“A Forensic Analysis of Calvin Frye’s Diaries”

Mary Baker Eddy Library, The. “A Forensic Analysis of Calvin Frye’s Diaries.” Released 27 September 2021. 

Due to the long-standing debate over Mary Baker Eddy’s use of morphine, the Mary Baker Eddy Library sought to resolve it in order to restore the greater focus on Eddy’s larger record as discoverer, writer, healer and leader. The debate endured because Calvin Frye’s diaries had recorded several instances of Eddy’s use of morphine as an anesthetic to relieve extreme pain associated with kidney stones between 1903 and 1910. But some claimed that his diaries had fallen prey to alterations and forgeries, so the diaries were unreliable evidence of the facts.

John Dittemore, a member of the Christian Science Board of Directors, had taken possession of many of Frye’s diaries in 1917. Later in 1919 he was removed from office and attempted to discredit Eddy. He broadly misconstrued what appears to have been a limited number of analgesic morphine injections. In September 2021, the Library worked with a noted forensic examiner, who analyzed some of the retrieved and relevant documents to determine the authenticity of the diaries. The examiner concluded that Frye did write the entries related to the morphine injections, confirming the administration of the drug being an anesthetic in several cases of extreme pain.

View this resource on The Mary Baker Eddy website.

See also annotations:

Rolling Away the Stone: Mary Baker Eddy’s Challenge to Materialism by Stephen Gottschalk

Mr. Dickey: Secretary to Mary Baker Eddy with Adam H. Dickey’s “Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy” by Nancy Niblack Baxter 

Mary Baker Eddy by Gillian Gill 

Mary Baker Eddy: The Years of Authority by Robert Peel