Before I became a student of Christian Science, tonsillitis kept me in bed two or three days each winter.
One summer, after having had class instruction, I was attending a college session at a conservation camp in northern Wisconsin when I manifested a severe case of tonsillitis. It was a day when the whole camp was going on a field trip. I asked to be excused because I knew I needed to do some specific prayerful work to overcome the symptoms.
In order to do this without waiting for everyone to leave camp, I went into the demonstration forest and sat high on a hill overlooking a river and began to declare the truth. I declared the perfection of God and man's perfection as His spiritual idea; I acknowledged the perfection of Love and of my own true selfhood as loving, having no soreness or coldness. I continued to acknowledge the perfection of Truth, Life, Spirit, Soul, Mind, Principle, and of man as the perfect manifestation of God as each of these synonyms describes Him.
