Medicine and the Church: Being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick
Religion
Medicine and the Church: Being a series of studies on the relationship between the practice of medicine and the church's ministry to the sick
Medicine -- Religious aspects; Pastoral medicine
Before the stress of life became as severe as it is to-day, most common
complaints could be overcome by rest and ordinary treatment. But under
modern conditions of extreme complexity healing can no longer be
conducted on such simple lines, and as time has gone on the effects of
this divorce of medicine and religion have made themselves felt.
In correspondence with a more highly organised state of society, man
has become a more highly organised being. He has developed faculties
in excess of the man of, say, fifty years ago, and the exercise of
these faculties, that depend for their operation on the nervous
system, entails a strain on that system to which it was not exposed
half a century back. The more elaborate the machinery the more ways in
which it may get out of order. Man to-day is prone to a dozen nervous
complaints whose existence our forefathers were happily able to ignore.
Owing to climatic and other conditions that need not be discussed here,
these nervous disorders first forced themselves on public attention in
the United States of America. The overworked business or professional
man has no time in the rushing life of the great growing cities of
America for rest. Carried off his feet by the tide of prosperity, he
becomes the slave of his inventions instead of being their master.
His sense of proportion becomes atrophied and he fails to maintain a
correct balance between thought and action. A purely materialistic
medicine that ignores thoughts and feelings as being outside the scope
of diagnosis is powerless to prescribe for such a case. And it is small
matter for astonishment that patients of this description have been
drifting into the hands of Christian Science and kindred cults in their
search for relief. These systems of philosophy or religion (if such
they can be called) lack, however, that element of completeness without
which no guide of human conduct can maintain its hold. And as it
becomes realised that these irresponsible and often mercenary societies
are propagating views diametrically opposed to the common-sense
conceptions of the patients, their power will be broken and the cures
cease. Meantime Christian Science undoubtedly does overcome some cases
of nervous trouble, but these in no sense outweigh the mischief done
by its followers in denying the sick medical care. We must clear the
ground before we can commence building, and it may be well to examine
briefly the ‘faith and works’ of Christian Science before proceeding to
discuss the relationship between Medicine and the Church.
Opening Mrs. Eddy’s handbook at random we come across these two
explanatory statements:
(1) It is not scientific to examine the body in order to ascertain if
we are in health.
(2) To employ drugs for the cure of disease shows a lack of faith in
God.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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