At the age of fourteen, when apparently a healthy youngster, I awoke one morning with an uncomfortable mist over my left eye. Later that day, upon closing my right eye, I noticed that I had completely lost the vision of the left and could detect nothing, save the sense of a moving object passing in front of me. Such a sudden affliction baffled the leading eye specialists in Providence, Rhode Island. One of them recommended my consulting a nationally famous oculist in Boston, Massachusetts. As a result of the latter's diagnosis, the next fifteen years found me under the care of some of the most eminent physicians, surgeons, osteopaths, dietitians, Swedish masseurs, and chiropractors in Providence, Chicago, and Cleveland.
In the meantime I had recovered nearly half of the lost vision in my left eye, but at the age of twenty-three I lost the complete vision of my right eye overnight in the same manner as that of the left eye. I then developed serious trouble with my hands and legs, and my locomotion was very badly handicapped. I had no confidence at all in traffic or in crossing a street, and staggered about for many months, leaning uncertainly upon a cane. At this time a famous Cleveland neurologist sent me to a local hospital for observation and a thorough examination, the sum and substance of it all being that the doctors disagreed as to the cause of all my trouble and admitted they could do nothing for me.
My dear mother had been interested in Christian Science for years, but in my ignorance of the subject I had thought it impracticable for anything other than temperament or poise. Given up by the best in the medical profession and with my back against the wall, I resolved to give God a trial, about three years ago, in much the same manner as a drowning man grasps at a straw. Here, however, I was most fortunate in being surrounded with real friends and being guided by a kind and capable practitioner, whose sound logic and common sense appealed to me from the first. Scarcely eleven months from the Sunday I first hobbled down the aisle of First Church of Christ, Scientist, of Cleveland, Ohio, I could walk perfectly without the use of a cane, and had regained much of my composure and confidence in the thickest of traffic. Today I am experiencing not only perfect health, but more genuine happiness than I had ever thought possible. To me, the most remarkable demonstration of all is the perfect restoration of my vision. This last strikes me as being almost a resurrection from the dead; for several foremost eye specialists had pronounced the nerve tissue as such, using the medical term "atrophy," which means dead nerve tissue, and stating that it was just as impossible to rescue dead nerve tissue as it was a dead body.
