Science and Health
with Key to The Scriptures
by Mary Baker Eddy
Chapter VII - Physiology

 

Medical errors
175:1
images of disease from taking form in thought, and we
should efface the outlines of disease already formulated in
the minds of mortals.
Novel Diseases
175:4
When there are fewer prescriptions, and less thought is
given to sanitary subjects, there will be better
constitutions and less disease. In old times
who ever heard of dyspepsia, cerebro-spinal meningitis,
hay-fever, and rose-cold?
175:9
What an abuse of natural beauty to say that a rose,
the smile of God, can produce suffering! The joy of its
presence, its beauty and fragrance, should uplift the
thought, and dissuade any sense of fear or fever. It is
profane to fancy that the perfume of clover and the breath
of new-mown hay can cause glandular inflammation,
sneezing, and nasal pangs.
No ancestral dyspepsia
175:16
If a random thought, calling itself dyspepsia, had
tried to tyrannize over our forefathers, it would have
been routed by their independence and in-
dustry. Then people had less time for self‑
ishness, coddling, and sickly after-dinner talk. The ex-
act amount of food the stomach could digest was not
discussed according to Cutter nor referred to sanitary
laws. A man's belief in those days was not so severe
upon the gastric juices. Beaumont's "Medical Experi-
ments" did not govern the digestion.
Pulmonary misbeliefs
175:26
Damp atmosphere and freezing snow empurpled the
plump cheeks of our ancestors, but they never indulged
in the refinement of inflamed bronchial tubes.
They were as innocent as Adam, before he ate
the fruit of false knowledge, of the existence of tubercles
and troches, lungs and lozenges.
Our modern Eves
175:32
"Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise," says
176:1
the English poet, and there is truth in his sentiment. The
action of mortal mind on the body was not so injurious
before inquisitive modern Eves took up the
study of medical works and unmanly Adams
attributed their own downfall and the fate of their off-
spring to the weakness of their wives.
176:7
The primitive custom of taking no thought about
food left the stomach and bowels free to act in obedi-
ence to nature, and gave the gospel a chance to be seen
in its glorious effects upon the body. A ghastly array of
diseases was not paraded before the imagination. There
were fewer books on digestion and more "sermons in
stones, and good in everything." When the mechanism
of the human mind gives place to the divine Mind, self‑
ishness and sin, disease and death, will lose their
foothold.
176:17
Human fear of miasma would load with disease the
air of Eden, and weigh down mankind with superimposed
and conjectural evils. Mortal mind is the worst foe of
the body, while divine Mind is its best friend.
Diseases not to be classified
176:21
Should all cases of organic disease be treated by a
regular practitioner, and the Christian Scientist try
truth only in cases of hysteria, hypochon-
dria, and hallucination? One disease is no
more real than another. All disease is the
result of education, and disease can carry its ill-effects
no farther than mortal mind maps out the way. The
human mind, not matter, is supposed to feel, suffer, en-
joy. Hence decided types of acute disease are quite as
ready to yield to Truth as the less distinct type and chronic
form of disease. Truth handles the most malignant con-
tagion with perfect assurance.
One basis for all sickness
177:1
Human mind produces what is termed organic dis-
ease as certainly as it produces hysteria, and it must re-
linquish all its errors, sicknesses, and sins.
I have demonstrated this beyond all cavil.
The evidence of divine Mind's healing power and abso-
lute control is to me as certain as the evidence of my own
existence.
Mental and physical oneness
177:8
Mortal mind and body are one. Neither exists without
the other, and both must be destroyed by immortal Mind.
Matter, or body, is but a false concept of mor-
tal mind. This so-called mind builds its own
superstructure, of which the material body is
the grosser portion; but from first to last, the body is a
sensuous, human concept.
The effect of names
177:15
In the Scriptural allegory of the material creation,
Adam or error, which represents the erroneous theory
of life and intelligence in matter, had the
naming of all that was material. These names
indicated matter's properties, qualities, and forms. But
a lie, the opposite of Truth, cannot name the qualities and
effects of what is termed matter, and create the so-called
laws of the flesh, nor can a lie hold the preponderance
of power in any direction against God, Spirit and
Truth.
Poison defined mentally
177:25
If a dose of poison is swallowed through mistake, and
the patient dies even though physician and
patient are expecting favorable results, does
human belief, you ask, cause this death? Even
so, and as directly as if the poison had been intentionally
taken.
177:31
In such cases a few persons believe the potion swal-
lowed by the patient to be harmless, but the vast ma-
178:1
jority of mankind, though they know nothing of this par-
ticular case and this special person, believe the arsenic,
the strychnine, or whatever the drug used, to be poi-
sonous, for it is set down as a poison by mortal mind.
Consequently, the result is controlled by the majority of
opinions, not by the infinitesimal minority of opinions in
the sick-chamber.
178:8
Heredity is not a law. The remote cause or belief
of disease is not dangerous because of its priority and
the connection of past mortal thoughts with present.
The predisposing cause and the exciting cause are
mental.
178:13
Perhaps an adult has a deformity produced prior to his
birth by the fright of his mother. When wrested from
human belief and based on Science or the divine Mind, to
which all things are possible, that chronic case is not
difficult to cure.
Animal magnetism destroyed
178:18
Mortal mind, acting from the basis of sensation in
matter, is animal magnetism; but this so-called mind,
from which comes all evil, contradicts itself,
and must finally yield to the eternal Truth, or
the divine Mind, expressed in Science. In pro-
portion to our understanding of Christian Science, we are
freed from the belief of heredity, of mind in matter or ani-
mal magnetism; and we disarm sin of its imaginary power
in proportion to our spiritual understanding of the status
of immortal being.
178:28
Ignorant of the methods and the basis of metaphysical
healing, you may attempt to unite with it hypnotism,
spiritualism, electricity; but none of these methods can
be mingled with metaphysical healing.
178:32
Whoever reaches the understanding of Christian Science
179:1
in its proper signification will perform the sudden cures
of which it is capable; but this can be done only by
taking up the cross and following Christ in the daily
life.
Absent patients
179:5
Science can heal the sick, who are absent from their
healers, as well as those present, since space is no ob-
stacle to Mind. Immortal Mind heals what eye
hath not seen; but the spiritual capacity to ap-
prehend thought and to heal by the Truth-power, is won
only as man is found, not in self-righteousness, but re-
flecting the divine nature.
Horses mistaught
179:12
Every medical method has its advocates. The prefer-
ence of mortal mind for a certain method creates a demand
for that method, and the body then seems to re-
quire such treatment. You can even educate a
healthy horse so far in physiology that he will take cold
without his blanket, whereas the wild animal, left to his
instincts, sniffs the wind with delight. The epizootic is
a humanly evolved ailment, which a wild horse might
never have.
Medical works objectionable
179:21
Treatises on anatomy, physiology, and health, sustained
by what is termed material law, are the pro-
moters of sickness and disease. It should not
be proverbial, that so long as you read medical works you
will be sick.
179:26
The sedulous matron – studying her Jahr with homoe-
opathic pellet and powder in hand, ready to put you
into a sweat, to move the bowels, or to produce sleep –
is unwittingly sowing the seeds of reliance on matter,
and her household may erelong reap the effect of this
mistake.
179:32
Descriptions of disease given by physicians and adver-
180:1
tisements of quackery are both prolific sources of sickness.
As mortal mind is the husbandman of error, it should be
taught to do the body no harm and to uproot its false
sowing.
The invalid's outlook
180:5
The patient sufferer tries to be satisfied when he sees
his would-be healers busy, and his faith in their efforts is
somewhat helpful to them and to himself; but
in Science one must understand the resusci-
tating law of Life. This is the seed within itself bearing
fruit after its kind, spoken of in Genesis.
180:11
Physicians should not deport themselves as if Mind
were non-existent, nor take the ground that all causation
is matter, instead of Mind. Ignorant that the human
mind governs the body, its phenomenon, the invalid may
unwittingly add more fear to the mental reservoir already
overflowing with that emotion.
Wrong and right way
180:17
Doctors should not implant disease in the thoughts of
their patients, as they so frequently do, by declaring dis-
ease to be a fixed fact, even before they go to
work to eradicate the disease through the ma-
terial faith which they inspire. Instead of furnishing
thought with fear, they should try to correct this turbulent
element of mortal mind by the influence of divine Love
which casteth out fear.
180:25
When man is governed by God, the ever-present
Mind who understands all things, man knows that with
God all things are possible. The only way to this
living Truth, which heals the sick, is found in the Science
of divine Mind as taught and demonstrated by Christ
Jesus.
The important decision
180:31
To reduce inflammation, dissolve a tumor, or cure or-
ganic disease, I have found divine Truth more potent than
181:1
all lower remedies. And why not, since Mind, God, is
the source and condition of all existence? Before decid-
ing that the body, matter, is disordered, one
should ask, "Who art thou that repliest to
Spirit? Can matter speak for itself, or does
it hold the issues of life?" Matter, which can neither
suffer nor enjoy, has no partnership with pain and pleas-
ure, but mortal belief has such a partnership.
Manipulation unscientific
181:9
When you manipulate patients, you trust in electricity
and magnetism more than in Truth; and for
that reason, you employ matter rather than
Mind. You weaken or destroy your power when you re-
sort to any except spiritual means.
181:14
It is foolish to declare that you manipulate patients but
that you lay no stress on manipulation. If this be so, why
manipulate? In reality you manipulate because you are
ignorant of the baneful effects of magnetism, or are not
sufficiently spiritual to depend on Spirit. In either case
you must improve your mental condition till you finally
attain the understanding of Christian Science.
Not words but deeds
181:21
If you are too material to love the Science of Mind and
are satisfied with good words instead of effects, if you
adhere to error and are afraid to trust Truth,
the question then recurs, "Adam, where art
thou?" It is unnecessary to resort to aught besides
Mind in order to satisfy the sick that you are doing some-
thing for them, for if they are cured, they generally know
it and are satisfied.
181:29
"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
If you have more faith in drugs than in Truth, this faith
will incline you to the side of matter and error. Any
hypnotic power you may exercise will diminish your
182:1
ability to become a Scientist, and vice versa. The act
of healing the sick through divine Mind alone, of casting
out error with Truth, shows your position as a Christian
Scientist.
Physiology or Spirit
182:5
The demands of God appeal to thought only; but the
claims of mortality, and what are termed laws of nature,
appertain to matter. Which, then, are we to
accept as legitimate and capable of producing
the highest human good? We cannot obey both physi-
ology and Spirit, for one absolutely destroys the other,
and one or the other must be supreme in the affections.
It is impossible to work from two standpoints. If we
attempt it, we shall presently "hold to the one,
and despise the other."
182:15
The hypotheses of mortals are antagonistic to Science
and cannot mix with it. This is clear to those, who heal
the sick on the basis of Science.
No material law
182:18
Mind's government of the body must supersede the so‑
called laws of matter. Obedience to material law pre-
vents full obedience to spiritual law, – the law
which overcomes material conditions and puts
matter under the feet of Mind. Mortals entreat the di-
vine Mind to heal the sick, and forthwith shut out the aid
of Mind by using material means, thus working against
themselves and their prayers and denying man's God‑
given ability to demonstrate Mind's sacred power. Pleas
for drugs and laws of health come from some sad incident,
or else from ignorance of Christian Science and its tran-
scendent power.
182:30
To admit that sickness is a condition over which God
has no control, is to presuppose that omnipotent power
is powerless on some occasions. The law of Christ, or
183:1
Truth, makes all things possible to Spirit; but the so‑
called laws of matter would render Spirit of no avail, and
demand obedience to materialistic codes, thus departing
from the basis of one God, one lawmaker. To suppose
that God constitutes laws of inharmony is a mistake; dis-
cords have no support from nature or divine law, however
much is said to the contrary.
183:8
Can the agriculturist, according to belief, produce a
crop without sowing the seed and awaiting its germina-
tion according to the laws of nature? The answer is no,
and yet the Scriptures inform us that sin, or error, first
caused the condemnation of man to till the ground, and
indicate that obedience to God will remove this necessity.
Truth never made error necessary, nor devised a law to
perpetuate error.
Laws of nature spiritual
183:16
The supposed laws which result in weariness and dis-
ease are not His laws, for the legitimate and only possible
action of Truth is the production of harmony.
Laws of nature are laws of Spirit; but mortals
commonly recognize as law that which hides the power of
Spirit. Divine Mind rightly demands man's entire obe-
dience, affection, and strength. No reservation is made
for any lesser loyalty. Obedience to Truth gives man
power and strength. Submission to error superinduces
loss of power.
Belief and understanding
183:26
Truth casts out all evils and materialistic methods
with the actual spiritual law, – the law which gives
sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, voice
to the dumb, feet to the lame. If Christian
Science dishonors human belief, it honors spir-
itual understanding; and the one Mind only is entitled to
honor.
184:1
The so-called laws of health are simply laws of mortal
belief. The premises being erroneous, the conclusions
are wrong. Truth makes no laws to regulate sickness,
sin, and death, for these are unknown to Truth and should
not be recognized as reality.
184:6
Belief produces the results of belief, and the penal-
ties it affixes last so long as the belief and are insepara-
ble from it. The remedy consists in probing the trouble
to the bottom, in finding and casting out by denial the
error of belief which produces a mortal disorder, never
honoring erroneous belief with the title of law nor yield-
ing obedience to it. Truth, Life, and Love are the only
legitimate and eternal demands on man, and they are
spiritual lawgivers, enforcing obedience through divine
statutes.
Laws of human belief
184:16
Controlled by the divine intelligence, man is harmoni-
ous and eternal. Whatever is governed by a false belief
is discordant and mortal. We say man suffers
from the effects of cold, heat, fatigue. This
is human belief, not the truth of being, for matter cannot
suffer. Mortal mind alone suffers, – not because a law
of matter has been transgressed, but because a law of this
so-called mind has been disobeyed. I have demonstrated
this as a rule of divine Science by destroying the delusion
of suffering from what is termed a fatally broken physical
law.
184:27
A woman, whom I cured of consumption, always
breathed with great difficulty when the wind was from
the east. I sat silently by her side a few moments. Her
breath came gently. The inspirations were deep and nat-
ural. I then requested her to look at the weather-vane.
She looked and saw that it pointed due east. The wind
185:1
had not changed, but her thought of it had and so her diffi-
culty in breathing had gone. The wind had not produced
the difficulty. My metaphysical treatment changed the
action of her belief on the lungs, and she never suffered
again from east winds, but was restored to health.
A so-called mind-cure
185:6
No system of hygiene but Christian Science is purely
mental. Before this book was published, other books
were in circulation, which discussed "mental
medicine" and "mind-cure," operating through
the power of the earth's magnetic currents to regulate life
and health. Such theories and such systems of so-called
mind-cure, which have sprung up, are as material as the
prevailing systems of medicine. They have their birth
in mortal mind, which puts forth a human conception
in the name of Science to match the divine Science of im-
mortal Mind, even as the necromancers of Egypt strove
to emulate the wonders wrought by Moses. Such theories
have no relationship to Christian Science, which rests on
the conception of God as the only Life, substance, and
intelligence, and excludes the human mind as a spiritual
factor in the healing work.
Jesus and hypnotism
185:22
Jesus cast out evil and healed the sick, not only with-
out drugs, but without hypnotism, which is
the reverse of ethical and pathological Truth-
power.
185:26
Erroneous mental practice may seem for a time to bene-
fit the sick, but the recovery is not permanent. This is
because erroneous methods act on and through the ma-
terial stratum of the human mind, called brain, which is
but a mortal consolidation of material mentality and its
suppositional activities.
False stimulus
185:32
A patient under the influence of mortal mind is healed
186:1
only by removing the influence on him of this mind, by
emptying his thought of the false stimulus
and reaction of will-power and filling it with
the divine energies of Truth.
186:5
Christian Science destroys material beliefs through the
understanding of Spirit, and the thoroughness of this work
determines health. Erring human mind-forces can work
only evil under whatever name or pretence they are em-
ployed; for Spirit and matter, good and evil, light and
darkness, cannot mingle.
Evil negative and self-destructive
186:11
Evil is a negation, because it is the absence of truth.
It is nothing, because it is the absence of something. It
is unreal, because it presupposes the absence
of God, the omnipotent and omnipresent.
Every mortal must learn that there is neither
power nor reality in evil.
186:17
Evil is self-assertive. It says: "I am a real entity, over-
mastering good." This falsehood should strip evil of all
pretensions. The only power of evil is to destroy itself. It
can never destroy one iota of good. Every attempt of evil
to destroy good is a failure, and only aids in peremptorily
punishing the evil-doer. If we concede the same reality to
discord as to harmony, discord has as lasting a claim upon
us as has harmony. If evil is as real as good, evil is also as
immortal. If death is as real as Life, immortality is a myth.
If pain is as real as the absence of pain, both must be im-
mortal; and if so, harmony cannot be the law of being.
Ignorant idolatry
186:28
Mortal mind is ignorant of self, or it could never be
self-deceived. If mortal mind knew how to be better, it
would be better. Since it must believe in some-
thing besides itself, it enthrones matter as deity.
The human mind has been an idolater from the beginning,
187:1
having other gods and believing in more than the one
Mind.
187:3
As mortals do not comprehend even mortal existence,
how ignorant must they be of the all-knowing Mind and
of His creations.
187:6
Here you may see how so-called material sense creates
its own forms of thought, gives them material names, and
then worships and fears them. With pagan blindness,
it attributes to some material god or medicine an ability
beyond itself. The beliefs of the human mind rob and
enslave it, and then impute this result to another illusive
personification, named Satan.
Action of mortal mind
187:13
The valves of the heart, opening and closing for the pas-
sage of the blood, obey the mandate of mor-
tal mind as directly as does the hand, ad-
mittedly moved by the will. Anatomy allows the mental
cause of the latter action, but not of the former.
187:18
We say, "My hand hath done it." What is this my but
mortal mind, the cause of all materialistic action? All
voluntary, as well as miscalled involuntary, action of the
mortal body is governed by this so-called mind, not by
matter. There is no involuntary action. The divine Mind
includes all action and volition, and man in Science is gov-
erned by this Mind. The human mind tries to classify
action as voluntary and involuntary, and suffers from the
attempt.
Death and the body
187:27
If you take away this erring mind, the mortal material
body loses all appearance of life or action, and this so‑
called mind then calls itself dead; but the hu-
man mind still holds in belief a body, through
which it acts and which appears to the human mind to
live, – a body like the one it had before death. This body
188:1
is put off only as the mortal, erring mind yields to God,
immortal Mind, and man is found in His image.
Embryonic sinful thoughts
188:3
What is termed disease does not exist. It is neither
mind nor matter. The belief of sin, which has grown
terrible in strength and influence, is an uncon-
scious error in the beginning, – an embryonic
thought without motive; but afterwards it
governs the so-called man. Passion, depraved appetites,
dishonesty, envy, hatred, revenge ripen into action, only to
pass from shame and woe to their final punishment.
Disease a dream
188:11
Mortal existence is a dream of pain and pleasure in
matter, a dream of sin, sickness, and death; and it is like
the dream we have in sleep, in which every one
recognizes his condition to be wholly a state of
mind. In both the waking, and the sleeping dream, the
dreamer thinks that his body is material and the suffering
is in that body.
188:18
The smile of the sleeper indicates the sensation pro-
duced physically by the pleasure of a dream. In the
same way pain and pleasure, sickness and care, are
traced upon mortals by unmistakable signs.
188:22
Sickness is a growth of error, springing from mortal
ignorance or fear. Error rehearses error. What causes
disease cannot cure it. The soil of disease is mortal
mind, and you have an abundant or scanty crop of disease,
according to the seedlings of fear. Sin and the fear of
disease must be uprooted and cast out.
Sense yields to understanding
188:28
When darkness comes over the earth, the physical
senses have no immediate evidence of a sun.
The human eye knows not where the orb of
day is, nor if it exists. Astronomy gives the
desired information regarding the sun. The human or
189:1
material senses yield to the authority of this science, and
they are willing to leave with astronomy the explanation of
the sun's influence over the earth. If the eyes see no sun
for a week, we still believe that there is solar light and
heat. Science (in this instance named natural) raises
the human thought above the cruder theories of the
human mind, and casts out a fear.
189:8
In like manner mortals should no more deny the power
of Christian Science to establish harmony and to explain
the effect of mortal mind on the body, though the cause
be unseen, than they should deny the existence of the sun-
light when the orb of day disappears, or doubt that the sun
will reappear. The sins of others should not make good
men suffer.
Ascending the scale
189:15
We call the body material; but it is as truly mortal
mind, according to its degree, as is the material brain
which is supposed to furnish the evidence
of all mortal thought or things. The human
mortal mind, by an inevitable perversion, makes all
things start from the lowest instead of from the highest
mortal thought. The reverse is the case with all the
formations of the immortal divine Mind. They proceed
from the divine source; and so, in tracing them, we con-
stantly ascend in infinite being.
Human reproduction
189:25
From mortal mind comes the reproduction of the
species, – first the belief of inanimate, and then of ani-
mate matter. According to mortal thought,
the development of embryonic mortal mind
commences in the lower, basal portion of the brain, and
goes on in an ascending scale by evolution, keeping always
in the direct line of matter, for matter is the subjective
condition of mortal mind.
190:1
Next we have the formation of so-called embryonic
mortal mind, afterwards mortal men or mortals, – all this
while matter is a belief, ignorant of itself, ignorant of what
it is supposed to produce. The mortal says that an inani-
mate unconscious seedling is producing mortals, both body
and mind; and yet neither a mortal mind nor the immortal
Mind is found in brain or elsewhere in matter or in mortals.
Human stature
190:8
This embryonic and materialistic human belief called
mortal man in turn fills itself with thoughts
of pain and pleasure, of life and death, and
arranges itself into five so-called senses, which presently
measure mind by the size of a brain and the bulk of a
body, called man.
Human frailty
190:14
Human birth, growth, maturity, and decay are as the
grass springing from the soil with beautiful green blades,
afterwards to wither and return to its native
nothingness. This mortal seeming is temporal;
it never merges into immortal being, but finally disap-
pears, and immortal man, spiritual and eternal, is found
to be the real man.
The Hebrew bard, swayed by mortal thoughts, thus
swept his lyre with saddening strains on human existence:
190:23
As for man, his days are as grass:
As a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone;
And the place thereof shall know it no more.
190:27
When hope rose higher in the human heart, he sang:
190:28
As for me, I will behold Thy face in righteousness:
I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with Thy likeness.
. . . . .
For with Thee is the fountain of life;
In Thy light shall we see light.
191:1
The brain can give no idea of God's man. It can take
no cognizance of Mind. Matter is not the organ of infi-
nite Mind.
191:4
As mortals give up the delusion that there is more than
one Mind, more than one God, man in God's likeness will
appear, and this eternal man will include in that likeness
no material element.
The immortal birth
191:8
As a material, theoretical life-basis is found to be a
misapprehension of existence, the spiritual and divine
Principle of man dawns upon human thought,
and leads it to "where the young child was,"
– even to the birth of a new-old idea, to the spiritual
sense of being and of what Life includes. Thus the whole
earth will be transformed by Truth on its pinions of light,
chasing away the darkness of error.
Spiritual freedom
191:16
The human thought must free itself from self-imposed
materiality and bondage. It should no longer
ask of the head, heart, or lungs: What are
man's prospects for life? Mind is not helpless. Intelli-
gence is not mute before non-intelligence.
191:21
By its own volition, not a blade of grass springs up, not
a spray buds within the vale, not a leaf unfolds its fair
outlines, not a flower starts from its cloistered cell.
191:24
The Science of being reveals man and immortality as
based on Spirit. Physical sense defines mortal man as
based on matter, and from this premise infers the mor-
tality of the body.
No physical affinity
191:28
The illusive senses may fancy affinities with their op-
posites; but in Christian Science, Truth never mingles
with error. Mind has no affinity with matter,
and therefore Truth is able to cast out the ills
of the flesh. Mind, God, sends forth the aroma of Spirit,
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