I feel that the time is ripe for me to acknowledge the blessings which Christian Science brought into my life at a time when nothing seemed worth while because of continued ill health. Fourteen years ago I suffered a severe nervous breakdown, from which I rallied very slowly and imperfectly. For years I remained in a condition of semiinvalidism. with all its attendant misery. I left no material remedy untried; everything that any physician suggested was resorted to, but with little or no benefit.
At last I went to a neighboring city to consult a nerve specialist. He said I had a complication of diseases, with no organ in my body functioning normally. He put special stress on the fact that I was suffering from a kidney disease, also an abnormal condition at the base of the brain, the nature of which or its outcome he seemed loth to discuss with me. He advised me to give up all reading, but added that I might get a certain book on mental and nervous diseases, wherein I would find pathological conditions similar to mine minutely and scientifically described, and from which I would learn the probable outcome of my case. He also said I had an internal growth that ought to be removed at once, as the operation might in his opinion relieve some of the head symptoms but I would have none of the operation. So he wrote me a prescription, which I had filled and took faithfully for a long time, but received little or no benefit. I also followed his directions as to a rigid diet for the relief of the kidney condition, but lost flesh and strength so rapidly that I finally told my husband I might as well succumb to the disease as to starve to death; so I ate whatever I wanted and felt no worse for it.
I never read the book on mental and nervous diseases. I had a number of such books in my library (I am a graduate of medicine and for many years had carried on a general practice), and knowing too well their contents, I was afraid to look into them, for I knew from a medical standpoint what my condition meant, and I had great fear. I got no relief, could not sleep without opiates, and my sufferings made me desperate. About this time I heard of mental science, and was treated for a while, but there was little or no improvement. Finally a good friend told me to read the Christian Science text-book. She said people had been healed by simply reading it. I said I had owned the book for several years, and read it at odd times, and if there was any healing in it I had failed to find it. I have since learned the reason for my failure. I was very antagonistic to the book and its author, yet I always kept the book in sight and never thought of parting with it.
