At the age of thirty-seven I was striken with what was considered an incurable malady. For one year I was unable to do any mental or physical work. Up to that time I had worked continuously and incessantly. Day and night my mind had been on my work. I was a pioneer worker and had opened a sanitarium in Surrey, England, with a medical office in London. I had also started and edited a health journal, and at night usually had been called upon to give lectures in the large cities of England, Scotland, and Ireland. My wife, seeing my danger, had cautioned me frequently, but had felt that I needed words of encouragement rather than words of caution, for the work had to done.
Then the, time came when I collapsed. I had to leave my work and go to the southern part of France, accompanied by a nurse. During my stay of three months I made some improvement, but, being impatient, I returned to my work in England too soon. In less than two months I had another breakdown. This made it necessary for me to forsake altogether the work which I had built up and loved, and for almost an entire year my brain refused to function normally. I know how it feels to be sidetracked after leading a most active life.
Since I had what was then considered an incurable disease, pernicious anemia, I came to the point where I gave up all hope of ever getting well again. But through the earnest prayers of my friends and a careful diet and good treatments I began to improve.
Several months later I gave a lecture to a large audience in the city of Melbourne, Australia. At the close a woman stepped up to me and said, "Are you Dr. Kress from England?"
I answered, "Yes."
She said, "I thought you were dead."
"No," I said, "I think there must be a mistake about that." She then told me that she had read my obituary in a London paper that had been sent to her.
I said, "That would certainly be of interest to me," and I asked her to let me have the paper. The next day she came with the paper. She called my notice to the headlines which read, "The Voice We Once Heard, We Shall Hear No More." Then appeared a delightful write-up of the good I was said to have accomplished. The obituary concluded by saying, "The world can ill afford to lose men like Dr. Kress." Forty-six years have pasied since I read my obituary. I have succeeded in reaching the age of eighty-three, and during the past two years I have been in my office and on duty daily from nine to twelve.
As I look back over the past I can say with David, "It is good for me that I have been afflicted: that I might learn Thy statutes." "Before I was afflicted I went astray." Ps. 119:71, 67. I learned, in part at least, the lessons God designed to teach me during that sickness. I began to make reforms in my diet, and refused to obey my inclinations to work when I ought to be sleeping. To be sidetracked for that one year was the best thing that could have happened to me, although for the time I felt unreconciled to it.
