by excitement, suggesting that medical diagnosis was wrong. No other experience seems to have followed this one, and when Quimby began to experiment with mesmerism he still accepted the prevailing medical theories. So, too, he began by taking devotees of mesmerism at their own word, since that appeared to be the best way to learn the truth concerning their phenomena.
There are two reasons for bearing these facts in mind, first that we may note how far he travelled to the point where he lost all faith in the medical faculty and proposed a theory of disease of his own; second, because we can hardly understand the interests of his intermediate period unless we realize that he was still in process and had not at first wholly rejected the physical theory of disease. Some other investigation might have been as profitable to him. The point is that he learned so much from his mesmeric experiments that he gave them up forever, and in giving them up came to himself and found a new truth of incalculable benefit to humanity.
There is no reason for apologizing as if it were discreditable that Quimby was once a mesmerist and was known through his ability to “magnetize” a patient or hypnotic subject. There was nothing to be ashamed of in this procedure. The only unpardonable thing that has been said about him is that he was “an ignorant mesmerist” and that he remained so. Ignorant he was not by any means, and he ceased to be a mesmerist because he was exceptionally skilful, so acute in exercising his powers that he learned the limitations of all such experiments.
We have his own statement to the effect that when he began to investigate mesmerism he was still an entire believer in the medical science and practice of the day. We also have his own exposition of the experiences which led to his change in point of view. We have contemporary testimony to his exceptional powers and the impression produced by his public experiments. Then too we have the testimony of his son, George, associated with his father as secretary when the mesmeric experiments were things of the past. Finally, we have the direct information coming to us from those who were most intimately acquainted with Quimby's practice in his later years, from 1859 to 1866 in Portland.
In the account of his father's life published in the New England Magazine, George Quimby says,
