Chapter 6: 'Science and Health with Key to The Scriptures' by Mary Baker Eddy

Chapter VI - Science, Theology, Medicine

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hurt, so don't think you are." Presently the child forgets

all about the accident, and is at play.

Drug-power mental

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When the sick recover by the use of drugs, it is the law

of a general belief, culminating in individual faith, which

heals; and according to this faith will the effect

be. Even when you take away the individual

confidence in the drug, you have not yet divorced the drug

from the general faith. The chemist, the botanist, the

druggist, the doctor, and the nurse equip the medicine

with their faith, and the beliefs which are in the majority

rule. When the general belief endorses the inanimate

drug as doing this or that, individual dissent or faith, un-

less it rests on Science, is but a belief held by a minority,

and such a belief is governed by the majority.

Belief in physics

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The universal belief in physics weighs against the high

and mighty truths of Christian metaphysics. This errone-

ous general belief, which sustains medicine and

produces all medical results, works against

Christian Science; and the percentage of power on the

side of this Science must mightily outweigh the power of

popular belief in order to heal a single case of disease. The

human mind acts more powerfully to offset the discords

of matter and the ills of flesh, in proportion as it puts less

weight into the material or fleshly scale and more weight

into the spiritual scale. Homoeopathy diminishes the

drug, but the potency of the medicine increases as the

drug disappears.

Nature of drugs

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Vegetarianism, homoeopathy, and hydropathy have

diminished drugging; but if drugs are an antidote to

disease, why lessen the antidote? If drugs

are good things, is it safe to say that the

less in quantity you have of them the better? If drugs

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possess intrinsic virtues or intelligent curative qualities,

these qualities must be mental. Who named drugs, and

what made them good or bad for mortals, beneficial or

injurious?

Dropsy cured without drugs

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A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into

my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been

employed, and yet, as she lay in her bed, the

patient looked like a barrel. I prescribed

the fourth attenuation of Argentum nitratum with occa-

sional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She im-

proved perceptibly. Believing then somewhat in the

ordinary theories of medical practice, and learning that

her former physician had prescribed these remedies, I

began to fear an aggravation of symptoms from their

prolonged use, and told the patient so; but she was

unwilling to give up the medicine while she was re-

covering. It then occurred to me to give her un-

medicated pellets and watch the result. I did so, and

she continued to gain. Finally she said that she would

give up her medicine for one day, and risk the

effects. After trying this, she informed me that she

could get along two days without globules; but on

the third day she again suffered, and was relieved by

taking them. She went on in this way, taking the

unmedicated pellets, – and receiving occasional visits

from me, – but employing no other means, and she was

cured.

A stately advance

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Metaphysics, as taught in Christian Science, is the

next stately step beyond homoeopathy. In metaphysics,

matter disappears from the remedy entirely,

and Mind takes its rightful and supreme

place. Homoeopathy takes mental symptoms largely