A little over one year ago my body was racked with aches and pains innumerable. I suffered from chronic tonsilitis, hay fever, rheumatism, cancer, and nervous prostration. Two years before, my tonsils had been removed, but the sore throat was not healed. Six months before, I had an operation for piles, but the suffering still remained. Having been a trained nurse for many years, I knew what a season of drugging and doctoring awaited me, were I to begin medical treatment, and how little assurance of permanent healing there was for me, even then. Besides all this, there was debt, a sick father, and much unfinished work which I had no strength to accomplish.
One of my friends now picked up a little pamphlet among the literature at hand, and read the title aloud, "The Los Angeles Case." A patient had given it to me to read several weeks before, after relating some accounts of healing through this Science which to me seemed incredible. Now, however, it was read aloud to amuse us, and we made various criticisms on it, until that portion was read where the defence referred to the healing of the blind man who said, "Whereas I was blind, now I see." All at once the conviction came to me that what had been read was true, that undoubtedly I had long been blind,—spiritually blind, —and a great desire to see came over me.
Our jesting words seemed all at once to be in very poor taste, and quite as much to call forth opposition as for any benefit I expected to receive, I startled my friends by declaring that I intended to visit a practitioner. I went the next day, but could not find him; this, however, only increased my desire to be treated. Again I sought him, obtained a treatment, borrowed that blessed book, Science and Health, which is indeed a "Key to the Scriptures," and read with all my might for a week, when I felt such a revivifying return of courage and strength that I was able to do more work in one day than I had been able to accomplish in a whole week before. I took only four treatments; my study of the book accomplished the rest.
