Mind, Medicine, and the Christian Science Controversy in Canada, 1888-1910

Abstract

Christian Science originated in the United States and arrived in Canada in the late 1880s. Its cultural antecedents lay in the vitalist reaction against the mechanistic vision of the human body which increasingly dominated Western medical orthodoxy. The new sect’s reception in Canada occurred in the context of other intellectual and social movements, including idealism, feminism and spiritualism. Among the most vocal opponents of Christian Science were church and medical leaders who believed that Canadians needed spiritual and legal protection against a system they viewed as anti-rational, immoral and dangerous. Largely overlooked in Canadian historical writing, Christian Science provoked a controversy of wide significance in Canada bearing on such issues as the interaction of mind and body, the role of faith in curing disease, and the state’s role in securing the hegemony of the medical profession.

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