When I was fifteen years of age, we were living on a ranch in Nebraska, where I indulged in wild horse-back rides and bronco breaking, afterwards becoming a bicycle enthusiast, and was considered an all-round wild young athlete. During one of my escapades I sustained an internal injury. I was sent to Chicago for treatment, and under a physician's care there after some months I regained my health, and went on a visit to our former Eastern home, enjoying dancing, skating, and general pleasures until the old trouble returned, disabling me to such an extent that I hurried back to Chicago, where I was helped some before returning to Nebraska. I resumed my athletic pleasures and sustained an injury so serious that nothing could relieve me. Four physicians endeavored to help me, but the cause was deep-seated and stubborn, and refused to yield, compelling me to lie flat on my back with the right knee drawn up. The region over the pain was painted, blistered, scalded, poulticed, and braces of every description tried; but no medical aid lifted me to my feet, and I suffered through long and weary months. Occasionally my mother would put me in the big rocker and drag it to the door on summer evenings. There seemed to be an improvement at one time during the year and a half in bed, when a gynecologist from New York took charge of the case; the pain lessened somewhat, and I gained strength enough to bear my own weight and walk a very little, but I was soon down again in a more deplorable condition than before.
This specialist, discouraged with the result of his efforts, assured my mother that every means known to him had been used, and an operation was all that could be of any benefit.
About this time I made a three days visit to a friend; a physician and editor of a Medical Clinic, was going North to a medical convention of some sort, and he suggested that I have a little change and come to his home and remain with his wife during his absence.
I was there and lying on the couch talking one day with Mrs. W. when she confidentially asked me if I knew anything about Christian Science. She told me of a case of curvature of the spine that she knew to have been cured by Scientists, and advised me to try it. That evening a Scientist called. Her calm assurances pleased us, and she gave me my first treatment.
I bought the text-book as she advised me to, and I read some, but understood little. I neither believed nor was antagonistic.
In the course of a few weeks I walked into a doctor's office; he stood speechless a moment staring at me, then said, "Why, Dr. V. told me to-day that he had given up your case, and that you would never be on your feet again." I was under promise not to reveal the source of my help; but not long afterward my adviser told him that I had gone into Christian Science.
I was growing strong rapidly. An old engagement was resumed. I married an eastern man who came and took me from Omaha to Pittsburg to live. After I was settled I looked about for Scientists, but there were no reading rooms or healers that I could hear of. I was not suffering a great deal and plenty of new interests took up my mind, so I placed my Christian Science volume in the bookcase, where it remained untouched; and with it seemed to go every recollection of the good it had poured out to me.
Two years later our little son was taken ill. We employed doctors, but the little one grew worse steadily; three doctors failed; a fourth helped him, but he suffered a relapse. Christian Science was suggested, but I turned a deaf ear quickly to this. I said I could never risk a precious little life with Christian Science at a critical moment like this. The best aid in the medical profession was sent for, but baby was taken away.
My old illness returned with double its meaning, and with faithful adherence to every law and direction the doctor gave me I struggled on in pain, being unable to walk more than two blocks for nearly a year. During that time the pain was incessant, and the oft-threatened operation was still suggested.
I had passed from one doctor to another; nothing could give me an hour's rest, and as long as I did not care to drag on in such an existence I consented to have the operation performed. The doctor assured me that if I recovered from the operation the result would render me a strong, happy woman.
I recovered from the shock, and the operation was considered a success, but the pain became uppermost and prominent from the first moment I regained consciousness, and remained so; but the doctor explained that time was now essential, and by degrees the pain would disappear, for its cause was removed. I gained a little strength, but my nurse thought me indolent because I could not walk through the halls after the regulation lapse of time. After five or six weeks I was wheeled in an invalid's chair from my room to the carriage, and taken to our village home, to be nursed back to strength, take my medicine, and await the healing effects of time and nature.
I could not leave my bed, and so in a position drawn with pain, I suffered and waited, trying to serve my time for many months. We were in communication with the surgeon who had performed the operation, but I was practically left to fate, as he was on a cruise on the Gulf.
The pain grew worse; the best help was called in; each tried assiduously to give me some relief, but nothing could reach that internal hidden seat of pain. Anodynes were administered, any appliance or resort was grasped, anything to tide me over this waiting for time to be well tried. I commenced wasting in flesh, losing my last grain of strength. My eyes grew weak and an oculist ordered them bound. We did not hope at this period ever to see me on my feet in bright daylight again; my mother hurried to me from the West. When she saw me helpless, in agony, my eyes bound, the room darkened and leeches on my temples, she decided to take me again to the hospital.
The doctor performed a slight operation, which he hoped would help the condition some, but if not he would be obliged to practically do the first operation again. He said that the disease which he thought alone gave me the trouble lay beyond, or that in the first operation a nerve had been tied which would have to be relieved; in either case an operation was necessary. After waiting a sufficient period one Sunday morning the doctor called my husband into the hall and explained that the operation could not be avoided, and as I only grew weaker by waiting; the sooner it was done the better. Thursday morning was appointed, and the operating room engaged. My mother protested, saying that one attempt had ended disastrously, and another might be no better, so it was postponed.
The difficulty with my eyes grew less, permitting me to have a soft light. I was about to start for home again, having been at the hospital about two months, but before starting, we consulted with another eminent surgeon, a Dr. D., whom I had noticed caring for cases similar to mine, in the hospital. He advised me to give all the time possible to my case, as so much had been done, and sometimes long aggravations would wear themselves out. This was in May. I returned home. With powerful tonics, anodynes, powders to induce sleep, baths, etc., I gasped through the long summer months. I was loosely dressed in the morning, and if the day were pleasant. I was dragged in the rocking chair to the porch and laid in the hammock until noon, drawn in for lunch, and out again. The nature of my pain would not permit of a sitting position. I was obliged to be in a reclining position.
We built a little home that summer, and I could watch it being erected across the street from my hammock, and when it was completed in the fall a neighbor and my husband carried me over.
My endurance was about exhausted, and some relief must come. Christian Science was thought of, but I was told that this illness was too genuine and serious for that, it was organic and internally located, and no medicine or appliance could reach it; radical measures were needed and I must not think of idling with any mythological uncertainty like Science. I went to the city and saw Dr. D., who made a thorough examination, and from what I could gather he could not decide what the trouble was to a certainty, the only thing to do was to put me under an anæsthetic and make an incision, and then decide what was to be done. One possible resort he mentioned would leave very little of me, and I was willing to let life ebb itself away as it was, rather than have that done.
Dr. D. said as the risks were great in what he might have to do, he advised me to try to bear with the torture a while longer, so that before he made a start he would have proven beyond all question that no amount of time or milder means would help.
That same day we sent for another eminent surgeon who ranked among the first specialists in the country, but of a different school, a Dr. J. He said immediate work was necessary, which would relieve two troubles at least, and he hoped would alleviate that principal trouble somewhat, but a second greater operation would be necessary. When I returned home, in answer to a letter from me he wrote about the same thing, and repeated that he did not think I would ever be entirely free from pain, but he could relieve me. I still have this letter.
We could not decide what to do. In the face of such a difference of opinion, what were we to do?—and whom were we to believe? My sufferings were too great to bear up under. I lay in helpless agony for weeks and weeks, my eyes were bound most of the time, and all windows in the room were darkened, as a ray of light the size of a nail-head seemed to pierce my eyeballs like a knife.
Dr. D. wrote us that the only resort was to come for the operation, as time was absolutely of no avail. As there was so much uncertainty about what was to be done, we could not decide to take the step; but the end or crisis of my life was at hand.
We decided to hazard Christian Science, having been tempest-tossed and well worn out looking for a haven of relief, every time being tossed farther from relief or hope; yes, we were even deprived of hope. I had grown so tender that lifting me from my bed seemed impossible.
One long year of increasing pain since the first operation was performed, and I lay a shapeless mass, practically blind, without faith, hope, or interest. I could not be moved very well, and the Scientist wrote that she would commence absent treatment. Soon new pains appeared, the old one seemingly being disturbed and slowly fading away. In two weeks I felt sort of knitted together enough so that I could endure the journey to the city. In place of journeying to the hospital, as had been planned for this same time, I was en route for milder treatment.
When I was installed in my new quarters and the Scientist called to see me, she was ushered into a room of darkness. I had the shelved "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," drawn from its obscurity, dusted and opened. My faithful mother read to me. She would sit on the floor, holding the book up to the window-still, where a narrow ray of light came from under the curtain and fell onto the book. I was so weak I was often in a semi-conscious state, and not deeply interested, when she would startle me and say, "That is reasonable. I have always said, give me something tangible." My mother was never very religiously inclined, but the religion taught here pleased her. Thus she would bring my interest back to the reading.
An aunt called to see me and brought me a bottle of tonic, and with a wink said, "Well, if you cannot take it now, lay it aside until you are through trying Science. You will need it."
The practitioner explained it would be as well not to discuss my new treatment with disinterested outsiders, as it could be explained to non-believers better after the work had commenced to show results. With an incredulous smile another aunt said, "Very plausible; as she knows she cannot help you, it is quite likely she would prefer not having it discussed."
In about three weeks my mother and these two aunts, and a figure well cloaked and with blue goggles on, went to the matinee to see "The Sign of the Cross." The tonic was never needed. When my mother and I returned to the village I sprang from the train and greeted my husband, saying a new world was before us.
It spread fast through town that Mrs. H. stepped out of the carriage and walked into the house. I had never been up-stairs in our new home, and I walked up and about the second floor. I tried the piano once again, and gained daily in strength. I visited the medicine cabinet with a bushel basket. I never would need medicine again. A greater power had been revealed to me, and I placed tonics, liniments, plasters, blisters, bandages of various patterns and supports of many kinds, pain pellets and sleeping powders, liquids and salves, until the basket was three-fourths full, and ready for the dump. The little box which contained the powders to quiet temporarily the pain, I hesitated to part with, doubt trying to hold its own still. I emptied out the few remaining powders, but kept the box, secretly feeling that if a violent attack came I would have the prescription number on the box. The prescription was never needed.
My progress was slow. Sometimes I fell back a little. I made a return visit to see my healer once, and I dragged into the office, complaining the street car had carried me beyond my corner. I was displeased to find no couch in my healer's rooms, only straight, stiff chairs. When I left her rooms I boarded a street car for the depot, and had one minute to make five blocks, and on foot descend the viaduct stairway, cross a track, make a long block to the second depot. My mother was holding the train, and she never will forget her surprise to see her almost helpless charge flying around the corner and down the hill at break-neck speed. My knees, useless so long, seemed to bend in every direction; but I gasped with every breath, "There is only one power! There is only one power!"
I was free from the pain which I had endured for ten years, which had grown slowly worse and resisted every known means in the medical profession to stir it. I had been visited by seventeen doctors, some treating me for a long period. I heard that Dr. J. said I never had been sick; another doctor claimed the operation cured me, another said I had not given the operation time for results when I tried Christian Science. Time was all that was needed, and I would have recovered. It required many months of patient, loving work on my healer's part, and effort on my own part, for a complete restoration, but clinging to God He tried, but never deserted me, and the reward came full and plenty. I am a perfectly well and strong woman.
This Truth is not for a few, but within the reach of every one. No illness is too severe, no trouble so great, but it can be overcome by this present one great power, ready for all who will seek it.
