SEVERAL YEARS AGO, as president of a restaurant chain that was about to go public, I had to be in New York for a "road show" to promote our stock offering to prospective investors. During the two-week trip, we encountered severe winter weather conditions. On my arrival home, I was feeling ill and soon developed a nagging cough. The condition worsened during the coming weeks, and I experienced substantial weight loss.
Our company's board of directors was alarmed enough at my condition to ask that I see a physician. However, I explained to them that this would not be necessary, and that as a Christian Scientist I wanted to rely solely on prayer for healing. My experience has been that prayer, based on spiritual understanding, is always the most effective form of treatment. I felt certain that "health is not a condition of matter ..." however much it appeared so, but a condition of divine Mind, or God, as Mary Baker Eddy has explained in Science and Health (p. 120).
I knew that this Mind was the only cause, and governed every aspect of my life and every function of my body. This Mind was, in fact, my Mind, and would correct any false concept I might be holding about life being material rather than spiritual. Because I felt that a doctor's diagnosis did not deal with the real cause of disease—the false concept that matter is cause and that we're subject to its conditions, such as cold and contagion—I thought a diagnosis would only misdirect my efforts for healing.
