by a mere suggestion, one can utilize this power by directing the mind with intelligence, and so disabuse it of its errors. Since minds are reached directly in any event by mere “opinions,” working mischief, we all have it in our power to reach minds wisely, and no “subject” is required. Thus it becomes a question of developing that “wisdom,” as Quimby later called it, which should free people from adverse suggestions.
Mr. Quimby further saw that even when a subject is clairvoyant this state is of short duration, and the subject readily lapses into the mere mind-reading of those present. So the diagnosis of a disease, as well as the opinion that a certain remedy will be effective, may be in part mere mind-reading. In an article addressed to the editor of a Portland paper, February, 1862, protesting against being classed with spiritists, mesmerists, and clairvoyants, Mr. Quimby says,
“I was one of the first mesmerisers in the state who gave public experiments, and I had a subject who was considered the best then known. He examined and prescribed for diseases just as this class do now. . . . The capacity of thought-reading is the common extent of mesmerism. Clairvoyance is very rare. . . .
“When I mesmerised my subject, he would prescribe some little simple herb that would do no harm or good of itself. In some cases this would cure the patient. I also found that any medicine would cure if he ordered it. This led me to investigate the matter, and arrive at the stand I now take: that the cure is not in the medicine, but in the confidence of the doctor or medium. A clairvoyant never reasons nor alters his opinion; but, if in the first state of thought-reading he prescribes medicine, he must be posted by some mind interested in it, and must also derive his knowledge from the same source from which the doctors derive theirs.
“The subject I had left me, and was employed by ——, who employed him in examining diseases in the mesmeric sleep, and taught him to recommend such medicines as he got up himself in Latin; and, as the boy did not know Latin, it looked very mysterious. Soon afterwards he was at home again, and I put him to sleep to examine a lady, expecting that he would go on in his old way; but instead of that he wrote a long prescription in Latin. I awoke him, that he might read it; but he could not. So I took it to the apothecary who said he had the articles, and that they would cost
