Having been helped and encouraged many times by testimonies given in the Journal or Sentinel, or at Wednesday evening testimony meetings, I wish to testify to the great blessings that have come to me through the teachings of Christian Science.
I first turned to Christian Science for healing in August, 1896. For about a year I had been in poor health, the doctors saying I was very anæmic; I was also suffering from a trouble for which they failed to find any cause or cure. I was very weak, very thin, and suffered from almost constant backache. My mother, who had become somewhat interested in Christian Science through the healing of relatives, decided to dismiss the doctor and have Christian Science treatment for me. She wrote to a practitioner in Chicago asking her to help me. We were living in Europe at the time. In a month I was well, free from pain and gaining in weight. The conditions which caused me to suffer have never returned. That winter I began to suffer from chilblains, as I had suffered during three previous winters. Again I wrote to Chicago for help, and in a week's treatment I was healed; and although I lived under exactly the same conditions that winter I never had this trouble again. From that time I have never consulted a doctor, nor have I used any material remedies. I have always turned to Christian Science for help, and have always been healed.
I had always been healed very quickly, but there came a time when I went through an experience of a slow physical healing; and I now know that during that experience I learned more of God and of God's man than I had ever known before, and that knowledge became for me a firm foundation, which can never be removed. Two of my sisters had passed away with tuberculosis, and I became terrified that I should manifest the same disease. Even the sight of the word would send me into a panic of fear. I began to manifest every evidence of the disease, and though no doctor ever diagnosed it, from my experience of nursing one whom the doctor said had tuberculosis of the bowels, I know that the symptoms were the same. For eight months I got worse, though there were times of improvement. I had treatment at different times from two practitioners, and sometimes felt able to help myself. Then, when I was in great extremity, having been unable to assimilate any food for some time, I telephoned to a practitioner in another town for help. From that moment the healing came very quickly. I ate my supper that night, retaining it; and never again had any trouble about my food. I gained strength hourly, and in a month was perfectly and permanently healed, not only of the disease but of the awful fear of it. I know that the faithful work done for me during those months meant the breaking down and destroying of many false fears and beliefs which seemed to hold me, and that healing was being accomplished all the time.
