WHEN a child, I was suddenly attacked by blood-poisoning. Before that time I had always been perfectly well and strong, but from then my health was apparently destroyed. The doctors could not understand my case, which was considered an unusual and interesting one. Various treatments were tried upon me, and at last one of the doctors decided that I had ulceration of the colon, and my parents were told that the case was absolutely hopeless. I got worse and worse and suffered agonies of pain. One doctor after another came down from London to see me, and all agreed that the only thing to save me was an operation called colotomy; but this was not performed. During the seven years of my illness, I passed through the hands of no less than sixteen different doctors, and I was never more than a few months without a hospital nurse, and even two, during the more acute stages of my illness. For a whole year I never tasted cooked meat, and on several occasions I was kept in bed for a long period and fed on milk. At the end of these treatments I was so weak and suffered so terribly that my people practically abandoned all hope of my being able to get up again. No medicine ever did me any good; in fact, during the last few years the only thing I took was opium, in hopes of subduing the pain.
About eighteen months ago the message of Truth and Love was brought to me. I had been rather better for a time after a sea voyage, and arrangements were being made for me to go abroad as usual for the winter. I dreaded going, as I felt that an internal abscess (for which I had already had an operation the year before) was forming again, and I was terrified at the thought of the pain it would cause. About this time a friend came to stay with us in the country and told my mother of her own wonderful cure through Christian Science. What she told her seemed to us the solution of every difficulty. What joy it was to hear that God never sent pain and suffering to humanity, —a problem I had been trying to solve. I knew I should be healed and all fear of the abscess disappeared immediately.
We longed to hear more, and the following Wednesday my mother and I went to London and attended the testimony meeting. The next day I received a treatment, after which we returned to the country, the practitioner giving me absent treatment meanwhile. During the fortnight that followed we spent all our time in studying Science and Health and it was a glorious revelation to us. It was not till the pain was gone (and it left me almost directly the treatment began) that I realized how continual it had been. At the end of a fortnight I was perfectly well and was out riding and walking with my brothers and sisters as if I had never been ill. From the moment I heard of Christian Science I never got into my bath-chair again, which I used constantly before, as the least exertion or fatigue had aggravated the symptoms.
