During the extreme hot weather in August, I attempted to change the position of a large electric fan, in order to throw the current of air in another direction; I had often done this without turning off the current, but on this occasion the fan slipped and in an instant both of my hands were in the fan, which was making from fifteen hundred to two thousand revolutions per minute. I knew I was badly hurt from the blood that was spattered over the wall by the fan. Clasping both my hands together to hide them from the gaze of the men who saw the accident, I requested one of them to wrap a towel around my hands, which he did, and I walked to my home, a distance of three blocks.
On examining my hands I found the thumb on the left hand severed at the first joint, on the second finger of the right hand were three deep cuts, one of which was completely through the nail. It seemed best to send for a surgeon for the nature of the jagged wounds and severed bone made it impossible to bring the several parts together by merely wrapping them. The surgeon, on examining the hands, said the thumb could not be saved, as the joint was destroyed, and there was not one chance in forty thousand that it would grow on, and if it did, it would always be stiff and without sensation, as the nerves had been destroyed. On my insisting that he should sew the thumb in place he strongly objected, as he said it would decompose and would not heal, and would certainly have to be taken off (if he sewed it on) in a week. On being asked whether he would not like to have a case of healing of this kind among his experiences, he only laughed, for he knew we were Scientists and he had supreme faith in his own experience and prophecies, but a higher law than his was the Healer and what was impossible with him was no impossibility with the Divine Mind. He dressed the hand and changed the bandages on the two following days which was the end of his connection with the case.
In ten days my hands were perfectly healed, showing only scars, my finger-nails not even turning black, much less coming off, as the surgeon said would be the case.
