I HAD been afflicted with what was called muscular and inflammatory rheumatism, when about the age of thirteen, through a belief of heredity, as my father and sisters had been likewise afflicted. Starting in my ankles, it gradually crept upward, and within a year had involved my whole system, bringing on spinal disease, or what is known as "Pott's curvature," until at the age of eighteen I was bent almost double. The best medical authorities in Montreal were consulted, and I was taken to all the noted mineral springs, but received very little help. Then typhoid fever seized me, and I was left a wreck. Several kinds of spinal supports were tried, and finally I was encased in a steel jacket lined with duck, and laced, which practically did away with all strain on the spine. This jacket I wore for nine years, putting it on the first thing each morning, and I was unable to walk across the room without its support.
In the morning, it would take me fully thirty minutes or longer to get into a sitting posture and start to dress, owing to the acute spinal trouble. For nearly fifteen years I had to go through this same thing every morning, until I gave out altogether in 1897. A year later found me still in bed, and then I was induced to try Christian Science treatment against my wish, as the outcome of a blind promise to do a favor for a friend, the favor being to allow her to pay for two weeks' treatment for me in Christian Science. I objected strenuously when she asked the favor, but having promised, I determined to go through with it.
I had not been out of bed for months, but on the evening of the second treatment, feeling easier and freer, I was able to slide slowly into a chair at the bedside and have the mattress turned, something that had not been done for months. It was only a few minutes, but just enough to start me wondering if there was not something in the treatment after all. I had not touched the books the practitioner had left, but I now decided to look through them. From that time I began to improve ; and while it was a long, tedious struggle up and down for three years thereafter, the results have been such as more than to compensate for a thousand times the effort put forth to keep me from falling back into the old rut.
