FORTY years ago, when Mrs. Eddy first announced that Mind was the only legitimate healer of the body, there arose a storm of ignorant opposition which has not entirely subsided at this day. Arguments were made by the advocates of materia medica, claiming, among other things, that God must have intended man to employ drugs for the healing of disease, otherwise He would not have provided them for human use. That wing of the press which simply reflects the opinions of mankind entered into the discussion, and lost no opportunity in charging Christian Scientists with criminal neglect whenever a failure could be laid at their door. In spite of this unreasonable opposition to her gospel of health, Mrs. Eddy continued to urge the supremacy of Mind over all the ills to which flesh is heir. She proved beyond peradventure the truths which she taught, and then trusted God to establish their verity. Instead of meeting the attacks of her opponents by fruitless discussion, Mrs. Eddy has patiently turned the other cheek, overcoming evil always with good. As the result of this Christlike forbearance the earth has continued to help the woman, and her wisdom is now bearing abundant fruition.
The leaven of Truth, which is constantly working in human affairs, has at length reached the ranks of materia medica. Recent revelations are showing the drugging system to be a house divided against itself,—a logical inconsistency which cannot stand. In a recently published report of the investigation of the wholesale drug business by Health Commissioner Darlington of the city of New York, according to the New York Herald, of the drugs sold in that city "seventy-two per cent are adulterated or in some other way fail to comply with the standard of the pharmacopoeia and are consequently unlawfully sold. Only twenty-eight per cent are absolutely or reasonably pure, and fifty-six per cent are so rank, so dishonestly compounded and labeled, so dangerous to life, that they call for the instant prosecution in a criminal court of the manufacturers and wholesale dealers. These figures are not the result of guesswork, but are founded upon analysis and assay of ten thousand specimens or samples procured from the wholesale drug establishments, either located here or represented by agents. In this list no account is taken of the thousands of cases of criminal substitution by the retailer, who for a trifling profit does not hesitate to employ entirely different drugs, because cheaper, for the component parts of prescriptions entrusted to him for compounding by physicians."
In view of the foregoing, though we were to assume that materia medica, is an exact science, and all doctors and retail druggists infallible in point of knowledge and integrity, there would still be left but twenty-eight per cent of a chance of getting a prescription correctly filled, even if it contains but a single drug. It is a fact, however, that the average prescription contains a number of drugs, and sometimes as many as forty. Over against the assumption that doctors seldom make mistakes, we have the published assertion of a retail druggist, who writes to the New York Herald as follows: "The public would be astonished if they could understand the absurdity of over eighty-five per cent of the prescriptions which are offered to cure them; chemical, therapeutical, and physical incompatibilities are happenings of every day. If some of these scientific prescriptions were published, it would certainly convince those who blame the druggist's dishonesty for the failure of the quick cure of their patients, that their absolute ignorance is more to blame for it than the druggist."
