Christian Science on trial

by Rennie B Schoepflin

"In Christian Science on Trial, historian Rennie B. Schoepflin shows how Christian Science healing became a viable alternative to medicine at the end of the nineteenth century. Christian Scientists did not simply evangelize for their religious beliefs; they engaged in a healing business that offered a therapeutic alterative to many patients for whom medicine had proven unsatisfactory. Tracing the movement during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Schoepflin illuminates its struggle for existence against the efforts of organized American medicine to curtail its activities.". "Physicians' efforts to trivialize and control practitioners of the faith indicated a lack of confidence among the turn-of-the-century medical profession about who controlled American health care. The contested authority of the medical community becomes clear through Schoepflin's examination of the pitched battles fought by physicians and Christian Scientists in America's courtrooms and legislative h