From my teen years I had an acute reaction to poison oak, even without actually coming into contact with the plant. At first I broke out repeatedly during the autumn. Later this occurred at various seasons of the year. Friends in the medical profession told me I had the reaction in my blood and would never get rid of it, although medication could help.
This awakened me to begin a deep study, in the textbook, Science and Health, and Mrs. Eddy's other writings, of the word "blood" and its relation to sacrifice. I knew the primary sacrifice I needed to make was to give up the belief that my true identity was material. I relied wholeheartedly on the promise in Science and Health that "there is more life and immortality in one good motive and act, than in all the blood which ever flowed through mortal veins and simulated a corporeal sense of life."
(Science and Health, p. 376): "The pallid invalid, whom you declare to be wasting away with consumption of the blood, should be told that blood never gave life and can never take it away,—that Life is Spirit, and that there is more life and immortality in one good motive and act, than in all the blood which ever flowed through mortal veins and simulated a corporeal sense of life." This helped me to gradually overcome fear.
An important breakthrough came. I had been scratching the condition, almost with a feeling of satisfaction. The next day we visited the zoo, and I stopped to laugh at the monkeys. Suddenly one began scratching himself vigorously. I was struck with the similarity to my own scratching, and then I saw another similarity. "You've put yourself in a cage just like that monkey!" I thought. "And you have the means to escape the cage that mortal mind has built—the belief in susceptibility to disease."
