In the summer of 1902 I was taken with a very severe attack of so-called appendicitis. I just pulled through, with the aid of one of the best doctors in New England, but I was cautioned that I must be very careful, must not exert myself in any way, and be sure to take a remedy daily. This was in Connecticut; but I was called West, and while suffering every moment of the time with the fear of an operation hanging over me, and carrying a grip full of medicine, I was taken with the second attack. I hovered between life and death for over a month, and finally got around again, this time with enlargement of the liver added to my troubles and a prediction of a third attack in about six months which would surely carry me off. While greatly reduced in weight, and depending on a very meager diet, my third attack came, in 1904. We were snowed in forty miles from a railroad, in the mountains of Washington. My wife gave me all the old remedies, but they failed to help me. I was surely in a bad fix, and it seemed that I bad only about twenty-four hours to live. There was no possible way of getting out of the camp, as getting away, except on snow-shoes or skis, was out of the question; besides, I could not move from my back.
About six months before going up to the mountains, Christian Science had first been brought to my notice, and when I made some inquiries about it I was given some Journals and Sentinels to read. Finally the wife of the mining man who had called my attention to Christian Science, who was a practitioner, sent me a copy of Science and Health to read, but I did not understand it. Before going farther, I might say that I had no religious belief, except that there was some power ruling over all; but the Bible was a closed book to me. I failed to see how God is Love; in fact, I believed the contrary. I now see this clearly, and the Bible is no longer a closed book!
It was snowing very hard as I lay there in the camp with Science and Health at my side, wondering if I was to be laid away up there, when suddenly the thought struck me, "Why not try Science? There is absolutely nothing else to do, and they claim so much." I asked my wife if she thought she could get over to the shaft-house and telephone to Spokane, and she said she could try. She did so, and a message was sent to the practitioner. After wading through snow above her waist, both going and coming, my wife returned to find me out of pain, and in a half hour I was asleep. Next morning I got up and ate a hearty breakfast, and for the first time since my first attack I did not lake the usual remedy, much to my wife's wonderment. The second day I sawed and chopped wood, lifted and pulled, and have worked up to the present date.
