It is in a spirit of the deepest gratitude that I take this opportunity of telling what Christian Science has done and is doing daily for me and mine, hoping that thereby I may give as much help and encouragement to some one else as the testimonies of others have given me. I was always an intensely nervous and delicate child, and following an injury received at the age of two years, I was never considered strong. After the birth of a little daughter in 1899, a serious organic and several lesser troubles remained with me until the coming of a small son in 1902, when these were added to and aggravated to a great extent. Between 1899 and 1904 I underwent four surgical operations, one of these being serious. This treatment merely gave temporary relief, and I soon began to grow weaker and more miserable, and from January, 1904, until June, 1904, I grew worse so rapidly that I began to lose hope, and my physician plainly showed his discouragement. I took tonics and other medicines during these five years, and the last six months of this time, several kinds daily. I may add that, owing to a family fear of anesthetics, I was with one exception operated on without them, the nervous shock following them being very great. Finally our doctor, who was an old family friend, told my husband that he must postpone his vacation (we were planning to go East that summer), as there was nothing for me to do but to stay quietly in bed, undergoing operations at intervals. This added mental agony to the physical; I was not only weak and helpless, but despairing. I was sure of but one thing —that I would undergo no more operations.
At this time my sister urged me to try Christian Science, telling me of an experience she had had with it. I was so bitterly prejudiced against what I thought it was, that probably I would not have allowed any one else even to mention the subject to me. However, as she advised it, and I was at the end of my resources, I decided to give it a trial. My thought was to try it, keeping my doctor safely in the background, but the practitioner assured me that she could not take the case unless he was fully informed and honorably dismissed. I remember the storm I expected, but my husband assured me that our physician— one of the best in the city, and the only one in whom I had the slightest faith—declared himself relieved when told that I was going to try Christian Science, and said that he thought it would help me, as he had a niece who had been healed by it. On a Wednesday I had my first interview with a practitioner, on Thursday my first treatment, and by Saturday my trouble, that with which I had been battling for so long, disappeared entirely, to reappear but once in the three and a half years since, in a very mild form, and then to be met and overcome at once by my own work in Christian Science. Every time that I think of my first treatment, a wave of gratitude sweeps over me that my first practitioner should have had the patience, understanding, and loving gentleness to bear with my skeptical and suspicious attitude.
At the second treatment the practitioner found me bright and cheerful, sitting up in bed, reading. At the third treatment I was sitting up, sewing, making ready to go East; while at the fourth treatment I was up and about the house for awhile. After three weeks, I was on the train bound for the New England coast, and I enjoyed every moment of the fifteen days' journey. Since then I have been stronger and better than ever in my life, in fact I never before knew what it was to feel strong and well like this. The extreme nervousness, which had been with me from childhood, has almost wholly gone, without any special treatment at all, and frequent attacks of illness, besides a trouble of the stomach, etc., have left me. Double hernia, liver and bowel and throat trouble, have all yielded quickly to Christian Science treatment, and an irritable and impatient disposition is slowly but surely improving. Also, two years ago, a second son came to me under Christian Science treatment, under circumstances so different from my former experiences that I am still trying to realize that I have a baby.
