almost without challenge from the local authorities, and which has
grown upon the passive or indifferent attitude of the public, sweeping
and immediate reforms can be instituted only at the cost of serious
temporary injury to certain charitable work of a necessary character.
I believe that the best results will be obtained if the city
authorities first decide clearly the relations to be established
between the city treasury and private charitable institutions, and
then move toward that end by gradually conforming the appropriations
in the budget to that idea, in such a manner that progress shall be
made as rapidly as may be consistent with the desire to avoid
crippling excellent charities which have been led to depend for many
years upon public assistance. By this, of course, I do not mean to
suggest that we should approach the subject with excessive timidity,
for the evils that exist have assumed such proportions that a more or
less severe use of the pruning knife must be made in dealing with
appropriations, else the effect will be scarcely perceptible. I am
convinced that ultimately the cause of charity will benefit rather
than suffer from this course, for it is a serious objection to the
whole subsidy system that it tends to dry up the sources of private
benevolence.
In making up the budget for 1900 I shall urge my associates in the
Board of Estimate to agree with me to limit the appropriations for
charity to actual relief work accomplished. The giving of public money
in lump sums to private societies and institutions for miscellaneous
charitable work, of which there is no public or official inspection,
should be discontinued at once. It has been the practice for some
years past, both in Brooklyn and New York, to donate annually lump
sums of money to such organizations. In New York these amounts have
been for the most part comparatively small, and principally derived
from the Theatrical and Concert-License Fund. In Brooklyn the amounts
have been larger, and were obtained originally from the Excise Fund,
and later directly from the budget. This practice should be wholly
discontinued. The charter itself contains stringent prohibitions
against the distribution of outdoor relief by the Department of Public
Charities, and the spirit of these provisions would certainly seem to
disfavor accomplishing the same result in an indirect manner. Many of
these recipients of public funds devote themselves exclusively to
outdoor relief, and an examination of the purposes of some of these
organizations shows that, however proper these may be as the result of
private benevolence, they are extremely improper objects of the public
bounty. The immediate and permanent discontinuance of appropriations
to all such societies and institutions will correct one of the gravest
abuses of the present system. If the persons conducting these
miscellaneous charities are really sincere, and believe that they are
doing good, they can readily obtain from private sources the funds
necessary to carry on the work.
I shall urge that all appropriations to institutions of every kind not
controlled by the city be limited to per-capita payment for the
support of public charges, and that a system of thorough inspection be
at once established to ascertain if present and future inmates are
really persons entitled to maintenance at public expense. In addition
to this precaution, the comptroller should have full power to withhold
payments to any institution after an appropriation has been made if in
his judgment, after examination, the money has not been earned. The
payment of city money to dispensaries should be discontinued, except
in special cases where the work done is clearly a proper charge
against the public treasury. No money should be paid for the treatment
of dependent persons in any private hospital while there is unoccupied
room in the city hospitals.
The city maintains its own hospitals, while at the same time
subsidizing private institutions which compete with them. During the
last few years great improvements have been made in the city
hospitals, but their condition is still capable of considerable
further improvement. While sometimes overcrowded, it frequently
happens that the city hospitals are not filled to the limits of their
capacity, and it would seem as though the city should not deal with
private hospitals except as subsidiary aids or adjuncts to the public
institutions. It stands to reason that so long as there are vacant
beds in the city hospitals and the city is at the same time
subsidizing private hospitals at a cost greater than the expense of
caring for patients in its own institutions, a wrong is being done to
the taxpayers. If private hospitals are to receive public assistance
at all, payments should be made only at some uniform rate,
approximately the same as the cost per capita of maintenance in the
public institutions.
The gravest problem of public charity is the support and training of
dependent children, because that has to do with the making of future
citizens of the republic as well as the relief of immediate suffering.
This work is entirely in the hands of private societies and
institutions. The rearing of large numbers of children in either
private or public institutions is in itself an evil--a necessary
evil--and likely to continue as long as there is extreme poverty, but
still an evil, and not to be fostered by subventions of public money
in unnecessary cases, when parents are really able to provide for
their support.
To build, equip, and maintain public buildings for the care of
dependent children seems to me entirely impracticable. Regardless of
the matter of expense, which would be enormous, all the disadvantages
of the "institutional system" would continue, and it is not likely
that public employees could be obtained who would rear children as
economically, as efficaciously, or with the same devotion and
self-denial as is the case with the religious orders and associations
now performing this work--in many respects so successfully. The care
of these children by direct governmental agencies being therefore
practically impossible, in the city of New York at least, and it being
recognized that the present system is likely to continue for many
years, if not permanently, the most should be made of it. With the
religious training of children the city has nothing to do. Their moral
training may also be left safely to those now responsible therefor. On
the other hand, the State is vitally concerned with their mental and
physical development, and visitation and control for the purpose of
maintaining a proper standard in these respects is essential. This
form of public charity, like many others, has been abused, and many
children are now supported in institutions who probably should not be
there. For the rearing of a child into a possible useful man or woman
a poor home is better than a good institution, and it is the duty of
the city authorities to extend the work of inspection and
investigation of such cases until they make it impossible for fraud in
the commitment and retention of children to escape detection.
The reduction and regulation of appropriations as outlined can not be
classed as a radical reform, and will work no hardship upon any
dependent person who is a proper charge upon the city. The saving to
the taxpayers, if the plan I have suggested is adopted, will
approximate one million dollars in 1900, and a steady reduction of
expenditures for charitable work should continue for several years to
come.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE FROM A PHYSICIAN'S POINT OF VIEW.
BY JOHN B. HUBER, A. M., M. D.
Christian science is stated to be a religious system which was
"discovered," in 1866, by Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, a lady now living
in the vicinity of Boston, Mass., who has passed her eightieth year,
and who is called by her followers the "Mother of the Christian
Science Church," or "Mother Mary." Mrs. Eddy has formulated Christian
Science in a book entitled Science and Health, with Key to the
Scriptures, in which book are to be found the principles upon which
this system rests. We are told that to him who studies this book
reverently and conscientiously there will be revealed "the Truth," for
which man has been searching without avail since the beginning of his
existence; that the faithful student will find in Christian Science an
infallible guide for the conduct of life in all its phases; and that
the Christian Scientist has the power to heal without any therapeutic
means, other than that of the influence of mind upon mind, all
imaginable ills, surgical or medical, which afflict mankind and the
lower animals. Mrs. Eddy tells us that she and her followers have had
this power transmitted to them from Jesus Christ, and that they are
able to heal the sick and to perform miracles as He is said to have
done. In Science and Health all religious systems other than
"Christian Science" are held to have been erroneous and pernicious in
their influence upon mankind, and the practice of medicine, as it is
taught in the medical colleges, is considered to be hurtful rather
than helpful to humanity, and to have increased disease rather than
ameliorated human suffering.
It is said that in 1898 there were in the Greater City of New York
three thousand Christian Scientists and seven Christian Science
churches. The whole number of Christian Scientists is declared to be
one million, of whom one hundred thousand, it is said, are engaged in
the business of "healing," and are called "healers." The movement has
been and is spreading day by day.
In religious matters Christian Science has divided many homes, and has
destroyed not a few through the mischief produced by its propaganda.
It is claimed that Christian Science has cured many who have not been
benefited by the efforts of regular practitioners of medicine. On the
other hand, many have died during the exclusive ministrations of
Christian Scientists. Moreover, Christian Science considers itself
entitled to disregard such sanitary laws, including those concerning
infectious diseases, as have been found effectual to preserve intact
the general health of communities and peoples.
Christian Science, then, is a cult unusually powerful and far reaching
in its influence, and it is therefore entitled to and should invite
correspondingly careful investigation of all its various aspects.
I have been interested in Christian Science from the view-point of the
medical man, and I have felt quite unaffected, for the reason which I
shall presently give, by Mrs. Eddy's stricture that "a person's
ignorance of Christian Science is a sufficient reason for his silence
on the subject." The system of medicine, as it is taught in the great
medical colleges of to-day, is an epitome of the accumulated study and
experience of mankind from the time human beings first became ill up
to the present day. All systems of cure, or of alleged cure, have been
examined by men who have made it the work of their lives to treat the
sick. Whatever has been found curative has been retained, and
unsubstantiated claims to cure have been discarded; so that the
regular degree of doctor of medicine states that its recipient has
acquired a knowledge of the system of treating disease which is a
crystallization of the world's best medical thought, study, and
experience.
As the possessor of such a degree, I have been engaged during several
months in an investigation of the cures which Christian-Science
healers are said to have accomplished.
Before beginning this work I reflected that mental suggestion, or the
influence of the mind of the physician upon that of the patient, is a
potent factor in the treatment of such diseases as are not
characterized by permanent pathological changes in the tissues, and I
remembered that when judiciously influenced by the physician's mind,
the mind of the patient can affect his body favorably both in
functional disorders and in disorders which may result from nervous
aberration--such as hysteria in all its protean forms, the purely
subjective, as headache and hyperæsthesia, and also those exhibiting
objective manifestations, as hysterical dislocations and paralyses.
I knew that medical men, in their own unadvertised work, employ
mental suggestion as a therapeutic means, rely upon it as a part of
their armamentarium, and use it in appropriate cases, either alone or
combined with other means of cure, as electricity, hydrotherapy, and
drugs--which last, despite Mrs. Eddy's foolish denunciation, are quite
as much entitled to be considered divinely appointed therapeutic
agents as is mental suggestion.
What I did want especially to discover was whether the Christian
Scientist could cure such diseases as are considered by the medical
man to be incurable--as cancer, locomotor ataxia, or advanced
phthisis--and also what were the results of their treatment of typhoid
fever, pneumonia, diphtheria, malaria, etc. And I wanted also to
investigate the claims of Christian Science concerning the alleged
cure of surgical conditions, such as necrosis or hæmorrhage from
severed arteries, by no other means than the sole exercise of thought.
If the Christian Scientist could have healed in such cases, I for my
part would have declared him a worker of miracles. Therefore I
searched diligently for such cases.
In the beginning I had the honor to meet Mrs. Stetson, the "pastor,"
or the "first reader," of the "First Church of Christ, Scientist," at
143 West Forty-eighth Street, New York city. I had prepared a number
of questions concerning Christian Science which I wished to ask Mrs.
Stetson. She preferred, however, not to answer them herself, but told
me that she would be pleased to forward them to Mrs. Eddy. I then
wrote out these questions and put them, together with a letter to Mrs.
Eddy, very respectfully requesting her consideration of them, in Mrs.
Stetson's hands. Mrs. Stetson then very kindly forwarded them to Mrs.
Eddy. Among the questions which I asked were the following:
Is the treatment of the sick a part of Christian Science?
Upon what principles is the Christian Scientist's method of treatment
founded?
How do you define health?
How do you define disease?
When a patient presents himself to you, do you inquire concerning the
causes of his illness?
Do you investigate symptoms? (Symptoms, I stated, are the signs of
disease.)
Do you make diagnoses? (A diagnosis, I stated, is a consideration of
symptoms by which one disease is distinguished from another or
others.)
In what does your treatment consist?
In treating a patient, do you administer any material substance, and
require that it be taken into the body as one would food?
Do you consider cleanliness, good order, and the attainment of
æsthetic effects in a patient's environment a part of treatment?
Do you take any steps to isolate the patient sick of an infectious
disease, or to protect those about the patient from the disease?
Do you treat structural diseases, as cancer or locomotor ataxia? Do
you consider you have cured such diseases? If so, how do you know you
were treating a structural disease, such as cancer or locomotor
ataxia?
Would you treat cases of fracture of bones or violent injury? If so,
what would you do in such cases?
Will you give me the names of patients whom you have treated, with
permission to inquire concerning their illnesses, your treatment of
them, and the effects of your treatment upon them--upon the distinct
understanding that their names are not to be published?
Do you deny the existence of matter? In Science and Health it is
stated that "all is mind, there is no matter." How is it possible, in
treating disease, for you to separate mind from matter?
Animals sometimes become sick; could they be cured by
Christian-Science methods?
From Mrs. Eddy I received no answer nor any communication whatever.
But, some time afterward, Mrs. Stetson informed me that the matter had
been turned over to Judge Septimus J. Hanna, Mrs. Eddy's "counsel."
Just here I reflected how Jesus Christ, whose representative Mrs. Eddy
declares herself to be, would have acted under those circumstances,
and I wondered how he would have appeared in this odd atmosphere
hedged about by "counsel" and other legal paraphernalia. Presently
thereafter I had the honor to receive a note from Mrs. Stetson,
appointing a time for me to call. When I did this, Mrs. Stetson gave
me a letter which had been sent her by Judge Hanna, and which she
permitted me to use as I should see fit. This is the letter:
"BOSTON, MASS., _November 18, 1898._
"_Editorial Office of The Christian Science Journal, Mrs. A. E.
Stetson, New York City_:
"DEAR SISTER: Mr. Metcalf handed me the questions submitted by
Dr. Huber. I have also received and carefully read your letters.
As I think Mr. Metcalf has informed you, this matter was referred
to me from Concord. I have been so very busy that I have not had
time to give this matter the thorough attention it needs until
now.
"I have carefully read and considered the entire paper. My
conclusion is that it will be wholly impractical--indeed, I may
say impossible--to answer these questions in such a manner as to
make an entire paper fit for publication in a medical journal,
or in any other magazine or periodical. The questions submitted
touch the entire subject of Christian Science, both in its
theology and therapeutics. These questions can be answered only
in one way so that they can be understood, and that is by just
such study of the Bible and Science and Health with Key to the
Scriptures as the earnest, sincere Christian Scientists are
giving them every day of their lives, and have been for years.
When we think of the helps provided by our leader, the Rev. Mary
Baker Eddy, for her own students in arriving at a correct
interpretation and putting in practice the teachings of these
text-books, such as the publications established by her, the
Bible Lessons made up of selections from the Bible and our
text-book, constituting the sermons for our service in all the
Christian-Science churches; the many auxiliaries she has
published and is publishing in further illucidation of the
text-books--when we stop to consider that even those of her
students who may be considered the most advanced are as yet
infants in the understanding and ability to demonstrate the truth
contained in these text-books, can we not easily see, and will
not your friend the doctor at a glance see, the utter futility of
attempting to answer his questions so as to make the answers
intelligible to the medical profession and their readers? I
admire greatly the kindly spirit manifested by the doctor and
those for whom he is acting,[2] and the entire fairness, from
their standpoint, of the questions submitted, but this does not
relieve the difficulty of the situation. I therefore return the
doctor's questions, with many thanks in behalf of our leader and
the cause for the impartial spirit manifested.
"Yours in Truth,
"S. J. HANNA."
[Footnote 2: I had arranged with the editor of the New York
Medical News for the publication in that journal of a paper on
Christian Science, and had so informed Mrs. Stetson.]
I wrote Judge Hanna a note of thanks, and in reply received a letter
in which he stated: "I should have been very glad if I could have seen
my way clear to answer your questions in such a way as could have been
intelligible and satisfactory. But it was impossible for me to do so."
Now, all this seems to me much worse than preposterous. I fail utterly
to see why he who asks the question, "Do you isolate a patient
suffering from an infectious disease?" would have to spend months or
years in Nirvana-like abstraction before he would be able to
appreciate an answer to it. No doubt Judge Hanna, who is evidently a
lawyer, could, if he chose, tell the reason why.
To all who had been "healed in Christian Science" whom I met I stated
plainly my object--to investigate how they had been "healed." I stated
that my findings would be published, but that no names would be
printed. The cases were to be numbered. I stated that I did not wish
to examine nervous manifestations of a hysterical sort or purely
functional disorders. I wished to see cases of disease in which the
structure of the organs was likely to be or to have been involved,
such as Bright's disease or cancer. Having, to begin with, explained
this fully, I took the subject's history and ascertained whenever
possible the name of any physician who may have treated the patient
before he or she went "into Christian Science." Almost all these
physicians who live in New York I visited; to the others residing in
New York and to those living out of town I wrote, the form of the
letter being generally as follows:
"DEAR DOCTOR: I am investigating Christian Science from the
physician's view-point, and am examining a number of people, in
the hope of presenting some twenty histories. These histories
would, I think, be valuable only in so far as they are
scientifically accurate. Therefore, whenever possible, I request
a medical account from any physician who may formerly have been
in attendance. I have now under observation the case of Mr.
X----, who believes himself to have been cured 'in Christian
Science.' I would thank you very kindly if you would send me
whatever medical information you can concerning this case, with
records of examinations if possible. The cases will be numbered,
not named."
In each case, having set down the subject's statements and the
physician's statement, I recorded my own observations of the subject's
condition.
I examined in succession _and without exception_ the case of every
willing Christian Scientist up to the number of twenty.[3] All these
cases were of their own choosing; no doubt, then, they would be
considered to be among their "good" cases. Their "failures" I had no
opportunity to examine. There were many others who refused to testify,
no doubt justifiably. Others refused for reasons not easily
comprehended, considering the fact that these people hold weekly
"experience meetings," in which they "rejoice to testify to the power
of Christian Science." It is difficult to see, therefore, why such
cases should not invite scientific investigation.
[Footnote 3: These medical histories are a part of my serial
paper in the New York Medical News of January 28, 1899, _et
seq._]
I could find in all these twenty cases no "cure" that would have
occasioned the medical man the slightest surprise. What did surprise
me was the vast disproportion between the results they exhibited and
the claims made by Christian-Science healers. One of these cases may
be cited as an example of the loose generalization upon which many of
the claims of these healers rest. A lady stated that she had had
pneumonia. I asked how she knew she had had pneumonia. She declared
she knew, because her nurse "could tell at a glance she had
pneumonia." No medical examination had been made. I asked what
symptoms she had had--how she had suffered. She told me she had
purposely forgotten--she had tried to dismiss from her mind all
recollection of this distressing illness. Well, this is no doubt
commendable enough; but how do we know, then, if she really had
pneumonia, or anything more than an ordinary cold?
I heard during my investigation of cases of yellow fever, phthisis,
cancer, and locomotor ataxia which had been "healed in Christian
Science." But truth compels the statement that my efforts to examine
these cases were defeated by the cheapest sort of subterfuge and
elusion. To be explicit: On November 2, 1898, a man arose in an
"experience meeting" which I attended and stated that he had been one
of a party of twelve who, while in Central America, contracted yellow
fever, he having suffered with the rest. All took medicine but
himself; instead, he read Science and Health. Among his companions
seven died; he recovered completely. Several days later I called at
the church and asked for the name and address of this gentleman, and
twice, on this and a subsequent visit, the clerk promised to send me
his address. Not having received it, I called a third time, on
November 21st. The clerk told me he could not find this eel-like
specimen, and could not get his address. This man was, however, a
member of that church, and had, on the evening I was present, a number
of acquaintances in the congregation.