Fanatic followers of naturopathy as well as of Christian Science reject the services of surgery. Yet do the men among them ever stop to think that the act of shaving, which they perform daily, is itself the performance of a minor surgical operation? For the hair is as much a tangible part of their anatomy as is the bony skeleton. This also applies to finger nails, toe nails, calluses, and corns.
Such opposition to surgery on the part of those who are unorthodox in their views of healing is based partly on blind fanaticism and partly on blind ignorance. The excessive attachment to their own particular system prevents them from seeing its true place and surgery's true relation to it. Natural methods should be tried first, surgical methods only last. If natural methods are tried too late or tried without result, then it is quite proper to resort to surgery if any hope lies there. They should be given their chance in the earlier stages of a disease but if they are not, if the disease has advanced to a serious or chronic degree, surgery may fitly be considered, either alone or in conjunction with them.
Even in divine healing, the spiritual force may still use a surgeon through which to express itself. It does not necessarily have to use only a saint to do so. Spiritual healing completes and does not displace the conventional allopathic or the unorthodox physical healing systems. It does not supplant but supplements them.
-- Notebooks Category 10: Healing of the Self > Chapter 4 : Healers of The Body and Mind > # 30
