I was virtually snatched from the grave by Christian Science. My mother's family, most of them, passed away with consumption. My mother had heart disease for a number of years before she died. My sister died of heart dropsy at the age of twenty-three. I was called a consumptive at that age. At the age of twenty-four I met with a very bad accident, was caught in the machinery of a mill; this nearly cost me my life. I recovered in time from the injury, but the physicians said that the terrible strain I had undergone had developed consumption and heart trouble, and also caused a very serious liver trouble, resulting in enlargement of the liver with abscesses. I was frequently prostrated with attacks of catarrhal fever and pneumonia, and laid up with sciatic rheumatism. I was in such a condition that I had very little comfort at any time, being in pain more or less day and night, and for years I seldom had a good night's sleep.
An extremely severe attack of pneumonia brought me so low that the only physician I had any faith in said I could not live three months if I stayed in that climate, and if a change of climate would not help me, I could not live long. I had moved about from place to place and had the best medical aid to be found in Ohio, where I was then living, in the city of Ashtabula. Under the physician's orders I went to Riverside, Southern California. I was so weak that several times on the way they thought I would die. In the high altitudes of the mountains, I became unconscious for several hours, and had my worst hemorrhage there. I reached Riverside and amid new scenes and among strange people, with everything very interesting, I seemed to improve so much that I went into business there. I soon found that I had more business than I had strength to attend to, and commenced to go back to my old condition, and in about a year and a half I was obliged to give up my work and think of nothing but getting relief from my suffering. I was then taken to the hot sulphur springs, thence to the coast, the mountains, and other places, but received little or no help.
At last I became too weak to be taken anywhere. I employed three of the best physicians in Riverside, making in all sixteen different physicians in the fifteen years that I had been fighting for life, for the sake of my wife and three children.
