Phineas Parkhurst Quimby

"Suppose a person should read an account of a railroad accident, and see, in the list of killed, a son. The shock on the mind would cause a deep feeling of sorrow on the part of the parent, and possibly a severe sickness, not only mental but physical. Now, what is the condition of the patient? Does he imagine his trouble? Is his body not affected, his pulse quick; and has he not all the symptoms of a sick person, and is he not really sick? Suppose you can go to him and say to him that you were on the train, and saw his son alive and well after the accident, and prove to him that the report of his death was a mistake. What follows? Why, the patient's mind undergoes a change immediately; and he is no longer sick. It was on this principle that Mr. Quimby treated the sick. He claimed that 'mind was spiritual matter,' and could be changed; that we were made up of truth and error; that disease was an error, or belief, and that the Truth was the cure. And upon these premises he based all his reasoning, and laid the foundation of what he asserted to be the 'science of curing the sick.' " * The Philosophy of P. P. Quimby, p. 18. (1895)