AFTER suffering for several years from nasal polypi, which at first would come one at a time, the disease gradually became worse and would affect both nostrils, with a large growth in each, and finally three or four would grow simultaneously, nearly filling the nose. These symptoms became alarming, producing so much distention in the face and congestion of the brain that apoplectic strokes were of frequent occurrence, each one being followed by paralysis of one side of the body, including the vocal organs, and in each recurrence of these conditions I would fall to the floor, speechless and perfectly helpless. The paralysis would yield gradually to medical treatment, so that I could get about without assistance, but these seizures were becoming more frequent, and more alarming in their increasing severity, and in one of the strokes I fell on the corner of a table and fractured a rib over the region of the heart, from which I suffered greatly. Medical and surgical treatment, which at first seemed to afford great relief, gradually failed, and to all appearances I could not survive another paroxysm, which was liable to occur at any time, as the brain affection was constantly getting worse, and my general health, from advanced age and disease, was fast giving way.
Medicine and surgery, which I had practised for sixty-six years, held out no encouragement, and as a last resort, but with little or no faith that I would be benefited, I applied to a Christian Science practitioner for absent treatment, as I was not able to make the journey to visit him. To my great surprise and joy, I was so much relieved after a few weeks that I dismissed the practitioner, and, as the sequel proved, I suffered a relapse. I immediately applied for further treatment, which was followed by a complete cure of all the consequences of the disease.
This was in the spring of 1902 and in the eighty-eighth year of my life, and the demonstration of the fact that "God will heal the sick through man, whenever man is governed by God" .(Science and Health, p. 495), inspired in me a confidence in God and in Mrs. Eddy's teaching such as I had never felt in my seventy-five years of membership in the orthodox churches.
