In February, 1919, I was discharged from the army with what was pronounced a functional heart disorder. In the next two years this difficulty steadily became more aggravated, and I spent many weary hours going from one doctor to another in search of relief. Each one tried to minimize the disorder, talked reassuringly of its eventual erasure —but did nothing at all to relieve me. This attitude soon began to frighten me; I thought they were holding something from me. Later I discovered that these men had no remedy to offer. In the meantime I tried a chiropractor, then a faith-healer, then another chiropractor; I read avidly many long dissertations on the chemistry of food and the purported remedial value of sunlight; but from them all I received not the slightest relief.
I do not remember the exact words used by the Christian Science practitioner, whom next I sought out, but I think I shall always remember the warm glow of assurance which suffused me as I listened to her. Nor will I soon forget the steady beat of my heart as I heard it on my pillow that night! My healing was almost instantaneous. But in the months which followed, error in the form of fear crept in and made me incredulous of such swift healing. The result was, of course, a slight return of the affliction. This should have warned me, but I was becoming engrossed in other matters. The practitioner had mentioned the Lesson-sermons to me many times, but I seldom, or never, found time to read them. I at first read "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy with absorbed interest; now this interest lagged.
It became necessary for me to learn that "the last state of that man" could indeed be "worse than the first." I found myself suddenly in a different locality, facing different problems, with Christian Science somewhere in a very hazy background. I became afflicted with various diseases,—neurosis, stomach trouble, slight attacks of appendicitis; my eyes, which had been healed of a weakness along with my other healings in Christian Science, now began to trouble me again, and I took to wearing glasses. I became first melancholy, then bitter. I became a doctor's daily visitor, until I was warned by a young and kindly physician to keep away from doctors!
