Allison Stewart, Mary Baker Eddy’s publisher, objected to her using this word in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures (see We Knew Mary Baker Eddy, Expanded Edition, Vol. 2, pp. 432–433). Someone had complained to him about this word choice, and he agreed it didn’t make sense.
Mrs. Eddy had written: “The tender word and Christian encouragement of an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and the removal of them, are better than hecatombs of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches, and the doling of arguments, which are but so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science, aflame with divine Love” (p. 367).
Stewart noted that the dictionary defines a hecatomb as “a sacrifice of the slaughter of one hundred cattle or oxen at the same time.” What did that have to do with gushing theories? He recommended another word. Adam Dickey, one of Mrs. Eddy’s secretaries, agreed.
