It has now been seven years since I turned to Christian Science as a last resort, in the hope of finding relief from asthma, which had become chronic. I had been bound by its seeming power for more than twenty years, and had exhausted every material remedy. Physicians of different schools tried in all earnestness to effect a cure. When local doctors had failed, I was then sent to a prominent specialist for examination, one who was looked up to as an authority, and who had written a number of prominent medical books along this line. I still remember how hopeful I was that he might find the seat of the trouble and succeed in removing the cause; but alas! his only words were "change of climate." Several months later I followed his advice and went West, but the change failed to benefit, for the disease seemed just as much in evidence. I soon decided to return home, and as I boarded the train made up my mind to have no more asthma and did not for six months. Then the disease returned and was worse than ever, thus proving the fruitlessness of will-power.
About this time Christian Science was brought to my attention; but my consciousness was as opaque as a stone wall to any possibility of relief from that source. Thus I went on for some time, and had given up all hope of ever being good for anything, having been told that the older I grew the more severe the disease would become. It was then, when utterly discouraged, that Christian Science was again presented to me, this time by a brother, whom I considered red altogether too intelligent to take up such a religion as I then thought Christian Science to be. In my extremity, however, I turned to it, and found that my opinion of it was as far from the truth as right is from wrong. Living in an environment of physical inharmony for a period of twenty years, discord had become the real and harmony a very unusual condition.
My healing was slow, although the practitioner worked earnestly for nearly a year, never once showing signs of impatience, in spite of the repeated visits and telephone calls for help. One day I went to see her, and in the course of conversation made some reference to "this claim of mine." Here she lovingly but very sternly awakened me out of my dream of life, of claiming a thing God never made, hence did not belong to me; and she poured forth a volley of truth which is still very clear in my thought.
