On “the third day,” according to her latest version, she “arose from the bed of pain, healed and free,” but in a letter dated February 15, 1866, two weeks after the accident and while she was still suffering from its effects, she complained that she was then “slowly failing,” and implored Mr. Julius Dresser, to whom the letter was written, to help her. Here is her story of the incident as written at the time: Lynn, Feb. 15, 1866. “Mr. Dresser,— “_Sir:_ I enclose some lines of mine in memory of our much-loved Friend, which perhaps _you_ will not think over-wrought in meaning, _others_ must of course. “I am constantly wishing that _you_ would step forward into the place he has vacated. I believe you would do a vast amount of good, and are more capable of occupying his place than any other I know of. “Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk and struck my back on the ice and was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapors from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor, etc., but to find myself the helpless cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby. “The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should, but in two days I got out of my bed _alone_, and _will_ walk, but yet I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly.… Now can’t _you_ help me. I believe you can. I write this with this feeling: I think I could help another in _my_ condition, if they had not placed their intelligence in matter. This I have not done and yet _I am slowly failing_. Won’t you write me if you will undertake for me if I can get to you?… “Respectfully, “Mary M. Patterson.” Not to comment upon the singularity of the administration of chloroform and ether to an unconscious person, it sufficeth to call attention to the manner in which again Mrs. Patterson contradicts Mrs. Eddy. She furnishes the most effective kind of corroboration of Dr. Cushing, and the whole thing is clearly seen to be an invention, so far as any unusual or peculiar or miraculous features are concerned. It is clear that Mrs. Eddy did not discover Christian Science in the _manner_ claimed. So much for that particular, and particularly silly perversion of the truth, and invention of the fictitious.