sin" (Science and Health, p. 411). Therefore Dr. Saleeby's explanation was not exact but this does not affect the gist of what he said.

Dr. Richard C. Cabot of Boston, professor of medicine in Harvard University, writing for the Twentieth Century Magazine in January, 1912, said: "That Christian Science has done and is doing a vast deal of good, not only as a religion, but as a health restorer and a protest against the shortsighted naturalism of the doctors, we are firmly convinced. Its affirmations are helpful to thousands."

...

...

"There can be no doubt that the influence of the mind upon the physical condition of the body is very powerful. . . . Just exactly to what extent the mental condition affects the body no one can accurately and definitely say. One person may believe it of far greater efficacy than another, but surely it cannot be said that it is a fraud for one person to contend that the mind has an effect upon the body and its physical condition greater than even a vast majority of intelligent people might be willing to admit or believe. Even intelligent people may, and indeed do, differ among themselves as to the extent of this mental effect. . . . The claim of the ability to cure may be vastly greater than most men would be ready to admit, and yet those who might deny the existence or virtue of the remedy would only differ in opinion from those who assert it. . . . As the effectiveness of almost any particular method of treatment of disease is, to a more or less extent, a fruitful source of difference of opinion, even though the great majority may be of one way of thinking, the efficacy of any special method is certainly not a matter for the decision of the Postmaster General within these statutes relative to fraud." (From the opinion of the United States Supreme Court in American School of Magnetic Healing vs. McAnnulty, 187 U. S. Reports 94.) (For the difference between magnetic healing and Christian Science, see pp. 16 and 66 of this pamphlet.)

SECTION III

WHEREVER the people have gained the right of self-government, they have been obliged continually to defend this right against encroachments. The time was when this vigilance was required only or mainly toward enemies from abroad. Today the people who would be free, are awakening to the fact that the greater dangers are within their own borders. They are beginning to perceive that the just liberties of the people are threatened chiefly by too much government and by the perversion of government. Hence, today as never before, the tendency and effect of laws are being scrutinized with a view to reducing the detriments and increasing the benefits of human government.

Health is a subject in regard to which legislators may do certain things wisely and thus promote health and the general welfare, or they may attempt too much and thereby do more harm than good, not only to the injury of health, but with harmful effect on other subjects of equal importance. It should be noticed, moreover, that the general desire for the government to do only what is wise and right concerning health is peculiarly liable to be frustrated, for there is a numerous class which has built up a complex and far-reaching organization for the very purpose of procuring and controlling governmental action on this subject. Therefore the rights of the people in relation to health, more than with respect to most subjects, need to be vigilantly guarded against subtle encroachments.

Among the reasons which lately moved the American people to put their government in the hands of President Wilson and his party, none was so prominent as the conviction that cer

tain revenue laws were having a pernicious effect on social and industrial prosperity. One of the first official acts of the President was the calling of a special session of Congress to consider the conditions to be remedied and the constructive policy that should guide remedial action. The message which he delivered at the opening of that special session was largely devoted to this subject. The pith of it was in these sentences:

"Consciously or unconsciously, we have built up a set of privileges and exemptions from competition behind which it was easy by any, even the crudest, forms of combination to organize monopoly, until at last nothing is normal, nothing is obliged to stand the test of efficiency and economy in our world of big business, but everything thrives by concerted arrangement. Only new principles of action will save us from a final crystalization of monopoly and a complete loss of the influences that quicken enterprise and keep independent energy alive. It is plain what those principles must be. We must abolish everything that bears even the semblance of privilege, or of any kind of artificial advantage, and put our business men and producers under the stimulation of a constant necessity to be efficient, economical, and enterprising, masters of competitive supremacy, better workers and merchants than any in the world."

It is to be observed that the social and economic principle thus defined by President Wilson, is of wider scope than the special application of it which he then had occasion to make. If true and applicable to the promotion of efficiency in manufacturing and commerce, it is no less true and equally applicable to other vocations wherein efficiency counts for success. If calculated to stimulate the energy and enterprise of those who serve the community by means of production and distribution, it is likewise designed to quicken the efforts of those who work in behalf of health. If exclusive privilege or artificial advantage is unwholesome in the world of business, it is also against public policy in the domain that includes the art or science of dealing with disease. The knowledge of how to prevent or cure disease is typically a field wherein the community, collectively and individually, have the right to

demand the benefits which will result from normal, free, and active development.

The soundness, as a general proposition, of the doctrine expressed by the President is not denied by any political party, and the contentions against its application to particular industries or vocations have no relation to the position occupied by the medical profession. Under the light of unprejudiced analysis, nine tenths of the reasons given for conferring exclusive privileges or artificial advantages upon "regular" physicians, merely voice a preference for their system and insist upon the right to choose it. The right to prefer and to choose another system is equally entitled to preservation, not only as an individual right but because it cannot be denied or abridged without creating a condition adverse to the general welfare.

Now that the world is beginning to compare the sum total of disease with the amount of it that ought to be prevented or cured, citizens and statesmen should open their eyes to the fact, and the meaning of the fact, that artificial advantages already have been conferred upon one school of therapeutics in many states and countries, and that this school is making a determined effort to obtain additional privileges. In several of these United States the members of the preferred school already have the sole right to charge for their services, and nearly everywhere the people have "consciously or unconsciously" clothed them with some form of legal privilege or sanction. Therefore the people of all parties and their representatives in all law-making bodies would do well to scrutinize the laws and bills that have been enacted, or are proposed, in the name of health.

"A natural monopoly is based on the admitted inequality of mankind; it is the inevitable expression of superiority in the open field of competition. . . . This is the only kind of monopoly that is legal, and whose position is likely to be permanent.

“An artificial monopoly is a control of supply due to exceptional privileges, such as special legislation, patent or copyright laws; or to undue influence, duress, unfair discriminations, unjust treatment, and the like. That is, the kind of monopoly which has excited universal disapprobation is the one founded on unjust suppression of competition and forcible ways of driving out competitors. Recent trust decisions have been based on that claim.

"Whatever objections exist to monopoly have peculiar urgency against these forms of artificial monopoly; although it must be remembered that certain kinds even of artificial monopoly may be justified on the ground of some desirability to the state, such as a business artificially created by a patent, or a copyright. But, as a whole, a monopoly due to special privilege, or to unfair or forcible suppression of competition, cannot for a moment hope for support from a fair-minded people like ours." (From an article in the Atlantic Monthly by Prof. J. Laurence Laughlin, professor of political economy at Chicago University.)