MAIN SOUTH ROAD.

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20100, 2 December 1930, Page 15

MAIN SOUTH ROAD.

TO THE EDITOa 07 THE PBESS

Sir, —Kindly permit mc the use of your columns to ask wliy those responsible for the maintenance of the Main South road are dumping shingle on it in such huge quantities on the stretch between Ashburton and Chertscy. A riverbed would make good travelling in comparison. The motorists of Canterbury must be the best tempered in creation to stand such a state of affairs for so many months. It is a pity that the Canterbury Automobile Association does not display a more militant spirit over the disgraceful state of our main road. Surely motorists are taxed heavily enough, and pay cheerfully enough, to warrant more consideration. Every motorist knows very well that, when he sees a cow on the road, he must treat her with respect because she is a cow, and I think I may be pardoned if I state that the Main South road in the Ashburton county is a cow of a road, because a motorist to avoid capsizing must proceed just as cautiously as if he were approaching a mob of dairy cattle. X havo travelled over most of the roads in Canterbury, Otago, Westlainl, Nelson, and Marlborough, and must award the stretch in question the medal for being the worst. —Yours, etc., lIIRAM HUNTER. Rakaia, November 28th, 1930. CHRISTIAN SCIENCE. TO TK« EDxTOH Of THE FRHSS Sir, X quite admit that Mrs Eddy testifies to the excellent character of medical practitioners. But that is not the point. The point is that she condemns their science as wrong, and themselves as ignorant of the true principles of healing. All the same, if tho effecting of cures, and the imparting to others of an understanding or right methods of healing, is to be regarded as evidence of tho correctness of Mrs Edcly'a principles, then the same argument applies a thousand-fold more to prove the correctness of the prmciples of medical and surgical science, which Mrs Eddy condemns. Remember, the British Medical Association does not publish lists of "testimonies"—but it could; and the "Fruitage" would be a very heavy crop. I will give mine, for one, although, being a healthy person, it is a small one. Last December, owing to neglecting an attack of influenza, 1 developed tonsilitis, with an abscess on tho tonsil —known, I believe, as "quinsy." I went to the doctor, who scolded me gently for not coming bofore, packed me off to bed, and after two days lanced the abscess; result, complete cure; so that by the end of the week I was as well as ever. The same doctor, in February, 1922. cured my wife of a severe attack of pneumonia. God worked through that doctor's knowledge' and skill, and both I and the Church to which I belong, are not slow to recognise the fact that although medical science is admittedly not yet perfect, yet nevertheless God works through it to the healing of thfr bodily ailments of mankind. Our own St. George's Hospital is a monument, as it were, to this belief — and doctors and nurses everywhere are —whether consciously or not—God's agents. And to speak contemptuously, as Mrs Eddy does, of medical science shows a very faulty conception of the nature and extent of God's work in the world of matter and sense. And to say that matter and senso are myths and illusions of "mortal mind" doesn't heln at all. _ For in that case, isn't "mortal mind" itself a myth and an illusion—and if it is, why are Christian Scientists so concerned about getting rid of it?" It hardly seems sensible to claim to cure pooplo of toothache by getting rid of a mythical notion about a mythical pain m a mythical tooth in a mythical body. It might even be better to cure it by getting rid of the tooth. I don't apologise for my rWTicule or the treatment of boils by the application of a high attenuation of truth Mrs Eddy certainlv claims on p. l.v to have cured typhoid fever in an advanced stage by "attenuating ' common salt "until there was not a single saline property (sic) left," and then adding a drop of the ''attenuation to a goblet of water and administering a toaspoonful of the water every three hours. , , , . , But attenuating sodnmi chloride is one thing, and attenuating truth is another, and I hope the truth administered to the boil was not so highly attenuated' as the salt administered to the tynhoid P ntient etc.. TREMAYNE M. CURNOW. The Vicarage, New Brighton, Nov. 29th, 1930.