The dawn of 1890 found Mary Baker Eddy at one of the most significant crossroads in her life. She had left Boston, Massachusetts, for Concord, New Hampshire, the year before to work on a major revision of her healing textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. In order to quiet the demands on her before she left, Mrs. Eddy had resigned as Pastor of the Boston Church of Christ (Scientist); she had given the responsibility for publishing The Christian Science Journal to a "Publication committee" of her students; she had dissolved her students association; she had closed the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, of which she was President and teacher; and she had asked the Boston church to dissolve its congregational government, with the request that it continue holding services as a voluntary association. Under her direction a Board of Directors was appointed and made responsible for maintaining church services, including the employment of a pastor who would preach in strict accord with the teachings of Christian Science.
Having thus cleared the decks, Mrs. Eddy devoted herself to revising her book. Her purpose was not to add new ideas, but rather to elucidate and illuminate more thoroughly the divinely inspired concepts that had been there from the first writing. When the fiftieth edition of Science and Health was issued in January 1891, a number of highly significant changes were to be found: there was a new arrangement of chapters, having several new chapter titles; marginal headings had been incorporated for the first time; Scriptural quotations had replaced literary ones at the beginning of each chapter; the previous thirty-eight-page index had grown to seventy-one pages; throughout the book, portions of text had been shifted and forty pages of new material had been added; and almost every page showed evidence of some rewriting. Of this new edition Mrs. Eddy wrote two of her students, "I made it a special point ... to so systematize the statement of Science as to compel the scholar to see it is demonstrably true, and can be understood on the basis of proof." Church History document: L08229, Church History department of The Mother Church .
The Discoverer of Christian Science did not write Science and Health from a theoretical basis. While all of its concepts had first come to her as divine revelation, she hadn't begun the book until she had first proved its practicality by healing others through scientific, Christian prayer. Perhaps to emphasize this point, she added to the new edition, "Working out the rules of Science in practice, the author has restored health in cases of both acute and chronic disease, and in their severest forms. Secretions have been changed, the structure has been renewed, shortened limbs have been elongated, cicatrized joints have been made supple, and carious bones have been restored to healthy conditions." Science and Health, 50th ed., 1891, pp. 55-56. See also current edition, p. 162.
