For five years I had been engaged in the business of extracting precious metals from ore by the cyanide process, and mortally speaking I was in the right condition, physically, for the sickness that I experienced. The work is considered very unhealthful, and fear of being poisoned had caused me to give up my position and seek something else, so I was working for the Llewellyn Iron Works in Los Angeles. About one year ago one Saturday afternoon I scratched my hand on a piece of iron. That night the pain was quite severe, and my wife bathed the little scratch with a solution of carbolic acid, and I went to work the following Monday morning apparently all right. It did not bother me in the least during the forenoon, but about one o'clock the pain returned with such force that I was compelled to return home. My wife immediately sent for a doctor and when he came he found me with a very high fever and a temperature of one hundred and five degrees. He said that I was a very sick man, and prescribed for me. By five o'clock my arm was much swollen, and I became delirious. The following morning the swelling had extended all over my left side and chest, the color of which was about the same as a piece of red flannel, while my left arm was completely paralyzed. The pain was terrible and I grew rapidly worse, despite the fact that the doctor gave me powerful medicines and called in other physicians. Typhoid-pneumonia set in and it looked as if my time had come. The doctors held another consultation, but decided that there was nothing more to do, as they had tried all the known remedies, and my release must come in death.
At this time I had been sick less than two weeks, and as the doctor stopped giving me medicine and told my wife and sister that I would die in a little while, my wife decided to try Christian Science, although we had always been very much opposed to it, having formed an opinion of its teachings, which was entirely incorrect, and worthy of condemnation. She telegraphed to a healer in Oakland of whom we had heard a great deal, to give me treatment and come to Los Angeles as soon as possible. He arrived the next morning and found me scarcely more than alive. He gave me a treatment and my thought was immediately changed and I knew that I should live. I was hungry and wanted an orange, which he gave me and the same forenoon I ate a hearty meal.
In three days time I was up and dressed and eating three meals a day. In six days my healer returned to Oakland, and I sat sunning myself on the front porch, when the doctor drove up to get two of my sisters, who are trained nurses, to help with an operation. He seemed rather shocked to see me there, and wanted to see my tongue and feel my pulse. After doing this he warned me to go back to bed again, talked about relapses and other materia medica laws. He had already told my sister that abscesses were forming which would break internally and end it all.
