The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy/Chapter 03

by Georgine Milmine

CHAPTER III

MRS. PATTERSON FIRST HEARS OF DR. QUIMBY—HER ARRIVAL IN PORTLAND—QUIMBY AND HIS "SCIENCE"

While Dr. and Mrs. Patterson were living in Rumney, it was announced in the village that a new healer, Phineas Parkhurst Quimby of Portland, Me., would visit Concord, N. H., to treat all the sick who would come to him. Stories of the marvellous cures he was said to perform had spread throughout New England. Stubborn diseases, which had resisted the skill of regular physicians, were reported as yielding promptly to the magic of the Quimby method. This new doctor, so the story ran, used no medicines, and never failed to heal; and upon hearing these tales the sick and the suffering—particularly those who were the victims of long-standing and chronic diseases—took heart and tried to reach him. Among these was Mrs. Patterson. Her husband wrote to Dr. Quimby from Rumney on October 14, 1861, that Mrs. Patterson had been an invalid from a spinal disease for many years. She had heard of Quimby's "wonderful cures," and desired him to visit her. If Dr. Quimby intended to come to Concord, as they had heard, Dr. Patterson would "carry" his wife to see him. If not, he would try to get her to Portland.

Courtesy of George A. Quimby 

PHINEAS PARKHURST QUIMBY

Dr. Quimby did not visit Concord, and Dr. Patterson soon went South, but in the following spring (May 9, 1862) Mrs. Patterson herself wrote to Quimby from Rumney, appealing to him to help her, and setting forth her truly pathetic situation. She had been better, the letter said, but the shock of hearing that her husband had "been captured by the Southrons" and again prostrated her. She had, she wrote, "full confidence" in Dr. Quimby's "philosophy, as explained in your circular," and she begged him to come to Rumney. She had been ill for six years, she said, and "only you can save me." Hard as the journey to Portland would be, she thought she was sufficiently "excitable," even in her feeble condition, to undertake it.^[1]

Although Quimby could not go to Rumney as she requested, Mrs. Patterson clung to the idea of seeing him. After she had returned to her sister's home in Tilton, she talked of Quimby constantly, and begged Mrs. Tilton to send her to Portland for treatment. But Mrs. Tilton would not consent, nor provide money for the trip, as she considered Dr. Quimby a quack and thought the reports of his cures were greatly exaggerated. Instead, she sent Mrs. Patterson to a water cure—Dr. Vail's Hydropathic Institute at Hill, N. H. At the Hill institution Dr. Quimby was just then a topic of eager interest among the patients, and Mrs. Patterson finally resolved to reach Portland. She wrote again to Dr. Quimby from Hill, telling him that although she had been at Dr. Vail's cure for several months, she had not been benefited and would die unless he, Quimby, could help her. "I can sit up but a few minutes at a time," she wrote. "Do you think I can reach you without sinking from the effects of the journey?"

Mrs. Patterson knew that it was useless to appeal again to her sister, and as there was no one else, she used her wits. From time to time she applied to Mrs. Tilton for small sums of money for extra expenses. By hoarding these she soon had enough to pay her fare to Portland, and she, therefore, set out.

Mrs. Patterson arrived at the International Hotel in October, 1862, and with scores of others, who went flocking to Quimby, she was helped up the stairs to his office.

Dr. Quimby now becomes such a potent influence in Mrs. Patterson's life that some understanding of the man and his theories is necessary for any complete comprehension of her subsequent career.

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was "Doctor" only by courtesy: he had taken no university degree and had studied in no regular school of medicine. He was regarded by the educated public as an amiable humbug or a fanatic, but by hundreds of his patients he was looked upon as a worker of miracles. His methods resembled those of no regular physician then in practice, nor did he imitate the spiritualistic and clairvoyant healers who at that time flourished in New England. He gave no drugs, went into no trances, used no incantations, and did not heal by mesmerism after he had discovered his "science." He professed to make his patients well and happy purely by the benevolent power of mind.

Fantastic as this idea then seemed, Quimby was no ordinary quack. He did not practise on the credulous for money, and his theories represented at least independent thought and patient, life-long study. He was born in New Lebanon, N. H., February 16, 1802, but spent the larger part of his life in Belfast, Me. He was one of seven children, and his father was a poor, hardworking blacksmith. Quimby, therefore, had practically no educational advantages; indeed, he spent actually only six weeks in school. Apprenticed as a boy to a clock-maker, he became an adept at his trade. The Quimby clock is still a domestic institution in New England; hundreds made by Quimby's own hands are still keeping excellent time. Quimby had an ingenious mind and a natural aptitude for mechanics. He invented, among other things, a band-saw much like one in use at the present time, and he was one of the first makers of daguerreotypes. From the first he disclosed one rare mental quality: his keen power of observation and originality of thought forbade his taking anything for granted. He recognised no such thing as accepted knowledge. He developed into a mild-mannered New England Socrates, constantly looking into his own mind, and subjecting to proof all the commonplace beliefs of his friends. He read deeply in philosophy and science, and loved nothing better than to discuss these subjects at length.

In those days a man of Quimby's intellectual type did not lack subjects of interest. In the '30's the first wave of mental science, animal magnetism, and clairvoyance swept over New England. The atmosphere was charged with the occult, the movement ranging all the way from phrenology and mind-reading to German transcendentalism. Quimby's interest was directly stimulated by the visit of Charles Poyen, the well-known French mesmerist, who came to lecture in Belfast. The inquiring clock-maker became absorbed in Poyen's theories, formed his acquaintance, and followed him from town to town. Inevitably, Quimby began experimenting in the subject which so interested him. Discovering that he had mesmeric power, he exercised it upon many of his friends and easily repeated the performance of Poyen and other exhibitors. From becoming their imitator he became their rival, and abandoning his workshop, started out as a professional mesmerist. Among the wonder-workers of the early '40's, "Park" Quimby, as he was popularly called, became pre-eminent. Always considered an original character in his native village, he was now regarded as an outright crank, and was the subject of much amiable jocularity.

In the course of his experiments, Quimby discovered that his most sensitive subject was Lucius Burkmar, a boy about seventeen years old, over whom he had acquired almost unlimited hypnotic control. The two travelled all over New England, performing mesmerics feats that have hardly been duplicated since, everywhere arousing great popular interest, and, in certain quarters, great hostility. Psychic phenomena were then incompletely understood; clergymen preached against mesmerism, or animal magnetism, as the work of the devil,—a revival of ancient witchcraft; while the practical man regarded it as pure fraud. The newspapers frequently vilified Quimby and Burkmar, and they were more than once threatened by mobs.

Then, as now, the public mind associated the occult sciences with the cure of physical disease. Clairvoyants, magnetisers, and mind-readers treated all imaginable ills. When blind folded, they had the power—according to their advertisements—of looking into the bodies of their patients, examining their inmost organs, indicating the affected parts, and prescribing remedies. Hundreds of men, women, and children, whose cases "the doctors had given up as hopeless," fervently testified to their power. Thus Quimby and Burkmar inevitably received numerous appeals from the sick. After a few trials, Quimby became convinced that in a mesmeric state Burkmar could diagnose and treat disease. Though absolutely ignorant of medicine and anatomy, Burkmar described minutely the ailments of numerous patients, and prescribed medicines, which, although absurd to a physician, apparently produced favourable results. For three or four years Quimby and Burkmar practised with considerable success. Consumptives, according to popular report, began to get well, the blind saw, and the halt walked.

Quimby then made an important discovery. After careful observation, he concluded that neither Burkmar nor his remedies, in themselves, had the slightest power. Burkmar, he believed, did not himself diagnose the case. He merely reported what the patient, or some one else present in the room, imagined the disease to be. He had, Quimby thought, a clairvoyant or mind-reading faculty, by which he simply reproduced the opinion which the sick had themselves formed. Quimby also discovered that, in instances where improvement actually took place, the drug prescribed had nothing to do with it. Once Burkmar, in the mesmeric state, ordered a concoction too expensive for the patient's purse. Quimby mesmerised him again; and this time he prescribed a cheaper remedy—which served the purpose quite as well. After a few experiences of this kind, Quimby concluded that Burkmar's prescriptions did not produce the cures, but that the patients cured themselves. Burkmar's only service was that he implanted in the sick man's mind an unshakable faith that he would get well. Any other person, or any drug, Quimby declared, which could put the patient in this attitude of mental receptivity and give his own mind a chance to work upon the disease, would accomplish the same result. He made this discovery the basis of an elaborate and original system of mind cure; he dropped mesmerism, dismissed Burkmar, and began to work out his theory. He experimented for several years in Belfast, and, in 1859, opened an office in Portland.

Quimby had the necessary mental and moral qualifications for his work. His personality inspired love and confidence, and his patients even now affectionately recall his kind-heartedness, his benevolence, and his keen perception. Even his opponents in the controversy which has raged over his work and that of Mrs. Eddy, speak well of him. "On his rare humanity and sympathy," says Mrs. Eddy, "one could write a sonnet."

He was a small man, both in stature and in build, quick, sensitive, and nervous in his movements. His large, well-formed head stood straight on erect, energetic shoulders. He had a high, broad forehead, and silken white hair and beard. His eyes, arched with heavy brows, black, deep-set, and penetrating, seemed, as one of his patients has written, "to see all through the falsities of life and far into the depths and into the spirit of things." At times his eyes flashed with good nature and wit, for Quimby by no means lacked the jovial virtues. If his countenance suggested one quality more than another, it was honesty; whatever the public thought of his ideas, no one who ever saw him face to face doubted the man's absolute sincerity. He demanded the same sympathy which he himself gave. He dealt kindly with honest doubters, but would have nothing to do with the scornful. Unless one really wished to be cured, he said, his methods had no virtue. On one occasion, instead of taking his place beside a certain patient, he turned his chair directly around and sat back to back. "That's the way you feel toward me," he declared. His offices were constantly filled with patients, and his mail was enormous. People came to consult him from all over New England and the Far West. He treated "absently" thousands who could not visit him in person.

Mrs. Julius A. Dresser, one of his early patients and converts, thus describes her first meeting with Mr. Quimby:

I found a kindly gentleman who met me with such sympathy and gentleness that I immediately felt at ease. He seemed to know at once the attitude of mind of those who applied to him for help, and adapted himself to them accordingly. His years of study of the human mind, of sickness in all its forms, and of the prevailing religious beliefs, gave him the ability to see through the opinions, doubts, and fears of those who sought his aid, and put him in instant sympathy with their mental attitudes. He seemed to know that I had come to him feeling that he was a last resort, and with little faith in him and his mode of treatment. But, instead of telling me that I was not sick, he sat beside me and explained to me what my sickness was, how I got into the condition, and the way I could have been taken out of it through the right understanding. He seemed to see through the situation from the beginning, and explained the cause and effect so clearly that I could see a little of what he meant. My case was so serious, however, that he did not at first tell me I could be made well. But there was such an effect produced by his explanation, that I felt a new hope within me, and began to get well from that day.

He continued to explain my case from day to day, giving me some idea of his theory and its relation to what I had been taught to believe, and sometimes sat silently with me for a short time. I did not understand much that he said, but I felt the spirit and the life that came with his words; and I found myself gaining steadily. Some of these pithy sayings of his remained constantly in mind, and were very helpful in preparing the way for a better understanding of his thought, such, for instance, as his remark that, "Whatever we believe, that we create," or, "Whatever opinion we put into a thing, that we take out of it."

In all the relations of life, Quimby seems to have been loyal and upright. Outside of his theory he lived only for his family and was the constant playmate of his children. His only interest in his patients was to make them well. He treated all who came, whether they could pay or not. For several years Quimby kept no accounts and made no definite charges. The patients, when they saw fit, sent him such remuneration as they wished. Inevitably, he drew his followers largely from the poor and the desperately ill. "People," he would say, "send for me and the undertaker at the same time; and the one who gets there first gets the case."

Quimby was thoroughly convinced that he had solved the riddle of life, and that ultimately the whole world would accept his ideas. His subject possessed him. He wearied his family almost to desperation with it, and wore out all his friends. He discussed it at length with any one who would listen. To put it in writing, to teach it, to transmit it to posterity,—that was his consuming idea. His only fear was lest he should die before the "Truth" had made a lasting impress. He wrote about it in the newspapers,—not, however, as extensively as he desired, for the editors seldom printed his articles, regarding them as the veriest rubbish. He selected, here and there, especially appreciative and intelligent patients, discussed his doctrine with them exhaustively, and enjoined them to teach unbelievers. His following was not wholly among the ignorant and humble. Edwin Reed, ex-mayor of Bath, Me., declares that Quimby cured him of total blindness. He visited him as a young graduate of Bowdoin, had his sight completely restored, spent several months studying the theory, and left with the conviction, which he has never lost, that Quimby was a strong and original thinker. Julius A. Dresser, whose name figures largely in the history of mental healing, early became absorbed in Quimby. For several years he was associated with him, receiving patients and explaining, as a preliminary to their meeting with the doctor, his ideas and methods. In 1863 Dr. Warren F. Evans, a Swedenborgian clergyman, visited Quimby twice professionally. He became a convert, and, in several books well known among students of mental healing, developed the Quimby doctrine. "Quimby," he said, "seemed to reproduce the wonders of Gospel history."

About 1859 Quimby began to put his ideas into permanent form. George A. Quimby thus describes his father's literary methods:^[2]

Among his earlier patients in Portland were the Misses Ware, daughters of the late Judge Ashur Ware, of the United States Admiralty Court; and they became much interested in "the Truth," as he called it. But the ideas were so new, and his reasoning was so divergent from the popular conceptions, that they found it difficult to follow him or remember all he said; and they suggested to him the propriety of putting into writing the body of his thoughts.

From that time he began to write out his ideas, which practice he continued until his death, the articles now being in the possession of the writer of this sketch. The original copy he would give to the Misses Ware; and it would be read to him by them, and, if he suggested any alteration, it would be made, after which it would be copied either by the Misses Ware or the writer of this, and then re-read to him, that he might see that all was just as he intended it. Not even the most trivial word or the construction of a sentence would be changed without consulting him. He was given to repetition; and it was with difficulty that he could be induced to have a repeated sentence or phrase stricken out, as he would say, "If that idea is a good one, and true, it will do no harm to have it in two or three times." He believed in the hammering process, and in throwing an idea or truth at the reader till it would be firmly fixed in his mind.

In six years Quimby produced ten volumes of manuscripts. In them he discussed a variety of subjects, all from the stand point of his theory. He wrote copiously on Religion, Disease, Spiritualism, "Scientific Interpretations of Various Parts of the Scriptures," Clairvoyance, "The Process of Sickness," "Relation of God to Man," Music, Science, Error, Truth, Happiness, Wisdom, "The Other World," "Curing the Sick," and dozens of other topics. He gave all his patients access to these manuscripts, and permitted all who wished to make copies, overjoyed whenever he found one interested enough to do this. He also encouraged his followers to write, themselves, frequently correcting their essays and bringing them into harmony with his own ideas. Quimby's writings, as a whole, have never been published; but the present writer has had free and continuous use of them.

From these manuscripts can be deduced a complete and detailed philosophy of life and disease. They refute the assertion sometimes made, that Quimby was a spiritualist, or that he made the slightest claim to divine revelation. Certain admirers sometimes compared him with Christ; but he himself wrote a long dissertation called A Defence Against Making Myself Equal with Christ. He usually calls his discovery the "Science of Health," and "The Science of Health and Happiness"; once or twice he describes it as "Christian Science." Scores of times he refers to it as the "Science of Christ." He also repeatedly calls it "The Principle," "The Truth," and "Wisdom."

Though he never identified his doctrine with religion, and never dreamed of founding an ecclesiastical organisation upon it, his impulse at the bottom was religious. He believed that Christ's mission was largely to the sick; that He and His apostles performed cures in a natural manner; and that he had himself rediscovered their method. Jesus Christ, indeed, was Quimby's great inspiration. He distinguished, however, between the Principle Christ and the Man Jesus. This duality, he said, manifested itself likewise in man.

In every individual, according to Quimby, there were two persons. The first was the Truth, Goodness, and Wisdom into which he had been naturally born. In this condition he was the child of God, the embodiment of Divine Love and Divine Principle. This man had no flesh, no bones, and no blood; he did not breathe, eat, or sleep. He could never sin, never become sick, never die. He knew nothing of matter, or of the physical senses; he was simply Spirit, Wisdom, Principle, Truth, Mind, Science. Quimby, above all, loved to call him the "Scientific Man." This first person was, so to speak, encrusted in another man, formed of matter, sense, and all the accumulated "errors" of time. This man had what Quimby called "Knowledge"—that is, the ideas heaped up by the human mind. According to Quimby, this second man held the first, or truly Scientific man, in bondage. The bonds consisted of false human beliefs. The idea, above all, which held him enthralled, was that of Disease. The man of Science knew nothing of sickness. The man of Ignorance, however, consciously and unconsciously, had been impregnated for centuries with this belief. His whole life, from earliest infancy, was encompassed with suggestions of this kind. Parents constantly suggest illness to their children; doctors preach it twenty-four hours a day; the clergy, the newspapers, books, ordinary conversation,—the whole modern world, thought Quimby, had engaged in a huge conspiracy to familiarise the human mind with this false concept. This process had been going on for thousands of years, until finally unhealthy ideas had triumphed over healthy; beliefs had got the upper hand of truth; knowledge had supplanted wisdom; ignorance had taken the place of science; matter had superseded mind; Jesus had dethroned Christ.

Quimby regarded his mission in the world as the reëstablishment of the original and natural harmony. Though his philosophy embraces the whole of life, he used all his energies in eradicating one of man's many false "beliefs," or "errors,"—that of Disease. His method was simplicity itself. The medical profession constantly harped on the idea of sickness; Quimby constantly harped on the idea of health. The doctor told the patient that disease was inevitable, man's natural inheritance; Quimby told him that disease was merely an "error," that it was created, "not by God, but by man," and that health was the true and scientific state. "The idea that a beneficent God had anything to do with disease," said Quimby, "is superstition." "Disease," reads another of his manuscripts, "is false reasoning. True scientific wisdom is health and happiness. False reasoning is sickness and death." Again he says: "This is my theory: to put man in possession of a science that will destroy the ideas of the sick, and teach man one living profession of his own identity, with life free from error and disease. As man passes through these combinations, they differ one from another. . . . He is dying and living all the time to error, till he dies the death of all his opinions and beliefs. Therefore, to be free from death is to be alive in truth; for sin, or error, is death, and science, or wisdom, is eternal life, and this is the Christ." "My philosophy," he says at another time, "will make man free and independent of all creeds and laws of man, and subject him to his own agreement, he being free from the laws of sin, sickness, and death."

Quimby, after dismissing Burkmar in 1845, never used mesmerism or manipulated his patients. Occasionally, after talking for a time, he would dip his hands in water and rub the patient's head. He always asserted that this was not an essential part of the cure. His ideas were so startling, he said, that the average mind could not grasp them, but required some outward indication to bolster up its faith. The cure itself, Quimby always insisted, was purely mental.^[3]

1. This letter, with others from Mrs. Patterson to Dr. Quimby, is in the possession of Quimby's son, George A. Quimby of Belfast, Me.
2. Article in the New England Magazine, March, 1888.
3. As far back as 1857, a writer in the Bangor Jeffersonian contradicts the statement that Quimby cured mesmerically. "He sits down with his patient," the letter says, "and puts himself en rapport with him, which he does with out producing the mesmeric sleep. The mind is used to overcome disease. . . . There is no danger from disease when the mind is armed against it. . . . He dissipates from the mind the idea of disease and induces in its place an idea of health. . . . The mind is what it thinks it is and, if it contends against the thought of disease and creates for itself an ideal form of health, that form impresses itself upon the animal spirit and through that upon the body."