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specific elements in the practice of Christian Science and the various forms of Mind Cure as a profession.

The patients who are treated by these practitioners have, to begin with, the vis medicatrix naturæ, which is the final element in every cure, recognized to be such by the leaders of the medical profession for a long period of time. Sir John Forbes, M. D., one of the most eminent regular physicians of England, remarks of the practice of his own School in his famous article on homeopathy:

First, that in a large proportion of the cases treated by allopathic physicians, the disease is cured by nature, and not by them. Second, that in a lesser but still not a small proportion, the disease is cured by nature in spite of them; in other words, their interference retarding instead of assisting the cure. Third, that in, consequently, a considerable proportion of diseases it would fare as well or better with patients if all remedies—at least all active remedies, especially drugs—were abandoned.

Sydenham long ago said, "I often think more could be left to Nature than we are in the habit of leaving to her; to imagine that she always wants the help of art is an error, and an unlearned error too."

Sir John Marshall, F. R. S., in opening the session of the London University Medical School in 1865, said,

The vis medicatrix naturæ is the agent to employ in the healing of an ulcer, or the union of a broken bone; and it is equally true that the physician or surgeon never cured a disease; he only assists the natural processes of cure performed by the intrinsic conservative energy of the frame, and this is but the extension of the force imparted at the origination of the individual being.

Under the Mind Cure this force of nature is still at work, and in the great number of self-limited diseases which tend to recovery, it is left free from all error of practitioners. If it loses any advantages