Testimony of Healing November 1, 1922 Issue

When, in late May, 1918, I set sail from San Francisco...

Charles Backus

When, in late May, 1918, I set sail from San Francisco in command of the schooner Ethel Zane, I had been in Christian Science several years; therefore, in the cabin, among my charts and nautical instruments, were the Bible, "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" by Mary Baker Eddy, and "Miscellaneous Writings," also by Mrs. Eddy.

When three weeks out of San Francisco, bound for Manila, and about three hundred and fifty miles southwest of Hawaii, as we were being carried along by a beautiful northeast trade wind, taking the wheel, I ordered the sails shifted, and the schooner jibbed. As the spanker boom swung heavily over me, a bale iron broke, and a heavy block struck me on the head and shoulders. My skull was fractured, a collar bone was broken and protruded at the neck, and one of the bones in the back of my neck was broken and protruded. The block pinned my left arm against the wheel, cutting it to the bone, and flattening one of the spokes on the wheel from which I had just taken my hand. An artery in my arm was severed.

My first aid in the struggle to retain consciousness was the "scientific statement of being" (Science and Health, p. 468). I repeated it and repeated it, as the men ran to my side and carried me to my cabin. A tourniquet was made to stop the blood, but no other material aid was given. I realized that I was in mid-Pacific, and that God alone could help me. I knew it was to the Father only that I could turn; and for four days, in my cabin, I read and kept reading Science and Health, as I had never read before. The bones knitted; the bruised flesh was replaced; and in two weeks I was on duty again. I was totally incapacitated for only four days.

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