“It is not your opinion about the world that is of consequence, but the actual truth of your existence in the world which Wisdom has created.”

IT is plain that to take the theory of spiritual healing seriously one must first apply it in actual practice, either with the sick or in self-help. It is not a doctrine to be theoretically accepted or rejected. It contains tenets which can only be tested experimentally. The experiences of no two people are alike. Hence in the end each man develops his own methods and states the doctrine according to the considerations which his own work has emphasized.

Fully one-half of Mr. Quimby's manuscripts abound in references to religious problems and to the Bible. The reason is not far to seek. Mr. Quimby found that the fears, emotions, and beliefs which were factors in producing the patient's disease were intimately connected with religious creeds and experiences. He sometimes traced a nervous disorder to the emotional excitement attendant upon religious conversion. To explain the genesis of the disease also meant to explain the effect of religious emotion upon health, and to indicate a wiser way of becoming religious. The close connection between health and religion in such cases led Mr. Quimby to investigate the subject more and more. The result was, for Mr. Quimby and for many of his patients, new light upon the cures wrought by Jesus, and hence new conclusions in regard to the mission of Jesus, the nature of sin, and the significance of the atonement.
Relation to Psychology. — Obviously, this theory of mental life is in sharp contrast with present-day physiological psychology.
Relation to Hypnotism. — Hypnotism is the inducing of sleep for purposes of scientific experiment, medical practice, or suggestive therapeutics. The principle of hypnotic after-effects is suggestion. In this respect there is a slight connection with the phenomena, but not with the methods, of mental healing.
Relation to Faith Cure. — Cures by faith are usually wrought by naive religious belief, or through superstitious credulity in a sacred relic or something of the sort.
Relation to “ Christian Science." — The term "Christian Science" was used, in an entirely different connection, in a poem by Abram Cowles, published about 1840. Mr. Quimby used the term to signify the exact principles implied in the life and teachings of Jesus, and also exemplified in his own work among the sick.
Relation to “Mental Science." — This term was used, for a time after 1880, to designate all mind-cure doctrines other than "Christian Science." … Later, the term was revived by a different type of mind-cure people, hence it became identified with a radically individualistic, commercial doctrine, in the South and West, and is no longer applicable to the Quimby theory. Relation to “Metaphysical Healing." — This term, which for a time took the place of "Mental Science," has usually been employed to designate any mind-cure theory founded on mental principles, and sometimes with reference to belief in " mental pictures" as the "causes" of disease. The term "metaphysics" is always used in a practical sense. The theory of "mental pictures" is a late development of a principle which Mr. Quimby very early recognised. Relation to the “New Thought'' — This is the latest of mind-cure terms and at present the most popular. It came into vogue in 1895, and was used as the title of a little magazine published for a time in Melrose, Massachusetts. The term was apparently a convenient designation, inasmuch as for its devotees it was literally a "new thought" about life. But critics soon assailed it on the ground that the doctrine was not new, and in England the term "Higher Thought" was substituted. Like "Mental Science," the term once had a nobler significance, but has often been identified with the most commercial, extravagant, and individualistic tendencies in the mind-cure world. It now means any kind of mind cure theory, from the most mystical pantheism to the sort of individualism that can not even be harmoniously organised for purposes of a general convention.

The "New Thought" at its best developed directly out of the teachings we have been considering, notably from the works of Dr. Evans, to whom Henry Wood and other recent writers have been greatly indebted. Of late there have been admixtures of "Christian Science" and other elements, differing more radically from the parent teaching in respects where that teaching had the advantage.

To all those who "build their own world from within" Mr. Quimby would have said : “It is not your opinion about the world that is of consequence, but the actual truth of your existence in the world which Wisdom has created.”

HEALTH AND THE INNER LIFE An Analytical and Historical Study of Spiritual Healing Theories, with an Account of the Life and Teachings of P. P. Quimby BY HORATIO W. DRESSER 1906


A History of The New Thought Movement by Horatio. W. Dresser – 1919
Gave a much more elaborate history and discussed the creation of the various churches.

The Quimby Manuscripts by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby Edited by Horatio W. Dresser [1921]
For reasons known only to himself George Quimby refused to release the Quimby material prior to MEB’s death.