Eddy's Philosophies

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'In less than three weeks from the time of us turning to Christian Science treatment, Kristen's burn was completely covered with fresh skin. There was no need for a bandage any more, and the visible signs of the burn were fading. Kristen was back in her Kindergarten class shortly thereafter.

Christian Science treatment was continued and she now walks and runs normally So speaks another happy customer of the Christian Science approach. Yet Kristen's burn would no doubt have healed substantially after the space of three weeks given no treatment whatsoever.

As Disraeli once said, 'Time is the great physician'. Note we are told that this 'three weeks' is only the three weeks since the Christian Science treatment began, not since the burn was incurred. One has to ask precisely what would constitute failure for Christian Science treatment in the light of this.

We should bear in mind that 80 to 90 per cent of illnesses recover under any treatment or with absolutely no treatment. Medical training and registration were still in a rudimentary state in Eddy's time, so her self-awarded title of 'doctor' would have been honorary. In England the Apothecaries Act of 1815 stopped unqualified doctors from practising medicine.

Yet we cannot deny this able commander her due, which resided in her tremendous organizational ability. Her youthful girlish appearance was a great asset, presenting both a physically attractive woman with dark brooding eyes but at the same time a 'safe' mother figure, which appealed to the many insecure and neurotic males who attended her. Other competing contemporary religious movements, such as Andrew Jackson Davis's doctrines of life health and cures, failed to show the staying power of Eddy's movement, even though during the 1840s his movement was as big as Christian Science in terms of popularity.

Jackson simply did not have the drive and ambition and sheer blind energy of Eddy. In her favour, Mrs Eddy's positive encouraging nature must have consoled the many who felt forsaken by conventional medicine.

As was once said of Oscar Wilde, Eddy stood in direct symbolic relation to her time. Virtually all her adult life was spent during the reign of Queen Victoria, which also coincided with the emergence of the emancipation for women movement and the fight for female suffrage. Mrs Eddy and her followers were a great boost to the female cause as it was highly unusual at the time for a woman to be giving lectures and addressing public meetings.

Another means by which she captured the Zeitgeist was by grasping, either consciously or unconsciously, the need for a movement that would alleviate religious insecurities by reconciling the old Christian orthodoxy with the unknown element of the new emergent science although, of course, there was very little or nothing about the movement that could be called truly scientific nevertheless, she intimately understood what was needed to massage and reassure the psychological hurts and uncertainties that lay deep in the American psyche.

She anticipated the mood of the middle classes and catered to it. Christian Science's advocacy of healthy-mindedness', as William James put it, coupled with an open and receptive attitude to materialism, told the middle classes exactly what they wanted to hear.

Mrs Eddy's receptivity to her public was truly awe-inspiring. No doubt she would have made an excellent politician in another time. She also anticipated many of the practices of modern medicine. The modern psychological approach to chronic pain is based on the relief of anxiety, distraction and suggestion, which is strikingly similar to the approach advocated by Eddy.

In a sense, Eddy's hypothesis is correct-unhappiness and suffering do indeed only exist in the mind; it is her contention that illness and disease do not have objective existence that one has to refute.

In the various photographs taken of Eddy we see a wistful melancholic face-a face remarkably similar to that of Greatrakes-with black hair framing eyes brimming with soulful intensity. In the two most commonly printed photographs of her she appears to be quietly amused at some inward joke to herself. Perhaps the joke was on us.