It is over three years since I turned to Christian Science for physical healing, after medicines, electricity, and other material means had failed to give me more than temporary relief. I was a graduate nurse and had practised that profession for twelve years prior to the spring of 1906. During those years I had two attacks of nervous breakdown, from which by the above remedies I recovered sufficiently to continue my work; but symptoms of the trouble remained, and my general health seemed to continue to fail from time to time. After giving up nursing in 1906, there came the final collapse, accompanied with great fear that my time on this plane was short, and I was not ready for the change. For a year and a half there was scarcely a time when I was not suffering from pain in some part of my body—with severe stomach and bowel trouble at times, and various other complications.
Then, while in a city in Kansas, a friend advised me to try Christian Science. I asked her to tell me what the treatment was like. Her reply was that all she knew about it was that people say they are not sick when they are; yet she knew of some who had been healed. I knew there must be more to the treatment than she had stated, and later decided to try it. I had three weeks' treatment, during which time I realized the healing of what the doctors had pronounced a serious kidney affection. I was still very nervous, and had enough other troubles to contend with; but the good seed had been sown. At this time my husband and I went East to visit our relatives, where I was again persuaded to take material remedies, but the medicine had a tendency to make me worse, rather than to benefit me in the least. I could not continue taking it, and I longed for something, I knew not what, only that it seemed so far beyond my reach.
After returning to St. Louis, six months later, I decided to attend a Wednesday evening meeting. At first I was not impressed with the service, but later I heard a testimony given by a lady which encouraged me to hope that I, too, could be healed. I went home with a sense of having been uplifted, and I rested better that night than I had for many months past. I also decided that the next day I would try to ascertain who this lady was, and have her tell me more about Christian Science. I did so, and she told me that it was the religion which Christ Jesus taught. This of course brought more questions and answers, and thus I realized that the hungering heart had at last found "the living bread," notwithstanding I had been a church-member and had never thought that I could change my religious views !
