THE PATIENT
By Stephen Paget, F.R.C.S.
The Bishop of Birmingham wrote to me, last
year, the following letter. He gave me leave
to publish it in the second edition of a book
of mine about Christian Science: and he
gives me leave to publish it again here:
'. . . I should wish to make a little more of your admissions as to Mental Therapeutics. Thus—If, as you admit, there are so many functional disorders; and they are curable by mental influences; and religion is a great mental influence; and this influence ("Quietism") is much needed in such and other cases—I should demand of the Church that it should recognise, far more explicitly, this field of legitimate curative power, and control it, and claim it by showing the power to use it. The neglect of this sphere of influence by the Church plays into the hands of Christian Science. (All this could be associated with the revival of unction.)
'Also, I think the medical profession likes—in public—to ignore all this, and thus in its
