 18fright. Fear never stopped being and its action. The
Man governed
by Mind
blood, heart, lungs, brain, etc., have nothing to do with Life, God.
Every function of the 21real man is governed by the divine Mind. The human mind has no power to kill or to cure, and it has no control over God’s man. The divine Mind that made man 24maintains His own image and likeness. The human mind is opposed to God and must be put off, as St. Paul declares. All that really exists is the divine Mind and 27its idea, and in this Mind the entire being is found harmonious and eternal. The straight and narrow way is to see and acknowledge this fact, yield to this power, and 30follow the leadings of truth.
That mortal mind claims to govern every organ of the mortal body, we have overwhelming proof. But this so-152:1called mind is a myth, and must by its own consent yield to Truth. It would wield the sceptre of a monarch, but 3
Mortal mind
dethroned
it is powerless.
The immortal divine Mind takes away all its supposed sovereignty, and saves mortal mind from itself. The author has endeavored 6to make this book the Æsculapius of mind as well as of body, that it may give hope to the sick and heal them, although they know not how the work is done. Truth 9has a healing effect, even when not fully understood.
Anatomy describes muscular action as produced by mind in one instance and not in another. Such errors 12
All activity
from thought
beset every material theory, in which one statement contradicts another over and over again.
It is related that Sir Humphry Davy once ap15parently cured a case of paralysis simply by introducing a thermometer into the patient’s mouth. This he did merely to ascertain the temperature of the patient’s body; 18but the sick man supposed this ceremony was intended to heal him, and he recovered accordingly. Such a fact illustrates our theories.
21The author’s medical researches and experiments had prepared her thought for the metaphysics of Christian
The author’s
experiments
in medicine
Science.
Every material dependence had 24failed her in her search for truth; and she can now understand why, and can see the means by which mortals are divinely driven to a spiritual source 27for health and happiness.
Her experiments in homœopathy had made her skeptical as to material curative methods. Jahr, from 30
Homœopathic
attenuations
Aconitum to Zincum oxydatum, enumerates the general symptoms, the characteristic signs, which demand different remedies; but the drug 153:1is frequently attenuated to such a degree that not a vestige of it remains.
Thus we learn that it is not the drug 3which expels the disease or changes one of the symptoms of disease.
The author has attenuated Natrum muriaticum (com6mon table-salt) until there was not a single saline property
Only salt
and water
left.
The salt had lost his savour;and yet, with one drop of that attenuation in a goblet of 9water, and a teaspoonful of the water administered at intervals of three hours, she has cured a patient sinking in the last stage of typhoid fever. The highest attenuation 12of homœopathy and the most potent rises above matter into mind. This discovery leads to more light. From it may be learned that either human faith or the divine Mind is 15the healer and that there is no efficacy in a drug.
You say a boil is painful; but that is impossible, for matter without mind is not painful. The boil simply 18
Origin
of pain
manifests, through inflammation and swelling, a belief in pain, and this belief is called a boil.
Now administer mentally to your patient a high 21attenuation of truth, and it will soon cure the boil. The fact that pain cannot exist where there is no mortal mind to feel it is a proof that this so-called mind makes its 24own pain that is, its own belief in pain.
We weep because others weep, we yawn because they yawn, and we have smallpox because others have it; but 27
Source of
contagion
mortal mind, not matter, contains and carries the infection.
When this mental contagion is understood, we shall be more careful of our mental con30ditions, and we shall avoid loquacious tattling about disease, as we would avoid advocating crime. Neither sympathy nor society should ever tempt us to cherish 154:1error in any form, and certainly we should not be error’s advocate.
3Disease arises, like other mental conditions, from association. Since it is a law of mortal mind that certain diseases should be regarded as contagious, this law ob6tains credit through association, calling up the fear that creates the image of disease and its consequent manifestation in the body.
9This fact in metaphysics is illustrated by the following incident: A man was made to believe that he occupied a
Imaginary
cholera
bed where a cholera patient had died.
Imme12diately the symptoms of this disease appeared, and the man died. The fact was, that he had not caught the cholera by material contact, because no cholera patient 15had been in that bed.
If a child is exposed to contagion or infection, the mother is frightened and says, My child will be sick. 18
Children’s
ailments
The law of mortal mind and her own fears govern her child more than the child’s mind governs itself, and they produce the very results which might 21have been prevented through the opposite understanding. Then it is believed that exposure to the contagion wrought the mischief.
24That mother is not a Christian Scientist, and her affections need better guidance, who says to her child: You look sick,You look tired,You need rest,or You 27need medicine.
Such a mother runs to her little one, who thinks she has hurt her face by falling on the carpet, and says, moaning 30more childishly than her child, Mamma knows you are hurt. The better and more successful method for any mother to adopt is to say: Oh, never mind! You’re not 155:1hurt, so don’t think you are. Presently the child forgets all about the accident, and is at play.
3When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the law of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, which
Drug-power
mental
heals; and according to this faith will the effect 6be.
Even when you take away the individual confidence in the drug, you have not yet divorced the drug from the general faith. The chemist, the botanist, the 9druggist, the doctor, and the nurse equip the medicine with their faith, and the beliefs which are in the majority rule. When the general belief endorses the inanimate 12drug as doing this or that, individual dissent or faith, unless it rests on Science, is but a belief held by a minority, and such a belief is governed by the majority.
15The universal belief in physics weighs against the high and mighty truths of Christian metaphysics. This errone
Belief in
physics
ous general belief, which sustains medicine and 18produces all medical results, works against Christian Science; and the percentage of power on the side of this Science must mightily outweigh the power of 21popular belief in order to heal a single case of disease.
The human mind acts more powerfully to offset the discords of matter and the ills of flesh, in proportion as it puts less 24weight into the material or fleshly scale and more weight into the spiritual scale. Homœopathy diminishes the drug, but the potency of the medicine increases as the 27drug disappears.
Vegetarianism, homœopathy, and hydropathy have diminished drugging; but if drugs are an antidote to 30
Nature of
drugs
disease, why lessen the antidote?
If drugs are good things, is it safe to say that the less in quantity you have of them the better? If drugs 156:1possess intrinsic virtues or intelligent curative qualities, these qualities must be mental. Who named drugs, and 3what made them good or bad for mortals, beneficial or injurious?
A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into 6my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been
Dropsy cured
without drugs
employed, and yet, as she lay in her bed, the patient looked like a barrel.
I prescribed 9the fourth attenuation of Argentum nitratum with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved perceptibly. Believing then somewhat in the 12ordinary theories of medical practice, and learning that her former physician had prescribed these remedies, I began to fear an aggravation of symptoms from their 15prolonged use, and told the patient so; but she was unwilling to give up the medicine while she was recovering. It then occurred to me to give her un18medicated pellets and watch the result. I did so, and she continued to gain. Finally she said that she would give up her medicine for one day, and risk the 21effects. After trying this, she informed me that she could get along two days without globules; but on the third day she again suffered, and was relieved by 24taking them. She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated pellets, and receiving occasional visits from me, but employing no other means, and she was 27cured.
Metaphysics, as taught in Christian Science, is the next stately step beyond homœopathy. In metaphysics, 30
A stately
advance
matter disappears from the remedy entirely, and Mind takes its rightful and supreme place.
Homœopathy takes mental symptoms largely 157:1into consideration in its diagnosis of disease. Christian Science deals wholly with the mental cause in judging and 3destroying disease. It succeeds where homœopathy fails, solely because its one recognized Principle of healing is Mind, and the whole force of the mental element is em6ployed through the Science of Mind, which never shares its rights with inanimate matter.
Christian Science exterminates the drug, and rests on 9Mind alone as the curative Principle, acknowledging that
The modus
of
homœopathy
the divine Mind has all power.
Homœopathy mentalizes a drug with such repetition of 12thought-attenuations, that the drug becomes more like the human mind than the substratum of this so-called mind, which we call matter; and the drug’s power 15of action is proportionately increased.
If drugs are part of God’s creation, which (according to the narrative in Genesis) He pronounced good, then 18
Drugging
unchristian
drugs cannot be poisonous.
If He could create drugs intrinsically bad, then they should never be used. If He creates drugs at all and designs 21them for medical use, why did Jesus not employ them and recommend them for the treatment of disease? Matter is not self-creative, for it is unintelligent. Erring 24mortal mind confers the power which the drug seems to possess.
Narcotics quiet mortal mind, and so relieve the body; 27but they leave both mind and body worse for this submission. Christian Science impresses the entire corporeality, namely, mind and body, and brings out the 30proof that Life is continuous and harmonious. Science both neutralizes error and destroys it. Mankind is the better for this spiritual and profound pathology.
158:1It is recorded that the profession of medicine originated in idolatry with pagan priests, who besought the gods to 3
Mythology
and materia
medica
heal the sick and designated Apollo as the god of medicine.
He was supposed to have dictated the first prescription, according to the 6History of Four Thousand Years of Medicine. It is here noticeable that Apollo was also regarded as the sender of disease, the god of pestilence. Hippocrates turned 9from image-gods to vegetable and mineral drugs for healing. This was deemed progress in medicine; but what we need is the truth which heals both mind and 12body. The future history of material medicine may correspond with that of its material god, Apollo, who was banished from heaven and endured great sufferings 15upon earth.
Drugs, cataplasms, and whiskey are stupid substitutes for the dignity and potency of divine Mind and its effi18
Footsteps to
intemperance
cacy to heal.
It is pitiful to lead men into temptation through the byways of this wilderness world, to victimize the race with intoxicating 21prescriptions for the sick, until mortal mind acquires an educated appetite for strong drink, and men and women become loathsome sots.
24Evidences of progress and of spiritualization greet us on every hand. Drug-systems are quitting their hold on
Advancing
degrees
matter and so letting in matter’s higher stra27tum, mortal mind.
Homœopathy, a step in advance of allopathy, is doing this. Matter is going out of medicine; and mortal mind, of a higher attenuation 30than the drug, is governing the pellet.
A woman in the city of Lynn, Massachusetts, was etherized and died in consequence, although her physi159:1cians insisted that it would be unsafe to perform a needed surgical operation without the ether. After the autopsy, 3
Effects
of fear
her sister testified that the deceased protested against inhaling the ether and said it would kill her, but that she was compelled by her physicians to take 6it.
Her hands were held, and she was forced into submission. The case was brought to trial. The evidence was found to be conclusive, and a verdict was returned that 9death was occasioned, not by the ether, but by fear of inhaling it.
Is it skilful or scientific surgery to take no heed of men12tal conditions and to treat the patient as if she were so
Mental
conditions
to be heeded
much mindless matter, and as if matter were the only factor to be consulted?
Had these 15unscientific surgeons understood metaphysics, they would have considered the woman’s state of mind, and not have risked such treatment. They would either 18have allayed her fear or would have performed the operation without ether.
The sequel proved that this Lynn woman died from 21effects produced by mortal mind, and not from the disease or the operation.
The medical schools would learn the state of man 24from matter instead of from Mind. They examine the
False source
of knowledge
lungs, tongue, and pulse to ascertain how much harmony, or health, matter is permit27ting to matter, how much pain or pleasure, action or stagnation, one form of matter is allowing another form of matter.
30Ignorant of the fact that a man’s belief produces disease and all its symptoms, the ordinary physician is liable to increase disease with his own mind, when he

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