VIII
CONTEMPORARY TESTIMONY
[Under date of July 8th, 1856, a former patient wrote a brief article entitled “An Important Discovery in the Healing Art,” as if intending it for publication. The Ms. has been preserved, and from it we quote the following:]
This truly wonderful discovery is now practised by Dr. Quimby, of Belfast, a very respectable gentleman, for intelligence, agreeableness and integrity. He is able to cure without the use of medicine diseases which have baffled the skill of most eminent physicians. Of this we have evidence in his curing those who have been afflicted with sickness and pain for several years, without once knowing the cause of their sufferings, and were given up by their physicians as having a complication of diseases that were incurable. Having therefore to abandon all hope of a recovery and giving themselves up to die, they heard of Dr. Quimby and his successful mode of curing disease. Feeling no longer able to swallow the poisonous draughts administered for their relief, they with faith as a grain of mustard seed were at last induced to put themselves under his treatment. By the blessing of God they were in a short time healed of their infirmities. They also learned something of the nature and cause of disease, the effects of the mind upon the bodily functions, and how the mind may become a physician for the body, which is of more real worth than all the mines of Golcond. For when in possession of this knowledge we learn to remedy our own ills, and no longer remain a prey to disease.
I now come to speak of myself and will give a short sketch of my own experience. For almost four years previous to my consulting Dr. Quimby I had been an invalid. In December, 1851, I contracted a violent cold, which brought on influenza, attended with a severe cough. Every part of me seemed wracked with pain, and it was with much difficulty I could move at all. This continued for some six weeks, when
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