Mrs. Eddy denies that physical exercise strengthens the muscles. "Because the muscles of the blacksmith's arm are strongly developed, it does not follow that exercise has produced this result, or that a less-used arm must be weak.... _The trip-hammer is not increased in size by exercise._ Why not, since muscles are as material as wood and iron?" Constant bathing, Mrs. Eddy says, received a "useful rebuke from Jesus' precept, 'Take no thought ... for the body,' We must beware of making clean merely the outside of the platter." _A Sensationless Body the Goal of Existence_ "A sensationless body," Mrs. Eddy says, is the ultimate hope of Christian Science. Since insensibility to pain is the ultimate good which her system of philosophy offers, it is natural that she should often point us to the lower forms of animal life for our exemplars. "The conditions of life become less imperative in lower organisms, or where there is less mind and belief on this subject." She points out hopefully that certain marine animals multiply their species by self-division. "The less mind there is manifested in matter, the better. When the unthinking lobster loses his claw, it grows again." If we but believed that matter has no sensation, "then the human limb would be replaced as readily as the lobster's claw." She points out the fact that flowers produce their seed without pain. "The snowbird sings and soars amid the blasts; he has no catarrh from wet feet." "Obesity," Mrs. Eddy says, "is _an adipose belief of yourself as a substance_." _Mrs. Eddy's Physiology_ The most discouraging thing about Mrs. Eddy's dissertations upon anatomy and physiology is that she seems to know so little about the physical facts and laws which she despises. She says, for instance, that a father "plunged his infant babe, only a few hours old, into water for several minutes and repeated this operation daily until the child could remain under water for twenty minutes, moving and playing without harm, like a fish." Does Mrs. Eddy actually believe that a child could live under water for twenty minutes? Again: "The supposition that we can correct insanity by the use of purgatives and narcotics is in itself a species of insanity." Where did Mrs. Eddy get the idea that such treatment was ever supposed to cure "insanity"? Mrs. Eddy says the fact that a finger which has been amputated continues to hurt is proof that nerves have nothing to do with pain, because, she states, "_the nerve is gone_"! Mrs. Eddy says that when we burn a finger, not fire but mortal mind causes the injury. To this statement she adds: "Holy inspiration has created states of mind which are able to nullify the action of the flames, as in the Bible case of the three young Hebrew captives, cast into the Babylonian furnace; while an opposite mental state might produce spontaneous combustion." That is, if mortal mind worked hard enough, we could burn our fingers without any fire, or we could produce the fire by willing it.