● ● ● of her head and neck.”2 After examining her he gave strict orders that she should not be moved. Two or three friends offered to stay with her through the night.3
Cushing paid two visits that evening.4 When he returned the next morning the women who had been watching with her told him that she had been unconscious all night, and she was still not able to speak. An effort had been made to find Patterson, who was away on one of his jaunts; he was finally reached in New Hampshire by telegram in the morning and hurried back that same day.5
Meanwhile Mrs. Patterson regained consciousness sufficiently to insist, against Cushing’s advice and to her friends’ alarm, that she be moved to her home at Paradise Court. In order to lessen the pain of the move the doctor gave her one-eighth of a grain of morphine and this plunged her into a deep sleep which lasted for several hours. The move by sleigh was made under his superintendence; he stayed until she recovered consciousness; and later that day (Friday) he visited her again.6
During the day George Newhall, a milkman, called to deliver the milk. He found two members of Mrs. Patterson’s church, Mrs. Carrie Millett and Mrs. Mary Wheeler, in charge. They told him that she “had met with an accident by falling on the ice and had broken her spine and would never be able to take another step alone.” Mrs. Millett asked him “to go down to Marblehead line and inform the Minister the Rev. Jonas B. Clark of the accident.” Years later he recalled the ride “with the ● ● ●
2 Alvin M. Cushing, affidavit, quoted in Georgine Milmine, The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (New York: Doubleday, Page, 1909), p. 84.
↑3 “Gave Morphine to Mrs. Eddy,” The Sunday Herald (Boston), 24 December 1899, p. 17. Sibyl Wilbur, “Personal interview in 1907 by Sibyl Wilbur with Dr. Alvin M. Cushing,” n.d., Reminiscence, MBEL; William D. Thompson recorded in unidentified newspaper clipping, c. 1900–1911, Subject File, Mary Baker Eddy - Lynn, February 1866 - Accident and Aftermath, MBEL.
↑5 Alvin M. Cushing to Lyman P. Powell, 14 June 1907, Subject File, Lyman P. Powell- Papers - Correspondence - 1907 to 1908, MBEL.
↑6 Milmine, Life, pp. 84–85. Cushing pointed out that the one-eighth of a grain of morphine was given “not as a curative remedy, but as an expedient to lessen the pain of removing,” and its effect was so immediate that, he added, “Probably one-sixteenth of a grain would have put her sound asleep” (p. 85). Bates-Dittemore make the disingenuous comment, “This seems conclusive evidence that she had not as yet yielded far to the habit.” Edward Sutherland Bates and John V. Dittemore, Mary Baker Eddy: The Truth and the Tradition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1932), p. 112n3. Medically it would seem to be conclusive evidence that there was no habit.
↑