In the spring of 1889 I had been under the care of two physicians of this city nearly all the time for five years, and all the time for three years. During these last years I had grown steadily worse, until I was very thin and in an extremely nervous condition, and could scarcely eat or sleep. The physicians said I was suffering from a serious lung trouble, and might live six months, although appearances were all against this. They also said I had an internal growth which must be removed if I could gain strength enough to undergo the operation, and I was advised to go to a specialist in Philadelphia for this operation. I started with my two small children, and at the end of seven days arrived there, weary and disheartened I was met by my only sister, who during my stay in the West had been healed of serious heart and spinal trouble by Christian Science. She had become a student of the Massachusetts Metaphysical College, in Boston, and had gone to Philadelphia as a practitioner of Christian Science.
At this time I was very antagonistic to what I supposed Christian Science to be, so that she could not even talk with me on the subject, as I was so unreasonable about it. I stayed with my sister about two weeks, and seemed to feel much better; then, without seeing the specialist I went on to New York to visit a brother. While there I had a severe attack, which frightened them all very much, and when I was able to talk my brother asked me if I felt willing to have a consultation of physicians. I replied that it it would be any comfort to him I should, but that I had lost faith in them, and had none in medicine. He however called three physicians who were considered the best specialists of lung trouble in New York City at that time, and they told him that it was only a question of a few weeks at most, and that I should get out of the city as soon as possible; so my sister came from Philadelphia, and we went to my old home in Vermont, to visit my mother, and there we spent the summer.
I returned to my home in Walla Walla. Wash., in the fall. I was very much better, but did not think very much about my health until my husband and all my friend began to say how much better I looked, and I found myself doing things that I had not been able to do in years before I then began to question myself as to what had wrought this change. I knew it could not be medicine, as I had not taken any that summer, and it did not seem reasonable that the long, hard journey could have helped me so much I therefore wrote to my sister and asked her if she had given me help in Christian Science. She replied that she could not see me pass out before her eyes, without doing all she could for me. She also said the time had come for me to read Science and Health, and do my own work in Christian Science.
