I have received so many blessings through Christian Science that I consider it a privilege to tell others of my healing, and I hope that my testimony may be a help to some other slave to the tobacco habit. I began to use tobacco at the age of seventeen, and from the first used it to excess, continuing to do so for forty-three years. During the latter part of this time I had a pipe in my mouth from nineteen to twenty hours out of every twenty-four. I had made a great many efforts to overcome this habit, but all to no purpose. I often wondered how it would seem to be a free man.
For several years my health had been failing, and by degrees I was incapacitated for work. Stomach and bowel disorder, a serious heart disease, etc., together with some dreadful trouble with my head, made life miserable. I had known of Christian Science for years, as through this treatment I had been helped out of a serious condition of neuralgia some seven years before; but somehow I thought that it could not overcome a habit of such long standing, and I did not have the courage to try it. I had become so enfeebled, however, that I saw something must be done if I hoped to live any length of time. I began to take treatment, but I started in with the thought that I had a fierce battle to fight and that I could never conquer. I gained so little benefit from the treatments that I finally stopped them.
The physical ills then set in with renewed energy, and I saw that I would not live long if I did not conquer the tobacco habit. I therefore began to have treatment again, and the battle was short this time. One day, after having smoked heavily, I was seized with an attack of the heart trouble which nearly ended all. As soon as I again gained control, however, I knew I was healed of the tobacco habit. From that day, in May, 1911, I have never had the slightest desire for the weed, though I have often been surrounded by those who were smoking. The physical ailments have been overcome one by one, till I now find myself healed of many of them, and I feel assured that He who "hath begun a good work" in me, will continue it unto the end.
