The present decade has experienced an intense interest
in mental healing. This has come as a culmination of the development along
these lines during the past half century. It has shown itself in the beginning
of new religious sects with this as a, or the, fundamental tenet, in more
wide-spread general movements, and in the scientific study and application of
the principles underlying this form of therapeutics.
Many have been led astray because, being ignorant of the
mental healing movements and vagaries of the past, the late applications,
veiled in metaphysical or religious verbiage, have seemed to them to be new in
origin and principle. No one could consider an historical survey of the subject
and reasonably hold this opinion. It is on account of the ignorance of similar
movements, millenniums old, that so much, if any, originality can be credited
to the founders.
.
. .
What we may designate "Metaphysical
Healing" originated with Phineas
Parkhurst Quimby (1802-1866). The movement was important, not so much on
account of what Quimby himself was able to accomplish by it, as because of the
work that has been carried on since by at least three of his pupils. He was
born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, and in early life was a watch and clock maker.
In 1840 he began experimenting with mesmerism, and accounts of these
experiments were published in the Maine papers of that time. After this he
developed a system of mental healing of his own, practising it in different
towns in Maine for some years. About 1858 he settled as a practitioner in
Portland and remained there until his death. I shall quote brief extracts in
his own words, which portray his system.
"My practice is unlike all medical practice. I give
no medicine, and make no outward applications. I tell the patient his troubles,
and what he thinks is his disease; and my explanation is the cure. If I succeed
in correcting his errors, I change the fluids of the system and establish the
truth, or health. The truth is the cure. This mode of practice applies to all
cases."
"The
greatest evil that follows taking an opinion for a truth is disease."
"Man
is made up of truth and belief; and, if he is deceived into a belief that he
has, or is liable to have, a disease, the belief is catching, and the effect
follows it."
"Disease being made by our belief, or by our
parents' belief, or by public opinion, there is no formula to be adopted, but
every one must be reached in his particular case. Therefore it requires great
shrewdness or wisdom to get the better of the error. Disease is our error and
the work of the devil."
Quimby made many wonderful and mostly speedy
cures, and although he wrote out his system, it has never been published. Among
his patients was Mrs. Patterson from Hill, New Hampshire, who went to Portland
in 1862. She had been a confirmed invalid for six years. To quote her own
words, published in the Portland Evening Courier in 1862, she made a
rapid recovery. "Three weeks since I quitted my nurse and sick room
en route for Portland. The belief of my recovery had died out of the hearts of
those who were most anxious for it. With this mental and physical depression I
first visited P. P. Quimby, and in less than one week from that time I ascended
by a stairway of one hundred and eighty-two steps to the dome of the City Hall,
and am improving ad infinitum. To the most subtle reasoning, such a
proof, coupled, too, as it is with numberless similar ones, demonstrates his
power to heal." Mrs. Patterson, afterward Mrs. Eddy, proclaimed after his
death a doctrine very similar to Quimby's. She called it "Christian
Science," a name Quimby applied to his teaching, although usually he
called it "Science of Health."
Another patient of Quimby's was Julius A. Dresser, who visited him
first in 1860. Of him Mr. Dresser says: "The
first person in this age who penetrated the depths of truth so far as to
discover and bring forth a true science of life, and publicly apply it to the
healing of the sick, was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby of Belfast, Me."
Rev. W.
F. Evans was still another patient and
disciple of Quimby's. His testimony is as follows: "Disease being in its root a wrong belief, change
that belief and we cure the disease.... The late Dr. Quimby, of Portland, one
of the most successful healers of this or any age, embraced this view of the
nature of disease, and by a long succession of most remarkable cures ... proved
the truth of the theory.... Had he lived in a remote age or country, the
wonderful facts which occurred in his practice would have now been deemed either
mythical or miraculous."
These three, Messrs. Evans and Dresser and Mrs.
Eddy, proved to be Quimby's most famous patients and disciples. Evans became a
noted and voluminous writer on mental healing, Mr. Dresser has been identified
with the New Thought movement of which his son H. W. Dresser is probably the
best exponent, and Mrs. Eddy ruled the Christian Scientists with a rod of iron.
Warren F. Evans visited Quimby
twice in the year 1863, and at these times obtained his knowledge of Quimby's
methods. Up to this time he had been a Swedenborgian clergyman, and his beliefs
enabled him the better to grasp the new doctrines. On the occasion of the
second visit he told his healer that he thought he could cure the sick in this
way, and Quimby agreed with him. On returning home he tried it, and his first
attempts were so successful that he became a practitioner, using only mental
means, and continued in this work. He wrote several books on the subject of
mental healing, the first one, The Mental Cure, appearing in 1869, six
years before Mrs. Eddy's Science and Health.
Perhaps, strictly
speaking, the New Thought movement
does not come within the scope of our subject, except as we see in it an
outgrowth and application of the Quimby doctrine, for two reasons. In the first
place, its purpose is mental hygiene rather than cure, and it is all the more
valuable for that. Of course, in establishing hygienic practices many disorders
are cured, but prevention is the main feature. The second reason why we might
perhaps not include it in a résumé of the healers is that it is intended to be
for the use of the individual to prevent his employing a healer of any kind.
The same objection, however, would do away to some extent with a discussion of Christian
Science. The principles of New Thought are that the mind has an influence on
the body, and that good, sweet, pure thoughts have a salutary effect, but the
opposite ones injure the body. Don't worry, don't think of disease, don't look
for trouble, but fill the mind with the opposite positive thoughts and life
will be happy and the body will be well. The doctrines are expounded
differently by the various leaders, and emphasis is laid on different points,
some emphasizing more fully the religious aspects of the movement, for example.
The principal writers on the subject are H. W. Dresser, R. W. Trine, H. Wood,
and H. Fletcher.
Mrs. Mary A. Morse Baker Glover Patterson Eddy
(1821-1910) was born at Bow, New Hampshire. After a precocious and neurotic childhood,
she united with the Congregational Church when seventeen years of age. At the
age of twenty-two she married George Washington Glover, probably the best of
her husbands. His death, six months later, was followed by the birth of her
only child and a ten years' widowhood. During this time she stayed with her
relatives and had long periods of illness, principally of an hysterical
character. She then experimented to some extent with mesmerism and
clairvoyance. In 1853 she married Dr. Daniel Patterson, an itinerant dentist,
from whom she got a divorce, and as Mrs. Patterson she went first to
"Dr." Quimby in 1862. She visited Quimby again in 1864, at which
time, with some others, she studied with him. After Quimby's death she began
teaching what she then called his science. For the next few years she wandered
from town to town about Boston in straitened circumstances, healing, teaching,
and endeavoring to found an organized society. It was not, however, until 1875
that the organization was formed in Lynn, and later in the same year appeared
her Science and Health. The years since then have been filled with
controversies in the law courts and newspapers, caresses and blows from the
ruling hand of Mother Eddy, and numerous developments from small beginnings, until
now over one hundred thousand are identified with the organization. These are
almost without exception proselytes from other churches.
From THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF MENTAL HEALING
BY
GEORGE BARTON CUTTEN, Ph.D.
1911
