"Real Science" & "Reality"

Two years ago on Long Island, Mrs Lucy F. Kirk, 54, was driving with her son Payton when their automobile collided with one driven by George Cisler The Cisler automobile was damaged. A doctor examined Mrs. Kirk, found her apparently seriously injured. A Christian Scientist, she declined medical attention summoned, instead, a paid healer to pray over her and read from Mary Bakei Eddy's Science & Health. Mrs. Kirk made what looked like a complete recovery but later she said she suffered from headaches, a pain in the nose and tremors of the left hand. She had made good money as a cake-baker and the tremors kept her from mixing batter with her oldtime deftness. Mrs. Kirk thereupon sued George Cisler for $10,000 damages.

In a Mineola court last week Justice Paul Bonynge charged the jury:

"The case is a very extraordinary one. The plaintiff was trained as a trained nurse and worked in hospitals. She has seen people die, even from such gruesome things as cancer. . . . Yet she comes under the influence of a cult that teaches that this is all a great delusion and those dying with cancer are out of tune with the infinite and with God. . . .

"She adopts the teachings of a woman leader of a cult who is now dead and in her grave. She was no Messiah and no God, just a woman of bones, flesh and blood, and yet this plaintiff, who will die as you and I, with hundreds of thousands of others, has seen fit to put aside real science ... to adopt the belief that pain and illness are things of the imagination and not of reality.

"Of course, harboring a belief of that sort presents a situation that brings her to a difficult dilemma. If pains are not real and fractures do not exist, then, obviously, you men are in no position under the law to award damages that do not exist. This lady of apparent refinement and culture was faced with the necessity of making a choice. Were the injuries real? If they were, she belongs in this court. If on the other hand they were not real, according to the teachings of this departed patron saint of Christian Science, then, of course, she has no place here.

"If you find that she denied the ministrations of a medical practitioner, through a stubborn belief in the efficiency of prayer by a paid healer, and that her recovery was retarded thereby, you would be unfair to your oath if you charged Cisler with these injuries. If she claimed that there is no pain and that the way of relief is through the teachings of Mrs. Eddy you cannot make Cisler pay. . . ."

Pondering all this, the jury decided that Mrs. Kirk's pains were unreal, hence had no place in court. Instead of awarding her $10,000, the twelve good men and true ordered her to pay George Cisler $75 for damages to his automobile.

In every State of the land there is a one-man Christian Science Committee on Publication, whose duties as laid down by Mrs. Eddy include correcting unfavorable statements about Christian Science in the Press. Last week all the New York Committee (William Wallace Porter) could think of to write the newspapers about the Kirk-Cisler suit was: "The consideration of this entire case . . . will doubtless bring into view the true definition of the term 'reality.' If this is done something worth while will have been accomplished."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.