the disease vanishes and the whole person is restored to harmonious natural functions. His formula of faith is confessedly that of the Saviour and the woman who touched the hem of his garment and became whole. The operation is purely mental. Mr. Q. discards this scriptural fact as a “miracle,” but regards it as natural, as properly reproductive by those who have the right idea of diseases and their cure, and who have the faith to attempt to relieve human suffering. . . . He refrains entirely from any manipulation over the patients, such as are generally known to be the accompaniments of mesmeric experiments. He neither puts them to sleep nor biologizes them, but takes them as he finds them . . . explains the method he proposes for a cure. . . . This is the way in which he says he restored this young lady to the power of speech—with no other application but the power of his speech upon her mind. . . . We have no reason to doubt the material statements in this case. . . . Mr. Quimby is not a “spiritualist” in any sense of the term.
[Interest in this case led to the reporting of another instance by the same writer, that of a Miss Buker, afflicted with a hip disease, the conditions being described in much detail. In an utterly hopeless condition she consulted Mr. Quimby in Belfast, and the account continues as follows:]
She began immediately to improve, and has grown better every week to a wonderful degree. The disease has measureably departed from the hip, and the leg has resumed almost its natural length and strength. She threw aside her crutches a week or two ago . . . and now she walks with considerable ease and no pain, with the aid of only a small cane in one hand. She lifts her foot with ease, and bears her whole weight upon it momentarily while walking—a thing which until within a few weeks she had not been able to do for fifteen long years. The reader may imagine the enthusiastic congratulations in which she indulges at the cheering prospect she now has of being completely restored to health. She is apparently in the enjoyment of a new life. . . . Dr. Quimby has used no medicine or material appliances whatever, internally or externally—he has not even seen nor touched the part afflicted. All he has done has been by acts of volition, conversing with his patient daily for about six weeks, “teaching her,” as he says, “the use of her limbs and how to walk.” He feels confident that he has obtained the mastery of the disease . . .
