After treating his patients, Mr. Quimby would retire to an anteroom and write at his desk. I had a curiosity to know if he indited anything pathological relative to his patients, and asked if I could see his pennings on my case. He immediately presented them. I read the copy in his presence, and returned it to him. The composition was commonplace, mostly descriptive of the general appearance, height, and complexion of the individual, and the nature of the case: it was not at all metaphysical or scientific; and from his remarks I inferred that his writings usually ran in the vein of thought presented by these. He was neither a scholar nor a metaphysician. I never heard him say that matter was not as real as Mind, or that electricity was not as potential or remedial, or allude to God as the divine Principle of all healing. He certainly had advanced views of his own, but they commingled error with truth, and were not Science. On his rare humanity and sympathy one could write a sonnet.
I had already experimented in medicine beyond the basis of materia medica, — up to the highest attenuation in homœopathy, thence to a mental standpoint not understood, and with phenomenally good results;[1] meanwhile, assiduously pondering the solution of this great question: Is it matter, or is it Mind, that heals the sick?
It was after Mr. Quimby's death that I discovered, in 1866, the momentous facts relating to Mind and its superiority over matter, and named my discovery Christian Science. Yet, there remained the difficulty of adjusting in the scale of Science a metaphysical practice,
- ↑ See Science and Health, p. 47, revised edition of 1890, and pp. 152, 153 in late editions.
