How to be happy though human / by W. Béran Wolfe.
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themselves with infantile invectives against medical
practice as if the medical profession was a colossal junta
of conspirators organized to keep patients sick and
suffering.
The germ of truth that exists in Christian Science is
that conversion neurosis symptoms referable to almost
any organ may be dispelled by encouragement. Many
conversion neurotics are spoiled, pampered, and depen¬
dent children who need someone to do something for
them all the time, and Christian Science fits admirably
into their scheme of things. The mother Church pampers
them as their own mothers used to do in childhood, and
rewards them with blessings as their own mothers
rewarded them with lollypops when they did not cry
about a barked shin or a bruised thumb.
The Christian Science Church and the Christian
Science practitioner might still have a useful place in the
cosmos, were it not for the fact that the Church makes the
egregious mistake of believing and acting “as if” all
diseases and affections of the human body were con¬
version neuroses. Because the Church belligerently
maintains that all sickness is sin and bad thinking,
thousands of gullible believers go as cheerfully to their
deaths as the Indian fanatics who throw themselves under
the wheels of the Juggernaut. Safely ensconced behind
the constitutional freedom of religious belief, the Christian
Science Church invades the field of medicine and foists
its lethal doctrines on ignorant parents and helpless
children. Its popularity can be ascribed solely to the
widespread extent of neuroses in modern life. No truly
courageous, socially minded man or woman can subscribe
to theories which demand, virtually, that the believer
shall check all his critical faculties with his hat and coat
in the ante-room of the church.
The reader will understand the necessity for attempting
to cure neuroses if he understands the vicious influence
of such a widespread neurosis as Christian Science. A
neurosis is never a private matter, as innocuous as the
wart on the end of a man’s nose. The neurosis is the most
u