He defended himself by charging that Eddy had merely copied Quimby’s material.The court ruled in Eddy’s favour, but Quimby’s papers were not made available for public scrutiny.This includes the view that disease is a mental error rather than physical disorder, and that the sick should be treated not by medicine, but by a form of prayer that seeks to correct the beliefs responsible for the illusion of ill health.The church does not require that Christian Scientists avoid all medical care—adherents use dentists, optometrists, obstetricians, physicians for broken bones, and vaccination when required by law—but maintains that Christian-Science prayer is most effective when not combined with medicine.Eddy and 26 followers were granted a charter in 1879 to found the Church of Christ, Scientist, and in 1894 the Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, was built in Boston, Massachusetts.The church is known for its newspaper, the Christian Science Monitor, which won seven Pulitzer Prizes between 19, and for its Reading Rooms, which are open to the public in around 1,200 cities.It was developed in 19th-century New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who argued in her book Science and Health (1875) that sickness is an illusion that can be corrected by prayer alone.
Her association with him from 1862 to 1865 strengthened her belief, acquired by her experiments with homeopathy, in the mental nature of disease.Reared in a strict Congregationalist home in rural .Personal misfortune and ill health contributed to Eddy’s preoccupation with the question of God’s responsibility for human suffering.Between the 1880s and 1990s the avoidance of medical treatment led to the deaths of several adherents and their children.Parents and others were prosecuted for, and in a few cases convicted of, manslaughter or neglect.