"CHRISTIAN SCIENCE" AND LIBERTY.
THE fact that a criminal prosecution is pending connection with the death of Mr. Harold Fred imposes, of course, a certain amount of reserve 11 journalistic discussion of the issues raised by that Inel choly event. Nevertheless, the development of practice of "Christian Science" is a subject of so En general interest that a few remarks upon certain asp of it, and the duty of society towards such move'e will not be inopportune. Let us say at once that ) difficult for us to understand any sane person honestly h ing the set of views put forth by an article in Wednes oily Chronicle, as contained in a book entitled "Science id Health," said to be the text-book of the Christian 3ientists, and that we see with grave concern the allega- on that these grotesque perversions of faith and avesties of science find increasing acceptance among ?ople of various classes in this country. There is, to ir mind, something specially repulsive in a system hich, while suggesting that the Founder of Christianity lund no need to diagnose the diseases He healed, prattles the distinction between acute and chronic, "organic" and functional" disease, of "changed secretions," "carious ones," " cicatrised joints," and lost lung-substance, ad claims that in the cure of all these forms of human ftlicticn the author has been successful in restoring ealthy conditions, " with no means but mind." It is to be ?ared that this loose employment of a half-medical jargon, bsolutely contemptible as it is, is found to increase the hances that suffering human beings will commit them- Ayes to those who purport to cure all their ills by faith." Sick people like to be treated by those who can libly use learned terms about their disorders. It prob- bly seems to them somehow that the professed all-healer rho talks thus must know better than a more obviously ;norant person at what particular point in their system bring the influences of his remedy to bear, whether it e faith or a universal pill, or a combination of both. We o not doubt, therefore, that the dialect of "Christian ■ ience" is only too well conceived for the purpose of ,inning converts. And if, as may be the case, and as it is he fashion to say, the exponents of the system are ineere in their belief in its efficacy-, as well as in their eadiness to take fees from those whom they treat, the raze is only the more likely to spread. If it does, it aust inevitably cause much suffering and smne deaths .mong the patients who actually submit themselves, or re submitted by those in charge of them, to its operation. 3eyond that, it must exercise a baneful influence by ts opposition to sanitary progress. In this respect, at east, it constitutes a more widely injurious social aberra- ion than even the anti -vaccination movement. For he adherents of the latter, at any rate in some well- mown centres of their delusion, do at least take laborate precautions for the isolation of cases of small- lox, and for the observance of modern principles in egard both to the prevention of infection and the general laintenance of conditions favourable to health. But the uthor of the text-book of the Christian Scientists is a dank reactionary in all such matters. She (for the aminine authorship of the work is acknowledged) main- uns that not only "when there are fewer doctors," but hen "less thought is given to sanitary subjects, there be better constitutions and less disease." In view of us feature of the teaching in question, there can, in our pinion, be no doubt that it is one of the most noxious of le morbid mental developments of our day.
And yet we are bound to say that the disposition hich appears to exist in some quarters towards a )ercive treatment of the Christian Scientists seems to I, to a considerable extent, wrong in principle, and wed upon a misconception of the sphere of law. There e apparently many persons who think that such a case that of Mr. Harold Frederic is obviously on all fours, om a. public point of view, with that of the child of Peculiar People" who has died because its parents fused to call in medical advice. Such a practical entity may no doubt be established ; but to us it ems . very important to recognise that the pre- mption—though it may be rebutted—is the other t.y when the patient is of full age. It is a long-settled meiple of English legislation that the State is bound to force upon parents and guardians the observance, the case of their children under age, of those elemen- measures for the preservation or restoration of bodily dth which are recognised as necessary by the common- Ise of civilised mankind. It is to the great credit of !Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children that has extended the application of this principle and !tight about its more rapid and certain enforcement. by no means to the credit of the present Govern- lit and Parliament that by their treatment of the Demotion Bill of last Session they acquiesced in the %sal abandonment of a form of protection of children met the carelessness and wrongheadedness of their 2nts which, though limited in its operation, un- doubtedly secured large numbers against the risk of disfigurement or death through a hideous and dangerous disease. But though the State's care for children has, in this respect, been unfortunately relaxed, it is still, happily, the law that qualified medical advice must be sought and acted on by parents whose children are ill, whether of small-pox or any other disease. That is as it should be, and it may be reasonably anticipated that in all cases where deliberate neglect of the responsibility thus recognised by the law is established, Judges and juries, will be found to deal adequately with the offence.
But the case is, prima, facie at any rate, essentially different when the neglect to call in, or to act on, qualified medical advice, and the reliance upon some irrational- alternative, occur in the case of an adult who is in a con- dition to decide for himself. It may or may not be the fact that Mr. Harold Frederic was in such a condition, or that he was in effect overruled by others. All that has to be thrashed out before a Judge and jury. But what we are concerned to urge is that there is an appreciable danger that the feeling excited, justly or unjustly, by this case, may operate as an unwise restriction upon the hitherto-recognised liberty of the grown-up citizen to form, and act on such views as he honestly forms, as to the treatment of his own body when sick. We apprehend that orthodox practitioners gene-. rally, if not invariably, believe that there is an appre. cia.ble number of cases in which persons treated by homceopathic doctors die, who would recover if they were in the hands of allopathic doctors. But no allopath suggests that the family of a man who has been in the habit of consulting a homceopathic doctor shall be liable to criminal prosecution if he dies in the hands of such an adviser. Such a proposition would arouse universal indignation as unjust in itself, and as an- unwarrantable infringement of the liberty of the subject. For, obviously, if the State thus fixed upon survivors a responsibility for death occurring after homceopathic - treatment, it would in effect be requiring every considerate • man of homceopathic convictions, as soon as he felt that hia- illness might end fatally, to consign himself to a system of. medicine in which he disbelieved. And the same kind of reasoning holds with regard even to eccentric crazes, such as that now under our attention. No doubt both allopaths and homceopaths would agree that "Christian Science" is an impossible system, and the mass of the laity are, it may be hoped, of the same opinion. But questions of liberty for adults in this country cannot be safely settled by any mere preponderance, however decisive, of numbers and intelli- gence. In America there are said to be two hundred thousand Christian Scientists. We may have that number or more here some day, and we cannot hope to suppress them by prosecuting the relations of those adults who die under the treatment, or the Scientists in whose hands they have died. When children are the victims, or when there is conclusive evidence that any patient was subjected to their treatment, and withheld from rational treatment, contrary to what may fairly be assumed to have been his deliberate wish, then the law will rightly and rigorously step in. So also if, and when, sanitary regulations are defied. But, for the rest, "Christian Science" must be left to the influences of Christianity and of science, which, in the long run, may be reckoned on to kill it. A homceopath or a follower of Prince Hohenlohe is not a suicide because he believes in a foolish or an anti-scientifin system of treatment for the sick.
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