When a youth of fifteen years I became afflicted with tuberculous periostitis, a disease of the covering membrane of the bone. After undergoing medical treatment for two years, which were spent mostly on my back in an iron splint extending the full length of my body, I was, at the end of that period, told I could use my leg again. But although the physicians said the disease was cured, they had not cured either me or my parents of the fear of it. And so I lived under the constant fear of tubercular reinfection. I became also an acute rheumatic subject, and the pain and aches at intervals would fill me with dread that perhaps the old complaint had returned. I took medicines prescribed by my doctors almost continuously, and was a frequent visitor at the doctors' surgeries. The disease in about four years' time did eventually remanifest itself.
Two young men, contemporaries and friends of mine, had difficulties similar to mine with very disastrous effects. With these sad cases before me, I became very unhappy and fearful, and resigned myself once more to medical treatment. For twelve months I was kept completely on my back, in bed or on a couch, with my leg in splints. Then I was allowed up, and for the next four years got about on crutches with one leg in iron splints and a raised boot on the other.
Then Christian Science came into my life. I did not at first readily accept it. Christian Science friends made the mistake—only too common —of trying to push me into taking up the study of Science. I bitterly resisted them. When at last, however, a friend gave me the Christian Science textbook, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, progress became rapid, and I decided to have Christian Science treatment. At the end of a few weeks I discarded the iron splints.
