I think the Lord has inspired me to write to you. For knowing as any one must know, how many manyAs Written:many [sic] similar letters to mine, you must be in receipt of every day, what encouragement could I have, that you would even read my letter, and yet something impels me to write. For the last four weeks I have been studying one of your books, “Science and Health,”Editorial Note: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. and have become thoroughly imbued with the idea, that if anybody can cure me, it will be yourself.

Last August my husband died suddenly leaving me with two childrenEditorial Note: Katherine Lathrop and John Carroll Lathrop. not old enough to be of much assistance, and only fifteen dollarsEditorial Note: $15.00 in 1884 is the equivalent of $423.23 in 2018.. Can you imagine such a condition of things? I am forty-one years old, and have been suffering from various forms of uterine difficulty and nervous exhaustion, for twenty years. I am convinced now that for the past three years I have been going through “change of life”Editorial Note: menopause for where I used to menstruate every fourteen days I now go from six weeks to two months and have been doing so for a year. Of course I am growing stronger, and probably in two or three years, I may become healthy, but unfortunately I cannot afford to wait. If I could get well, there are various things I might do, but what can I do now, when I am not strong enough to walk a square!

Can you help me? Surely God will pay it back to you in some way. I anxiously await your answer. If I could be cured, and then study your glorious ScienceEditorial Note: Christian Science, I might not only do something for myself and family, but also benefit suffering humanity.