At the time, I was not really close to any religion. My wife, a lifelong Christian Scientist, and I were parents of an eighteen-month-old baby girl. We were planning a vacation trip when the baby became ill. Days after a family reunion, our daughter was unable to keep down any food or water. At first, she seemed to want to take food and water, but later she began to refuse them.
Meanwhile, we found out that her cousin, who was the same age and had also been at the picnic, had similar symptoms and had been placed in the hospital. This played on our fear. I asked my wife to call the doctor who had attended our daughter's birth. He prescribed some medicine, but when we tried to give it to her, she kept spitting it out.
The next day our daughter ate
some animal crackers and got up
to play. She was healed.
