Appletons' Popular Science Monthly, October 1899. Various

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ