Mark Twain on Christian Science

Mark Twain has fallen among the Christian Scientists, and relates his experiences in the October number of The Cosmopolitan. Last summer, on his way back to Vienna from the Appetite Cure in the mountains, he fell over a cliff and “broke some arms and legs and one thing and another.” He was taken to a neighbouring village, where there was no surgeon. There happened, however, to be a lady from Boston, who was a Christian Science doctor, and could cure anything. So she was sent for. But the shades of night were falling, and she could not conveniently come; she sent word, however, that it did not in the least matter, as she would apply “absent treatment” and call in the morning. In the meantime the sufferer was bidden to make himself tranquil and comfortable, and remember there was nothing the matter with him. The patient was in some doubt whether the diagnosis had been made with sufficient care, but he tried to make himself believe that his pain was a delusion. Morning brought the Christian Scientist, who declined even to listen to the recital of his symptoms, assuring him that there is no such thing as feeling, and that nothing exists but mind, which cannot feel pain. “You should never,” said she, “allow yourself to speak of how you feel, nor permit others to ask you how you are feeling; you should never concede that you are ill; nor permit others to talk about disease, or pain, or death, or similar non-existences in your presence. Such talk only encourages the mind to continue its empty imaginings.” On the unfortunate sufferer pleading that he was full of imaginary tortures, which could not make him more uncomfortable if they were real, and asking what he could do to get rid of them, he was told that there was no occasion to get rid of them since they did not exist, but were mere illusions propagated by matter which itself had no existence. (BMJ 1899;ii:1123)