Testimony of Healing February 19, 1916 Issue

I was always considered delicate and had throat and...

Ruth Rea Thompson Irwin

I was always considered delicate and had throat and stomach trouble. Tuberculosis was supported to be hereditary in our family and the fear of that disease was always held over me. When I was seventeen years old symptoms of this malady began to appear, after we had left our home in New Mexico and moved to Los Angeles. I grew worse all the time and tried one doctor after another. Finally a specialist, after several weeks of severe treatment, told me I must leave California at once, as I would live but a few months in that climate. I returned to Albuquerque, N. Mex., in the hope that the climate there would cure me. I also took three months' treatment from a doctor, who said he would cure me in that time, but at the end of that period he said I was incurable. I was a total wreck. The doctor also told me that if I lived a year I would go insane. I left his office very much discouraged, but a wonderful surprise was awaiting me, and my sadness was soon to be turned into joy unsurpassed.

When I returned home I found a letter from a Christian Science friend in Los Angeles who had tried to interest me in Science when I was there, but I was not ready for it until everything else had failed. I wrote her that very night to begin treatment; I also began to study out the truth for myself. The stomach trouble and cough were overcome in a few weeks, and one by one all other symptoms faded into their native nothingness. This was in May, and the following August I entered the university. In the two years I went there and the following year that I taught school I did not miss a day on account of ill health. My father was opposed to Christian Science and would not give me the money to get a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures," so I walked to the university each day, a distance of two miles or more, and saved five cents. In this way I got enough to buy a pocket edition of the text-book. It took quite a while to save the amount, and I had to walk about two hundred miles, but it was worth it.

In the glorious eight years since my healing I have had many proofs of the truth of Christian Science, both for myself and for others. I left New Mexico several years after my healing, and have lived in Ohio, Nevada, and again in California. This has proved to me that there is nothing in climate, and colds and sore throat are absolutely a thing of the past. I have been given a health certificate from the physician who treated me before I came into Science. He watched me for several years, and said himself that he knew I was healed.

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