With great gratitude I wish to bear witness to a healing...

Else Thierack

With great gratitude I wish to bear witness to a healing which my eight-year-old daughter experienced.

One year we were spending our summer vacation on the Baltic Sea, and as there was continuous very hot weather we went bathing several times a day. After about three weeks our daughter was suddenly taken ill with vomiting and high fever. For days she refused all nourishment. Then she had difficulty in swallowing, her joints became swollen and stiff, and she was in great pain. I tried with my own understanding of Christian Science to overcome this sickness, but she grew worse. I was told that the sickness was the result of her excessive ocean bathing. In about a week my husband, who is not a Scientist, insisted that a doctor be consulted. He came and diagnosed the case as articular rheumatism. In the meantime I had written to a Christian Science practitioner and asked for help. But the sickness did not yield, the condition growing worse. The stiffness extended to the cervical vertebrae and the child could not move her head, and was in great pain. One day the sense of danger seemed especially great, the child being completely apathetic. When the doctor came he found his suspicion confirmed. He mentioned the danger of inflammation of the cerebral membrance and a suspicion of cerebrospinal meningitis. The only possibility of making the cervical vertebrae supple again was said to lie in lancing the spinal cord. On his next visit the doctor intended to do this.

Discouraged and perplexed, I remained alone with the child, as my husband meanwhile had had to go home. Despair threatened to seize me, but God's hand sustained me. I took the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health by Mrs. Eddy, and read. At the time I understood little of it, but I read on until I came to the passage which reads (p. 420), "Mind is the natural stimulus of the body." I held on to this passage as the truth of which I was in need at that moment. I could not get beyond it, but read it over and over again.

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