"I leave my testimony with you that I believe as firmly as I believe anything in this world that I would not be standing here today talking to you if I had not obeyed the Word of Wisdom.
"When my appendix was removed, it had broken and blood poisoning, so they said, in the third and last stage, had set in. There were nine doctors present and eight said I had to die. The chief surgeon in the Catholic hospital turned to President Joseph F. Smith, and said: "Mr. Smith, you need not think of such a possibility or probability as that this man shall live. Why, if he should live it would be a miracle, and this is not the day of miracles. He can't live because no man ever lived who was in the condition he is in following an operation for appendicitis."
"That was the message delivered to me by Joseph F. Smith himself during his last sickness, and he said: "Our doctor friend who said it would be a miracle has passed away. I never saw you looking healthier in my life than you do today, Heber."
"I said to the nurse who told me regarding these nine doctors that I did not want to meet any of them, except the one who said and believed that I would pull through. She said: "He is the house doctor. I will call him in."
"I asked him why he disagreed with the others, and he smiled. (He was a southerner.) He said:
"Mistah Grant, ah just took a chance, suh. Ah have felt the pulse, suh, of thousands of patients, having been a house doctor in many hospitals. But ah never felt a pulse just like yours, suh. Why do you know, suh, in all of the tests that I made during an hour and three quarters that you were under the knife your heart never missed one single, solitary beat, and ah made up my mind that that heart would pull through."
"What kind of heart did I have? I had a heart that had pure blood in it, that was not contaminated by tea, coffee, or liquor. That is why the poison in my system was overcome. The doctor who operated upon me had made an agreement with me that he was to tell me if I had to die -- and he did -- so that I could write a couple of letters. But I did not write them because in the kind providences of the Lord it had been revealed in a manifestation that I did not have to die.
"Men say we cannot receive communications from the other world, but my wife whose body lies in the grave, visited my wife who is alive and told her that my mission was not yet ended. And I had received before that a blessing by the gift of tongues from that identical wife whose body was in the grave. And what was in that blessing? That I should live to lift up my voice in many lands and in many climes proclaiming the restoration to the earth of the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ."
(_Gospel Standards_, pp. 326-7; _CR_, April, 1933:10-11)
Compiled and written by David Kenison
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