Medicine: A Gallstone

Mrs. Sadie Bingham Lampkin, trustee of the Christian Science Society of Red Bank, N. J., fell ill of a pain in her stomach. She called a Christian Science healer and later reported herself "gloriously healed." A few weeks later she died. A licensed doctor refused to issue a death certificate. Thereupon the county physician, accompanied by a police sergeant, went to the home of the deceased, procured the body, performed an autopsy, declared that Mrs. Lampkin had died of peritonitis caused by a gallstone which had ruptured the lining of her stomach and that an operation would most certainly have saved her life. The county physician, Harvey W. Hartman, marked the death certificate: "Neglected case by Christian Science."

His next step was to bring before a Justice of the Peace one Mrs. Alice H. J. Morris, the "healer," and one Mrs. Beulah Webster, the "reader." They were held for the Grand Jury in $2,000 bail each as material witnesses. Bond for both women was furnished by John Lampkin, son of the deceased, who said he would have called a physician had he realized the seriousness of his mother's plight.