human race, and the manner in which it came about is of the highest importance.
It is difficult to ascertain definitely just when Mrs. Eddy arrived at the conclusion that mortal mind, not matter, causes sin, sickness, and death, as her own recollection of her initial revelation seems to be somewhat blurred. "As long ago as 1844," she writes in the Christian Science Journal, in June, 1887, "I was convinced that mortal mind produced all disease, and that the various medical systems were, in no proper sense, scientific. In 1862, when I first visited Mr. Quimby, I was proclaiming—to druggists, Spiritualists, and mesmerists—that science must govern all healing."
To her discovery of the principle of mental healing, she has assigned no less than three different dates:
In a letter to the Boston Post, March 7, 1883, she says:
We made our first experiments in mental healing about 1853, when we were convinced that mind had a science, which, if understood, would heal all disease.
Again, in the first edition of Science and Health (1875), she says:
We made our first discovery that science mentally applied would heal the sick, in 1864, and since then have tested it on ourselves and hundreds of others and never found it fail to prove the statement herein made of it.
In Retrospection and Introspection, she says:
It was in Massachusetts, in February, 1866, . . . that I discovered the Science of Divine Metaphysical Healing, which I afterwards named Christian Science.[1]
In later editions of Science and Health, and in numerous other places, Mrs. Eddy definitely fixes 1866 as the year of her
