Christian Science was first introduced to my family thirty years ago, but I was not ready to accept it; and although I witnessed an instantaneous healing of a serious difficulty, I looked upon it as a faith cure and a fad.
I was beginning a nursing career which filled my life for a considerable period, and in my eagerness for knowledge, I took up every branch of medical surgery. I found it all very wonderful, until I began to be dissatisfied with results. At this stage odd copies of Christian Science literature came my way; and pondering the articles I realized that I was not working in the highest profession, as I had previously thought. The early seed sown was to bear fruit. Slowly I was brought out of materia medica, and was able to prove Mrs. Eddy's words on page 369 of the textbook, that Christian Science is both "prophylactic and therapeutic."
From childhood I was delicate. I suffered from a weak chest and was never without a cough. Later, refusing an operation for gastric ulcers, I was for years strictly dieted. I could not travel in trains or buses without sickness and for this I took drugs. To be sociable I had acquired the habit of smoking cigarettes. I often promised to refrain from this, but it was not until I began the study of Christian Science seriously that I destroyed all drugs and medicines in my possession, and gave up smoking. Only those who have been delivered from these two pernicious habits can realize what such freedom means.
