In January, 1914, I went to a hospital and gave birth to a perfectly healthy child, but through negligence on the doctor's part blood-poison set in. On the second day I had a raging fever, for which an ice-cap was put on my head. The doctor could not understand why I had a fever, so on the third day he put me on the operating table, where I suffered untold agonies. This was repeated on the fourth and fifth days; then my face began to swell and the jaws to stiffen. When I told the matron of this, she advised me to get some gum and chew it: so I chewed gum day and night until I could stand it no longer.
The doctor then isolated the baby and myself, put us in a room where we caught terrible colds, and instead of having mumps (as my case was diagnosed) I had lockjaw. On the fifteenth day our baby died, and I was not expected to live. By morning I was paralyzed, could not move hand or foot, or turn my head on the pillow. They moved me to another floor, thinking I would pass away at any time, and my husband stayed by my bedside for five nights.
My mother-in-law, who was interested in Christian Science and who had just found out my condition, immediately went to a practitioner, who at once gave me absent treatment, and the very hour treatment began improvement set in. I moved my hand for the first time in days, the ice-cap was taken off, and from that day on there was a steady gain. In two weeks I left the hospital, much to the surprise of all.
