John Lowe Butler - Miraculous Healing of Severe Childhood Rheumatic and Physical Decline

John Lowe Butler suffered severe childhood afflictions. At age seven, he was stricken with inflammatory rheumatics that 'passed from my feet to my finger ends in every joint.' He then contracted what doctors called 'an impostume on my leg' and later 'the dropsy in my left eye; it was swollen for thirteen days so that the sight could not be seen, and when I could open it they said it looked like a hog's eye after it had been scalded, and the doctor said it would be difficult to save.' From age seven until twenty, Butler endured twelve severe rheumatic attacks, sometimes twice a year. When he was nineteen, 'pain fell in my left side and my left arm and thigh and leg began to shrink and fail me so that I began to think that I should lose the use of that side altogether. I was so reduced that my mother could carry me from one room to another with ease, in her arms.' However, 'through the means used, the Lord began to restore my limbs again so that when I was twenty-two years of age I was getting better than ever I expected to be.' This miraculous restoration allowed him to labor and eventually stand six feet tall, contrary to all medical expectations.