The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-10-29
1NDIrIDUA1 RESPONSIBILITY.


 INDIVIDUAL RESP0NSIBIEITY
 We are interested to know more of the reasons which move government to interfere with individuals who select their own means of defense against disease and death. Within a month parents were found guilty of man. slaughter who submitted their child to treatment for pneumonia at the hands of a Christian Science healer. That was, if we are not mistaken, in the State of New Jersey A New York wo- man is now to be investigated by the coroner because her husband died of the same disease while under Christian Science treatment.
 We have no defense to make of the practice of Christian Science healing. We do not know anything about it from either personal experience or personal knowledge. On the other hand we do know many intelligent people who dis- charge faithfully their obligations to society, who take their own methods of fighting sickness and disease. Some of them pin their faith to the allopathic form of treatment and resign them selves to the inevitable if that chances to be the outcome. Others regard the allopathic school with dread and rest content with the relief given by the homeopathic school They utter no complaint except that of grief If death is the portion doled out. Still others re- ly upon the strengthening influence of osteopathy. The number is by no means small in the city of New Haven which clings to it's faith in Christian Science healing Every known cure has it's supporters here as elsewhere. If we should go among the Chinese residents of the city we should find that their remedies are made from properties which the Caucasian rejects. Tie city of Boston is filled with astrologists and soothsayers who undertake to give their patients a charmed life. Their in. structions are followed faithfully, and whether as consequence cf the treat ment given or not, men and women continue to live and die under 1t with out the law interfering. We could go on indefinitely enumerating the instances where men and women shun the con- lventional medicinal cure without gov- ernment supervision, which would rea- sonably prove that IT Z. rule the gov- ernment leaves the individual to care for himself or those dependent upon him except where infectious diseases exist.
 As we have intimated, we hold no brief for the Christian Scientists. The columns of The Journal andA Courier are open to all beliefs and all faiths. We only ask that respectful language be used to advance the cause under consideration. We do, however. won der what the principle is which &C., cepts death Ut the hands of Christian Science healer as proof of manslaugh- ter but which declines to accept death at the hands of any one of the other schools of treatment as other than due natural causes. Physicians of the regu- lar school have been known to resort to extreme and radical experiments to produce certain results, experiments which would appear to the snntiment- alists to be brutal. If the principle up- on which the government acts in ap- pretending Christian Silence headers who have been unsucce s5fu! Is a sound principle, what is the principle which protects the regular who experiments along radical lines? If, too, the nrinci- pie upon which the government pro- ceeds where a Christian Science heal ing fails is sound, why should it mol begin to operate before a believer ac- cepts the doctrines which promote it True this would land large number of intelligent and law-abiding people in houses of detention, but we do not see why this responsibility should be lodged if as is contended, the doctrine of Christian Science makes steadily fol manslaughter the moment illness sets in, or an error of mind, if that be tho trouble.
 It may appear brutal to advocate in ldividual responsibility where infec' tious diseases are not under considera. tion, but it is difficult to make it sC