THERE is one branch of professional etiquette, namely, the inviolability of the intimate and confidential relations which exist between lawyer and client, physician and patient, clergyman and parishioner, which is so well understood, and in fact is so safeguarded by the law, that it is rarely infringed, and inasmuch as the Christian Science practitioner stands in the same confidential relation to his patient as do the lawyer, the doctor, and the minister to their clients, there should he no failure on the part of the practitioner to respect the confidence of his patient to just the same extent as do these professional men. In the relationship of patient and practitioner, the patient feels that he is in need of help because of conditions in his life or in the lives of those of his immediate environment, which have brought sickness, sorrow, or discord into his experience, and he has the right to expect that whatever he says to the practitioner will be regarded as being just as inviolably confidential as anything lie might say to his lawyer or his spiritual adviser.
Christian Science heals both sickness and sin, and many who are in need of this healing would be deterred from asking for help if they could not feel that their confidence would be respected. Many, in fact, would continue to suffer from the troubles with which they are beset rather than face the possibility of being humiliated by having their moral shortcomings or even their physical ills made the subject of conversation, and the conduct of practitioners of Christian Science should be such as to assure their patients that their condition, either moral or physical; will not become the subject of gossip.
Mere thoughtless gossip in such matters is bad enough, but unfortunately it has been said that some practitioners have gone even farther, and have excused their inability to heal some patients of their sicknesses upon the ground that these patients were so immoral or wicked that they could not be healed. Any violation of the confidence of a patient on this ground is not only wrong, but foolish, and the practitioner who indulges in such practices is hurting his own usefulness and bringing discredit on the religion which he professes. No doubt those who offend in this way do it through thoughtlessness, but thoughtlessness is something from which a Christian Science practitioner should be free, especially that thoughtlessness which needlessly wounds another.
