Mental Healing (I)

The earliest Mental-healer of this period of whom we have authentic record is Phineas Parkhurst Quimby.[1] Born at Lebanon, New Hampshire, on February 16, 1802, he removed with his parents as a young child to Belfast, Maine, where the greater part of his life was spent. Quimby's father was a poor blacksmith, and the boy himself had but little schooling. In his youth he was apprenticed to a clockmaker, and proved himself a successful and ingenious craftsman. He appears to have been a thoughtful and observant man ; an inventor, moreover, and always open to new knowledge. In 1838 he was present at a lecture on Mesmerism by Charles Poyen. He was much struck by what he saw and heard, made the acquaintance of the lecturer, and finally began to experiment in the new science on his own account. He was fortunate enough to find an admirable subject, one Lucius Burkmar, a youth of seventeen, and soon threw up his trade and became a professional Mesmerist, giving popular demonstrations and treating disease by clairvoyance.

After three or four years, however, Quimby became convinced that his clairvoyant's diagnoses were due to thought reading— that, in fact, he simply reproduced the opinion which the patient or Quimby himself had formed of the disease, and that his prescriptions could be traced to the same source. Carrying out this line of thought, he convinced himself that the efficacy of the treatment prescribed by Burkmar was due entirely to the expectation of the patient, that any other person or thing which could inspire equal confidence in the patient would be equally efficacious—that, in short, the patients cured themselves. He dismissed Burkmar, discontinued the practice of Mesmerism, and, meditating upon his past experience, gradually evolved a new theory—that all disease was a delusion, an error of the mind.

In 1859 he removed to Portland, Maine, where he opened an office, and was continually occupied until his death, in 1866, in the treatment of disease by the new method which he had elaborated in accordance with his theory.

One of his early patients, Mrs. Julius Dresser, who came to him as a young girl after six years of hopeless illness, her case given up by all the doctors, thus describes his procedure: —

"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 all 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. ... He continued to explain the case from day to day. ... I felt the spirit and life that came with his words, and I found myself gaining steadily."

The local papers of these years contain frequent references to Quimby's theories.2Thus the Bangor (Maine) Jeffersonian writes in 1857: "He says the mind is what it thinks it is, and that 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."

Again, in the Lebanon Free Press of December 3, 1 860, we read : " The foundation of his theory is that disease is not self-existent nor created by God, but is purely an invention of man.*'

In the Portland Advertiser of February 13, 1862, there is a letter from Quimby himself. After explaining that he is not a Spiritualist or a Mesmeriser he goes on :

" I deny disease as a truth, but admit it as a deception . . . handed down from generation to generation until the people believe in it." The patient's trouble, he adds, arises from "the poison of the doctor's opinion in admitting a disease."

One of his patients, Miss E. G. Ware, in a letter published in the same paper of March 22, 1862, amplifies this creed : —

" Instead of treating the body as an intelligent organisation with independent life, he [Quimby] finds the life and intelligence in the man who occupies it." Often, she adds, he tells the patient that "he has no real disease. . . . He refers (disease) directly to man himself under the dominion of errors invented by man. ... To cure disease ... is to destroy the error on which it is based."

But in view of later developments the most valuable, if not perhaps the most lucid, of the contemporary expositions of Quimby's theory is to be found in a letter from another grateful patient, Mrs. Mary M. Patterson, afterwards to be known throughout two hemispheres as the Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. The letter was published in the Portland (Maine) Courier of November 7, 1862. (Quoted in McLure's Magazine for February, 1907). Mrs. Patterson began by explaining that Quimby healed neither by Spiritualism nor by Animal Magnetism, and that the magnetiser who had previously treated her failed to effect a cure because " he believed in disease, independent of the mind, hence I could not be wiser than my Master." She then continues :

" But now I can see, dimly at first and only as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's faith and works ; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth is my recovery. This truth which he opposes to the error of giving intelligence to matter and placing pain where it never placed itself, if received understandingly, changes the currents of the system to their normal action, and the mechanism of the body goes on undisturbed. That this is a science capable of demonstration becomes clear to the mind of those patients who reason upon the process of their cure. The truth which he establishes in the patient cures him (although he may be wholly unconscious thereof), and the body, which is full of light, is no longer in disease. At present I am too much in error to elucidate the truth, and can touch only the keynote for the Master hand to wake the harmony."

The exposition, as said, is not lucid. The writer sets out, as she tells us, to " analyze " the power by which she has been healed : she makes " great argument about it and about " without ever getting to the point. Imperfect as the testimony is, it is, however, sufficient.

1 The account of Quimby's life and doctrine given in the text is derived mainly from The Philosophy of P. P. Quimby, by Annetta Gertrude Dresser (Mrs. Julius Dresser), 1895. I have made use also of the later material included in the articles on Christian Science published in McLure's Magazine in 1907 and 1908, and in Lyman Powell's useful book, Christian Science, the Faith and its Founder (1907).

2 These extracts from the provincial papers quoted in the text are derived from Mrs. Dresser's book already referred to. It is hardly necessary to emphasise the importance of this disinterested contemporary testimony in view of the fierce controversy which has in recent years sprung up round Quimby's name.

From all the contemporary testimonies it is clear that so far back as the later fifties, at any rate, P. P. Quimby taught that disease was a non-entity, a delusion, an ancient error ; and that he carried out his teaching in practice by ministering, not to the body, but to the sick soul. Quimby left behind him no systematic account of his doctrines. In any case he had no special power of expression, and his later years seem to have been occupied, to the extreme limits of his strength, in healing those who came to him for help. But he was in the habit of dictating to one or other of his disciples who acted as secretary or amanuensis, whenever he could find moments of leisure. These manuscripts, which fill several volumes, are still extant. From the fragments which have been published by Mrs. Dresser and others it is clear that his philosophical ideas had never been worked out in a coherent system. The keynote of his thought, however, is a vivid realization of the difference between what older philosophies have called Soul and Body, the Spiritual and the Natural Man. But Quimby conceived this opposition from a new point of view, and employed a novel terminology for the purpose of describing it. " Is a man spirit or matter ? " he asks, and replies " Neither ; he is Life." Though not an adherent of orthodox Christianity, he believed in Christ, and frequently describes his doctrine as the Science of Christ : he occasionally calls it " Christian Science." More generally, however, he refers to it as the " Science of Health " or the " Science of Health and Happiness." But both " Christ " and " Science " are used in a special sense. Thus he writes that Christ " separated Himself as Jesus the Man of opinion from Christ the scientific Man." Again, after explaining that the " senses are life—the senses are all that there is of a man," he proceeds : " Are the senses mind? I answer No. Mind and Senses are as distinct as light and darkness, and the same distinction holds good in wisdom and knowledge, Jesus and Christ. Christ, Wisdom, and Senses are synonyms. So likewise are Jesus, Knowledge, and Mind." Or again, " Mind is Matter—all knowledge that is of man is based on opinion. This I call the world of Matter."

Quimby's vocabulary, it will be seen, is somewhat confusing. The usage of centuries has accustomed us to conceive of " mind " and " matter " as complementary terms, as an alternative method of expressing the opposition between soul and body. But Quimby tells us that mind is matter. The statement, however, represents something more than the confusion of terminology natural in a self-educated man. In classing disease, mind, opinion, knowledge, Jesus, amongst the things that do not count, Quimby is really endeavouring to draw a new line between the things which are and the things which only seem to be. It is a line which everybody at some time of his life tries to draw in some fashion or another. We must recognize here an heroic attempt to start from a new point, to draw the line higher up, to leave on the other side a good deal which most people have been content to include amongst the things that are. We are not here concerned with the success of the attempt. It is enough to bear in mind, in considering the development of later derivative philosophies, that Quimby is the first of whom it is recorded that he made such an attempt. Quimby is one of those men, like Socrates or St. Simon, who live not in their books but in the lives of their disciples. He wrote his message not on the printed page, but on the minds and characters of living men and women. One of his earliest pupils was the Rev. W. F. Evans, originally a Methodist minister, who for some years before as a patient he visited Quimby, in about 1863, had been studying the works of Swedenborg. Evans quickly assimilated Quimby's theories, and between 1869 and 1886 published a number of books on Mental-healing. It is not necessary to consider his teaching in detail. His terminology and doctrine are strongly tinged with Swedenborgianism and differ considerably from Quimby's. He can hardly, in fact, be said to be in the strict sense a disciple, though he acknowledges his personal debt to the Maine healer. But he drew the line in a different place. He does not identify mind with matter. The following extract from his earliest book will, however, make it clear that in his view of the nature of disease he differs little from his teacher. To cure disease, he says, " all that is necessary is the power intuitively to detect the morbid state of the mind underlying the disease, and how to convert the patient to a more healthful inner life. All disease is, in its cause, an insanity . . . its secret spring is some abnormality or unsoundness of the mind."

From:

Mesmerism and Christian Science

A SHORT HISTORY OF MENTAL HEALING

By

FRANK PODMORE

1909

Frank Podmore (1856 –1910) was an English author, founding member of the Fabian Society, and writer on psychic matters.