In 1918 I was suffering from a nervous breakdown. I weighed ninety-seven pounds, and had gradually settled into a state of depression from which nerve specialists, relatives, and friends seemed unable to arouse me. As I contemplated life and its seemingly unsolvable problems, I began to think of suicide. After I had made the weary rounds of being examined by several physicians, my parents were advised to place me in a sanitarium for safekeeping. I pass over the heartbreak of my dear parents and my own despair. So far as I have been able to discover, I was placed on record as a case of "incipient dementia superinduced by melancholia." I might add here, for those who still believe that Christian Science cures only nervous or neurasthenic cases, that since earliest childhood I had been subject to biliousness, jaundice, and constipation. I had been treated with many drugs, but with no permanent relief. I was engaged in public school teaching, and each spring as the burden of work seemed to become heavier this condition of inaction became worse.
After I had been in the sanitarium several months and had only added to my stock of illusions, even my mother's hopefulness began to wane. She was in tears one day when our next-door neighbor told her of Christian Science. We had known nothing of its methods, but mother called on a practitioner at once, and treatment was commenced. In less than three months I was taken home, when mother's fears were allayed enough so that she felt she could take me there. I had not been told beforehand. When the nurse came to tell me one Sunday morning that I was going home, she could scarcely speak for tears of joy. I could not believe her. I had almost ceased to believe anything or anyone; but I went humbly.
Shortly after that our kind neighbor took us to a Wednesday evening testimony meeting, giving me my first glimpse of a new heaven and a new earth. I truly felt the spiritual power of the Lord's Prayer. Then I began to study ''Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy; but we still felt the need of the practitioner, who had so helped us amid the darkness. It was during this time, while she was working for me, that I was completely healed of constipation. I began to grow into a state of health hitherto unknown to me. I can truly say there is nothing like the renewing and regenerating power of the hopeful and uplifting message of Truth and Love.
