error, till he dies the death of all his opinions and beliefs. Therefore, to be free from death is to be alive in truth; for sin, or error, is death, and science, or wisdom, is eternal life, and this is the Christ." "My philosophy," he says at another time, "will make man free and independent of all creeds and laws of man, and subject him to his own agreement, he being free from the laws of sin, sickness, and death."
Quimby, after dismissing Burkmar in 1845, never used mesmerism or manipulated his patients. Occasionally, after talking for a time, he would dip his hands in water and rub the patient's head. He always asserted that this was not an essential part of the cure. His ideas were so startling, he said, that the average mind could not grasp them, but required some outward indication to bolster up its faith. The cure itself, Quimby always insisted, was purely mental.[1]
- ↑ As far back as 1857, a writer in the Bangor Jeffersonian contradicts the statement that Quimby cured mesmerically. "He sits down with his patient," the letter says, "and puts himself en rapport with him, which he does with out producing the mesmeric sleep. The mind is used to overcome disease. . . . There is no danger from disease when the mind is armed against it. . . . He dissipates from the mind the idea of disease and induces in its place an idea of health. . . . The mind is what it thinks it is and, if it contends against the thought of disease and creates for itself an ideal form of health, that form impresses itself upon the animal spirit and through that upon the body."
