My servant brought my wrapper, and I arose from bed and sat up. The attack of heart-disease lasted two days, and we all think I could not have survived, but for the wonderful help received from you. The enlargement of my left side is all gone, and the doctors pronounce me rid of heart-disease. I had been afflicted with it from infancy. It became organic enlargement of the heart and dropsy of the chest. I was only waiting, and almost longing, to die, but you have healed me. How wonderful to think of it, when you and I have never seen each other. We return to Europe next week. I feel perfectly well.
Louisa M. Armstrong.
Mr. R. O. Badgely, of Cincinnati, Ohio, wrote: “My painful and swelled foot was restored at once on your receipt of my letter, and that very day I put on my boot and walked several miles.” He had previously written me: “A stick of timber fell from a building on my foot, crushing the bones. Cannot you help me? I am sitting in great pain, with my foot in a bath.”
I never believed in taking certificates or presenting testimonials of cures; and usually, when healing, have said to the individual, “Go, tell no man.” I have never made a specialty of healing, but labored, in every way that God directed, to introduce metaphysical treatment. I offer a few testimonials, simply to support my statements about Christian Science.
Lynn, June, 1873.
My little son, a year and a half old, had ulcerations of the bowels, and was a great sufferer. He was reduced almost to a skeleton, and growing worse daily. He could take nothing but gruel, or some very simple nourishment. At that time the physicians had given him up, saying they could do no more for him, and he was taking laudanum. Mrs. Eddy came in, took him up from the cradle, held him a few minutes, kissed him, laid him down again, and went out. In less than an hour he was taken up, had his playthings, and was well. All his symptoms changed at once. For months previously blood and mucous had passed his bowels, but that day the evacuation was natural, and he has not suffered from his complaint since. He is now well and hearty. After she saw him he ate all he wanted. He even ate a quantity of cabbage just before going to bed.
L. C. Edgecomb.
I was called to visit Mr. Clark, in Lynn, confined to his bed six months with hip-disease, caused by a fall upon a wooden spike, when quite a boy. On entering the house I met his physician, who said he was dying. He had just probed the ulcer on the hip, and said the bone was carious for several inches. He even showed me the probe, that had on it the evidence of this condition of the bone. The doctor passed out. Mr. Clark lay with his eyes fixed and sightless; the dew of death was upon his brow. I went to his bedside. In a few moments his face changed; its death-pallor gave place to a natural hue. The eyelids closed gently, the breathing became natural; he was asleep. In about ten minutes he opened his eyes and said, “I feel like a new man; my suffering is all gone.” It was between three and four o'clock in the afternoon when this took place.
I told him to rise, dress himself, and take supper with his family. He did so. The next day I saw him in the yard. Since then I have not seen him, but am informed that he went to work in two weeks, and that pieces of wood were discharged from the sore as it healed. These pieces had remained there ever since the injury received in his boyhood.
Since his recovery I have been informed that his physician claims to have cured him; and that his mother has been threatened with an insane asylum for having said, “It was none other than God and that woman who healed him.” I cannot attest to the truth of that report, but what I saw and did for that man, and what his physician said of the case, occurred just as I have narrated. For three years I sought day and night the solution of this problem of Mind-healing. I searched the Scriptures, and read nothing else, not even a newspaper. I kept aloof from society, and devoted my time and energies to discovering a positive rule. I knew the Principle of all harmonious Mind-action to be God, and that cures were produced, according to primitive Christian healing, by a holy, uplifting faith; but I must know its Science, and I won my way through divine discovery, reason, and human experiment.
I had no human aid. The revelation of Truth to the understanding came, as to all, through divine power; when “unto us a child is born,” a new idea has birth, and “his name is Wonderful.” This is the origin of Christian Science in this century.
That Life is God, that the might of omnipotent Spirit shares not its strength with material drugs, have been demonstrated to me. Reviewing this brief experience, I cannot fail to discern the coincidence of the human with the divine.
My medical researches and experiments had prepared the way for metaphysics. Every material dependence had failed, and I can now understand why; for I see the means by which mortals are divinely driven to a spiritual source for health, happiness, and Life. My experiments in homœopathy had made me sceptical as to material curative methods.
Jahr, from Aconitum to Zincum oxydatum, enumerates the general symptoms, the characteristic signs, that demand the different remedies. But the drug is attenuated to such a degree that not a vestige of it remains; and from this I learn that it is not the drug that cures the disease, or changes one of the symptoms.
I have attenuated Natrum muriaticum (common table-salt) until there was not a single saline property left. The salt had “lost its savor;” and yet with one drop of that attenuation in a goblet of water, and a teaspoonful of the water administered at intervals of three hours, I have cured a patient sinking in the last stage of typhoid fever.
The highest attenuation of homœopathy, and the most potent, steps out of matter into Mind; and thus it should be seen that Mind is the healer, or metaphysics, and that there is no efficacy in the drug.
A case of dropsy, given up by the faculty, fell into my hands. It was a terrible case. Tapping had been employed, and the patient looked like a barrel as she lay in the bed. I prescribed the fourth attenuation of Argenitum nitricum, with occasional doses of a high attenuation of Sulphuris. She improved perceptibly. Believing then somewhat in the ordinary theories of medical practice, I began to fear a crisis, or aggravation of symptoms from the prolonged use of these remedies, and told the patient so; but she was unwilling to give up the medicine, when she was recovering. It then occurred to me to give her unmedicated pellets for a while, and watch the result. I did so, and she continued to gain as before. Finally she said that she would give up her medicine for one day, and risk the effects. After trying this she informed me that she could get along two days without globules; but on the third day she again suffered, and was relieved by taking them. She went on in this way, taking the unmedicated pellets, with occasional visits from me, — employing no other means, — and was cured.
When I learned of a verity that Mind, and not matter, effects the cure, I had such qualms of conscience over attributing the cure to matter that I gave up a respectable profession, and heard the soft impeachment that I had lost my wits, or become a Spiritualist — which seems to me much the same thing.
My experiments have proved the fact that Mind governs the body, not in one instance, but in every instance. A change of belief changes all the physical symptoms, and determines a case for better or worse. Nerves carry a changed report according to the changed belief. The indestructible faculties of Spirit exist without the necessities of matter, or the false beliefs of a so-called material existence.
Destruction of the auditory nerve, and paralysis of the optic, are not needed to ensure deafness and blindness; for if mortal mind says, “I am deaf and blind,” it will be so without an injured nerve. Every theory opposed to this fact (as I learned in metaphysics) makes man, who is immortal in understanding, mortal in belief.
What is termed matter manifests nothing but mortality. Not a glimpse or manifestation of Spirit is obtained through matter. Spirit is positive; and for positive Spirit to pass through negatives would be its destruction.
Whatever furnishes the semblance
