In the early part of February, 1898, I received an injury to my right eye which placed me in the hospital for fifteen days; during which time and after I was in constant pain until the following February, when I was again placed in the hospital for six months. While the doctors did everything they could to subdue the pain, the only relief I received was from the application of cocaine. In 1890 the sight of this eye left me entirely. For eight years, after being examined by different doctors at different times, I was still a constant sufferer. Even with the use of cocaine there was a dull, heavy, throbbing pain over my eye. I was examined in the mean time by thirteen different physicians. The only hope for relief was the removal of the eyeball. I visited specialists in regard to having it removed, and but for want of means would have had the operation performed. Such was my condition that I had wished some one would put me out of the way, but in March, 1897, I began to investigate Christian Science. At that time I could read only a half page of Science and Health without resting, but in about two weeks and a half I could read for hours without any sense of fatigue whatever. The sense of suffering was gone and the soreness had disappeared, and with the disappearance of the sense of suffering, went the drug. I had always worn a pair of smoked glasses, but these also were laid aside, and I have had no use for them since. For about four months after the pain had gone and the use of the drug had been stopped, the fear that this was only a resting spell was with me constantly, and a sense of suffering would return, until I realized that it was the reading of Science and Health that had healed me of this suffering and that it would also destroy several false appetites which I had cultivated — some for twenty-five years. This it did, and I resolved to put its teaching into practice as nearly as I could understand it for the rest of my days. Suffice it to say, that in four days these appetites were destroyed, and not only so, but I was made a new man. Since that time I have enjoyed splendid health, and even my sight that was gone has returned, although the demonstration is not yet perfect, but I am entirely sure it will be through this healing truth. Christian Science found me without hope, without God in the world, — a total wreck, morally, mentally, and physically; but through the uplifting power of Truth, as revealed in Science and Health, and the understanding of man's relation to God, I have begun to realize man's birthright, and this understanding enables me to put aside self-will, selfishness, malice, envy, and hatred, and to know that none of God's ideas can give offense to another.
Lebanon, Ill.
