With a heart full of gratitude do I testify to the healing and spiritual uplifting received through Christian Science. In 1894 I was living in Houston, Texas, and conducting a dressmaking establishment. I took malarial fever, and was treated by a good physician for six months, getting somewhat better, so that I could do some cutting and fitting, but soon there was added to my troubles, varicose and painful veins. The physician said they were caused by my standing so much when I was very weak. They pained me so dreadfully that it was necessary for me to wear silk rubber hose. For over two years I was treated for these painful veins and received no relief. I decided to go to Chicago, thinking that the change of climate would help me, but I was disappointed again, so in the fall of 1897 I entered a hospital. I underwent a very painful operation for the diseased veins, which necessitated over five hundred stitches. After I left the hospital I had to wear bandages from my ankles above my knees. I was doomed to another disappointment, for I found that I was no better; my limbs were very stiff, so that I could hardly walk.
I then had another trouble added to my list, that already seemed more than I could bear. I was sewing, and all at once everything grew dark before me. I could hardly tell one person from another in the room. T went to an oculist, who examined my eyes and said that my right eye was blind and the other in a bad condition, and that this was caused from the effects of the malaria in my system and the painful veins. My eyes were treated unsuccessfully for six months. In 1898 I entered another hospital to be treated by a good oculist. I got so that I could see a little better, but had dreadful pain in my eyes all the time, which could not be relieved by glasses. I grew so discouraged that I decided to take no more medicines and thought I would try change of climate once more. I went to Denver, Colorado. I grew somewhat better, but only for a short time. My eyes and limbs were so painful that I went back to medicine again. I stayed in Denver one year; then I concluded that the altitude was too high, so traveled from place to place until May, 1901, when I came to North Yakima, Washington. There I met a lady who had been healed of some eye trouble by Christian Science, and she advised me to try it. She said Scientists believe that all things are possible with God.
After some persuasion I went to see the Christian Scientist who was so lovingly recommended to me, and she said that God would heal me. This made me very happy, even if I did not quite understand how. After the first treatment I took off my glasses, and in two weeks I was perfectly healed. My limbs, that had been so long like sticks, were entirely restored.
