twenty dollars. This was impossible for the lady to pay. So I returned and put him to sleep again; and he gave me his usual prescription of some little herb, and [the patient] got well.”
This result convinced Mr. Quimby that if mediums and subjects had not acquired their alleged knowledge from the “common allopathic belief,” and if it were not for “the superstition of the people,” very few cures would be wrought. The fact that the medium's eyes are closed, for example, adds to the mystery. The people as readily responded to the suggestions of doctors who helped them create their diseases, in the first place, as to the supposed wisdom of the medium in the second. It is all a matter of suggestion any way. But real service to the sick would consist in showing them how they had been deceived. Mr. Quimby's experience with mesmerism had taught him the real secret of humbuggery in the case of both mediums and of mesmerists or supposed “magnetic healers.” He had to pursue his investigations far enough to be thoroughly convinced, and to come into possession of the true principle. Moreover it was necessary for him to experiment with Lucius long enough to make the highly important discovery that he, Quimby, was clairvoyant, too, without the aid of mesmerism, and without any of the psychical manifestions through which the spiritists influenced people.
