To the Editor of the Herald: I have always enjoyed reading "Dr. Frank's" very interesting and instructive articles in your columns. In the article of the 8th inst., in his very deserved attacks upon humbug and quackery in the healing art, I was sorry to notice his unkind allusion to the "so-called Christian Scientists," who are included by him under the head of "quacks" and "arrant knaves."
Making all allowances for the prejudice of more bigoted physicians against scientists, it occurred to me that "Dr. Frank" was a trifle discourteous, to say the least. Generally speaking, the advocates of a new theory are regarded by opponents as "cranks," or else influenced in their advocacy by pecuniary motives. I may venture to say for myself that I am neither, nor am I a Christian Scientist in practice. Suppose I should make the sweeping generality that old and new school physicians are charlatans and quacks, because of my own experience, and that of another very near and dear to me. For between four and five years the larger part of a very limited income has been expended in doctors' bills and medicine, and though in Philadelphia two of the best resident physicians (Dr. Pancoast always excepted) were employed, I can honestly say that neither my own case—nervous prostration, nor the other I have referred to—was reached. Rather the reverse. Two years later occurred a like experience in Boston. There has been no experimenting with doctors whose skill was merely a matter of conjecture only. Today, I myself, and the member of my family to whom I have made reference, are well. Neither has known such an approach to perfect health in ten years. We owe this entirely to the treatment of a Christian Scientist. Nearly a year since, an intimate friend consulted the two best physicians in the city within five miles of Boston, regarding that most terrible of physical evils—cancer. Both physicians recommended its removal; one immediately, the other as soon as the system could be built up to stand the shock. To-day—Christian Science again —the person I refer to is as fully restored to health as I myself, and the dreaded evil is no longer in sight. Naturally, I feel that justice should be given to Christian Scientists, particularly when every day the most undeniable and authentic cures, which only the most bigoted and fanatical can deny, are wrought through their instrumentality.
But despite my own experience in doctors and drugs, and the knowledge of the fatal result of their experimenting in many cases, I should certainly neither be discourteous nor unwilling to give to all their honest meed of praise as to denounce this body of intellectual and estimable men as "quacks and charlatans," simply because I believe now that the world doesn't need half as much dosing as it thinks it does.
