Lives on trial: Christian Science healers in Progressive America

Drawing on a number of previously unused sources, including practitioner correspondence and the transcripts of Christian Scientist trials, this study differentiates the prescriptive pronouncements made by the movement's founder, Mary Baker Eddy, and other church leaders about the healing practices of Christian Scientists from what progressive-era practitioners did and what patients experienced. It explores the ways in which practitioners offered patients religious healing framed in the terms and concepts of medicine. Christian Scientists did not simply evangelize for their religious beliefs; they engaged in a healing business that offered a therapeutic alternative to many patients for whom medicine had proven unsatisfactory. Furthermore, this study traces the evolution of Christian Science during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as it struggled for existence against the efforts of organized American medicine to curtail its activities.;As the medical community awakened to the presence of the new sect, physicians exhibited an anxiety and tenacity to trivialize and control Christian Scientists that challenges the sunny assumptions made by many historians regarding the confidence of the turn-of-the-century medical profession about who was winning the struggle to control American healthcare. The limited authority of the medical community becomes even clearer through an examination of the pitched battles fought by physicians, Christian Scientists, and other interested parties in America's courtrooms and legislative halls over the legality of Christian Science healing. While the issues of medical licensing, the meaning of medical practice, and the supposed right of Americans to therapeutic choice dominated early debates, later confrontations saw the legal issues shift to matters of contagious disease, public safety, and children's rights. And throughout, Christian Scientists revealed their ambiguous status as medical practitioners and religious healers.;The 1920s witnessed the establishment of an unsteady truce between American medicine and Christian Science but an unequivocal legal standing for Christian Science healing. However, the ambivalence of many Americans about the practice of religious healing persisted. By understanding the outcome of earlier conflicts we gain a helpful historical context for understanding late twentieth-century public debates over children's rights, parental responsibility, and the authority of modern medicine.