Through the help of Christian Science I have been healed of what is popularly termed an incurable disease. No preconceived favorable impression of Christian Science prompted me to seek this relief or aided me in adjusting my thought to its radical claims; on the contrary I was prejudiced against what I thought it was, to a degree of which I now have ample reason to be ashamed. Physical suffering from tubercular disease, with complications more discomforting even than the lung trouble, together with mental distress and discouragement for which there was seemingly no relief, drove me to Christian Science only as a last resort.
When I turned to Christian Science in the winter of 1904, there was no other hope for me. I had made a hard fight, and had gone out on the desert in Arizona, seventeen hundred miles from my home in the state of Washington, with the hope of arresting the progress of the disease. For more than ten years my health had been breaking. In 1894 I had been compelled to surrender the results of years of professional work as a lawyer in Oregon—my native state—and seek relief in change of climate. I had gone to California to begin professional life anew, and bad, after years of seeming success, suffered an even more serious breakdown in health, which had finally compelled me to abandon my profession altogether. I had been advised by my physician to try the effect of ranch life, and following this hope I gave up everything and spent three years on a ranch in eastern Washington, where I had the third and most serious breakdown of all. I had been coughing for years, and had become completely disheartened, handicapped as I was. With my finances exhausted by frequent removals in search of climatic advantages, and all my chances in life apparently blasted, I was forced to the conclusion that I had before me, after a long, hard struggle, only the dismal way of those who suffer from that most dreaded disease.
A thorough examination by a prominent and able physician of Portland, Ore., in 1904, under the usual methods employed by the medical profession, confirmed this conclusion. I knew nothing of the healing Principle of Christian Science, although like thousands of others I thought I knew enough of this belief to be prejudiced against it. I tried every remedy, aside from medicines, in which my physician had apparently no faith, in my case. I had faithfully followed a course of "feeding" on eggs and milk in large quantities; had tried cold climate and hot, dry climate, and slept out in the open in the winter season with snow on the ground. Still continuing to lose ground, I finally took to the desert in the hope of relief. Finding no help under any course of treatment, and distressed and utterly discouraged, I came to desire above all things what I regarded as relief through death. I had reached the bed-rock of human experience.
