It is with a deep sense of gratitude that I send my testimony. Fifteen years ago Christian Science was brought to me while I was an inmate of the children's hospital in San Francisco, where I had been confined for nine years, suffering from hip disease. During these years I had undergone nine operations, some very severe, and I suffered intensely most of the time. Then a loving friend told me of Christian Science and of her healing. I became very much interested, for I had given up all hope of being healed through materia medica, having been pronounced incurable by the best surgeons in the state. I was facing another operation, which the doctor said I might not survive.
It was then, although I had expected to spend my life in the hospital, that I decided to leave and try Christian Science. With my friend's help, I removed to a private boardinghouse and began the treatment. My first year as a student of Christian Science was very hard in many respects, and I was filled with fear and suffering all the time. The first error to disappear was my intense fear of God. How grateful I was to learn that He is Love, and that He had never afflicted me with this painful disease. I had been taught that my sufferings were in accordance with the will of God, and were all for some good purpose.
At the end of the year I was so much better that I was able to enjoy many pleasures of which I had been deprived by illness, and was more free from suffering than I had been in years. Then came a period of mental laziness, when I did very little earnest study, and left the work to the practitioner. Five years later I found myself just where I was when I first took up Christian Science, perhaps even worse. My relatives were very kind, and when I became bed-ridden, at my request they called in a doctor, who performed a slight operation and wanted me to wear a splint. Again I had to decide between Christian Science and medicine, and as splints had failed me before, I chose Science.
