One day the television news was full of details about the prevalence of breathing difficulties like asthma. This reminded me of my own early experience. Asthma had always been prevalent in our family; it was seen as a common nervous problem. One of my earliest recollections is of my mother, who wasn't a Christian Scientist, coming quite often into the bedroom I shared with my older sister because of my sister's asthma attacks.
I didn't suffer from this complaint myself until one night a number of years later during World War II when I woke with a very bad asthma attack. I was working in the administrative department of an underground aircraft factory at the time. It was very isolated, and I had no access to a telephone.
The next morning I wrote to a Christian Science practitioner whom I had known all my life with the sad story of all my problems. Her brief reply simply thanked me for my letter and instructed me to read this passage from Science and Health: "The elements and functions of the physical body and of the physical world will change as mortal mind changes its beliefs.... Neither organic inaction nor overaction is beyond God's control; and man will be found normal and natural to changed mortal thought, and therefore more harmonious in his manifestations than he was in the prior states which human belief created and sanctioned" (pp. 124-125).
