My sister, living in Scotsville, Cape Breton, suffered for about three years from severe inflammation in her knee, accompanied, as is usual in such cases, by stiffness of the joint and great pain. Several physicians, among them one of Quincy's leading doctors and an eminent medical man in Boston, treated her, but failed to effect a cure or even secure permanent improvement. Conditions gradually grew worse; it looked as if the knee had become tubercular; the general health of the patient was becoming poor and she was losing courage. This was the state of things for about three years.
I did not know anything about the processes of Christian Science healing, and do not in fact now, but I knew there must be something in it because of testimonies that had come to my attention from reliable sources, so I wrote to my sister, urging her to give Christian Science a fair trial, and saying that she had everything to gain and nothing to lose by the experiment. I ordered a copy of Science and Health and a trial subscription to the Monitor sent her, and I mailed her the Sentinel every week.
My sister, being by occupation a professional nurse and in religion a Presbyterian, found it hard to take to the remedy I advised, but finally laid aside all prejudice and began to study the literature, with the result that in less than a month she reported progress and improvement. The tissues in the region of the knee, which had for some time been flabby and shrunken, were beginning to fill out and the pain was passing away. A short time later, flexibility took the place of stiffness in the knee. The patient's general health became normal, and today she is apparently well, attending to her work and ardently studying Christian Science, from which she has also received other benefits.
