Rensselaer Republican, Volume 27, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 July 1895 — Cured by Prayer. [ARTICLE]

Cured by Prayer.

He makes his defense on the truthfulness of his works. He cites as a first miracle the result of his prayer for Sadie Cody. She swears that by some mysterious power her left leg was lengthened three inches, and she was enabled to walk without a limp. Her relatives verify her story. Miss Cody was carried into the home on a stretcher, taken from the train a helpless, doomed woman. The people of her Indiana town told her she would die among strangers. She came to the tabernacle in her extremity. She asserts that all the physicians in the town had pronounced her marked for the grave, and swears before a notary that Dr. C. A. DavidTffi State street, had declared her beyond the assistance of medical science. Conviction that she was to be instantly healed, reads the affidavit, came the moment she became a resident member of the singing, praying band. She so told Mr. Dowie, but he sent her to a room to spend a season with her Bible. Others were sent to holster up her faith. Prayer lasted two days, and then the preacher concluded the time had come for the laying on of hands. Miss Cody was carried to the healing-room and placed upon the sofa. Mr. Dowie listened to her confession of faith and then prayed; so did Miss Cody. Mr. Dowie concluded his ministration by a command to “arise and wajk in the name of the Lord.” Miss Cody describes in her affidavit that she felt within her some terrific force. She strugg’ed, and, arising, stood upon her feet. JSfea .walked—access -Jha. room, the first time she had stood without assistance in a year. Within eight weeks, she says, she left the home a well woman. She came to Chicago from Morris, 111., to bear witness to the genuineness of the cures of Mr. Dowie.

After reading the above statement from Dowie, and learning from the physicians here how monstrously false and misleading they are in all essential particulars, we are more than ever convinced that this Dowie is a monumental money-making fraud, and the truth is not in him. Dr. W. W. Hartsell treated Miss Cody for a long time for sciatic rheumatism. Instead of having pronounced her as “marked for the grave” he says that when she left his care, she was practically cured of her rheumatism, and was suffering only from hysteria. Dr. M. B. A Iter was her last physician previous to her going to Dowie. He never “pronounced her as marked for the grave” either. On the eon* fcrary the very last opinion he gave her of her case was that her disease had reached a stage where nature would work a slow but certain cuxeIn this view Dr. C. A. David, her

uncle, who is referred to in the above quoted paragraph, fully agreed. Dr. David was down here, in consultation with Dr. Alter in the case. Both he and Dr- Alter did admit that in one sense “she was beyond the Assistance of medical science.” In other words they told her that her disease had, assumed a chronic stage, where medicine would not affect it, but where it would get well of itself, in time. Her recovery was undoubtedly much more .rapid under Dowie’s hypnotic encouragement than it otherwise would have been, although according to his own statement it Was eight weeks before she left the “home” a well woman. And the people of Rensselaer who observe her "present far from healthy appearance, doubt whether she is yet wholly well. Dr. J. H. Loughridge also diagnosed Miss Gody’s caße, in consultation with Dr. Alter; and Dr. V. E. Loughridge also perscribed for her. Neither of them nor any other doctor of Rensselaer ever thought of “pronouncing her a doomed woman,” but on the contrary saw no reason why she should not, ultimately get well. As to what Miss Cody herself now believes and asserts about her case, it is sufficient to say that while her honesty and sincerity are above question, yet t_ie opinions about their own oases, of persons suffering from hysteria, are of no value whatever. It is by thus parading and monstrously misrepresenting such cases as this of Miss Cody’s, that Dowie is becoming enormously wealthy from the deluded patrons of his $lO a week boarding houses. It will be noticed, however, that he maintains a profound silence in regard to such cases as two others from this vicinity; one of whom came back a corpse and the other scarcely living to reach home. Neither has he any thing to say of the many cases of real cripples and real sickness, several of whom live in this vicinity, to whom his so-called cure afforded no relief. The statement that one of Miss Cody’s legs was lengthened three inches is a palpable falsehood. Of all the persons who knew her previous to her sickness, no one ever knew her as a cripple, and had one leg been three inches shorter than the other, she would have been 60 greatly crippied. that. walking would have been almost impossible.