Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/114

80 The unprejudiced historian finds discrepancies, not only in the dates of Mrs. Eddy's discovery, but in her accounts of the particular episodes which occasioned it. In the several editions of Science and Health, for example, there are two elaborate versions. In the early editions Mrs. Eddy associates her discovery with experiments which she made to cure herself of dyspepsia; in later editions, as the result of a miraculous recovery from a spinal injury received in a fall on the ice in Lynn, in 1866. Both these episodes are related in all editions of the book. In the early versions, however, the recovery from dyspepsia receives the greater emphasis; while in recent editions the fall on the ice assumes the chief importance, with the other story forced more and more into the background.

In the first edition of Science and Health (1875), Mrs. Eddy gives the following account of how she was led to see the truth:

When quite a child, we adopted the Graham system for dyspepsia, ate only bread and vegetables, and drank water, following this diet for years; we became more dyspeptic, however, and of course thought we must diet more rigidly; so we partook of but one meal in twenty-four hours, and this consisted of a thin slice of bread, about three inches square, without water; our physician not allowing us with this simple meal, to wet our parched lips for many hours thereafter; whenever we drank, it produced violent retchings. Thus we passed most of our early years, as many can attest, in hunger, pain, weakness and starvation. At length we learned that while fasting increased the desire for food, it spared none of the sufferings occasioned by partaking of it, and what to do next, having already exhausted the medicine men, was a question. After years of suffering, when we made up our mind to die, our doctors kindly assuring us this was our only alternative, our eyes were suddenly opened, and we learned suffering is self-imposed, a belief, and not truth. That God never made men sick; and all our fasting for penance or health is not acceptable to Wisdom because it is not the science in which Soul governs sense. Thus Truth, opening our eyes, relieved our stomach, also, and enabled us to eat without suffering, giving God thanks; but we never afterwards enjoyed food as we expected to, if ever we were a freed slave,