in Chicago. She had now fallen out with Mrs. Clara Choate, and for several weeks before she went West Mrs. Eddy was in a state of great anxiety lest Mrs. Choate should "prostrate" her through mesmerism, as she believed that Mrs. Choate herself wished to go to Chicago to teach. Mr. Frye had bought tickets for Mrs. Eddy and himself when, on the very night before they were to start, she fell ill. Next day she was not able to leave the house, and many of her students were summoned to the college to treat against Mrs. Choate.
This adverse treatment, now conducted with some system, was an important feature of the daily life at the college. A regular society was organised among Mrs. Eddy's most trusted students and was called the "P. M." (Private Meeting).[1] This society met daily after breakfast in the morning and after supper at night, gathered in Mrs. Eddy's parlour, and "took up the enemy" in thought. Mrs. Eddy was not always present at these sittings, but she usually gave out the line of treatment. She would say, for example: "Treat Kennedy. Say to him: 'Your sins have found you out. You are affected as you wish to affect me. Your evil thought reacts upon you. You are bilious, you are consumptive, you have liver trouble, you have been poisoned by arsenic,' " etc. Mrs. Eddy further instructed her practitioners that, when they were treating their patients, they should first take up and combat the common enemy, mesmerism, before they took up the patient's error. The adverse treatments given by the students at the college were usually conducted in perfect silence, and the participants
- ↑ The sessions of this secret society later caused a good deal of discussion and criticism. In the Christian Science Journal of September, 1888, Mrs. Eddy admits that she "did organise a secret society known as the P. M.," but that its workings were not "shocking or terrible."
