Christian Science first came to my notice in the year 1886, but I gave it no thought only as something most unreasonable and false until it came to me to save my life and gave me something to live for.
On November 20, 1886, a baby boy was born to us. When the baby was a week old a form of sore mouth made its appearance which the doctor called ulcerated nursing sore mouth; it continued to spread internally and externally until it covered my lips and chin, and was eating my stomach, so I could retain no solid food, had I been able to masticate it. My husband not being satisfied that the one physician attending me was doing me any good, employed the second one, a lady, and she decided that the best way to cure the mouth was to burn the ulcers with caustic. No one will ever know what agony I had to endure. I began failing in strength and flesh day by day. Shortly after the doctors called in, seven in all, were all of the opinion that I could not live, as my ulcerated sore mouth had caused blood poisoning. My heart was beating so loudly that it could be heard plainly in adjoining rooms, where all of the family sat, waiting for the end—husband, father, mother, sisters, and brothers. I had fallen away from one hundred and twenty-five pounds to a mere skeleton that could be carried around as easily as a small child. My mind was gone, I had no intelligence; it had been destroyed by poisonous drugs such as morphine and opium, to ease pain and suffering. The physicians had decided that I could last possibly an hour and a half, but no longer. All had taken a final farewell. Something was needed from town and my father was sent to get it. The errand took him to a grocery store and the proprietor inquired how I was. Father told him what the doctors had said. The shopkeeper told him of Christian Science, and also that his wife was a healer, and asked why I should die just because the doctors had said so; why not try Christian Science? The healer was sent for at once, one of the sweetest women on earth, and in less than an hour I was conscious and recognized her, and from that time I began to seem natural. All organs of the body responded to Christian Science treatment. I craved food,—for four months nothing had passed my lips,—and such food as beef-steak, potatoes, and cabbage, which was my first meal, and I ate heartily and retained it. All looked with horror expecting a fatal result. In less than twenty-four hours this appetite came to me, and also the power of speech returned, which I had lost from paralysis of the tongue, caused by using so much cocaine, and in ten days I was walking in the yard. In three weeks I went to my father's home, eighteen miles, for a visit, and while there I commenced to transform.
I shed my skin, my nails came off, my hair fell out, in fact, I am all new. This may seem a very strange story to believe, but I am able to prove it all by so many who stood by and suffered with me during the terrible ordeal, that I feel happy in writing this, for Christian Science did it all.
