Phineas Parkhurst Quimby ~ Biographical Sketch.
[The New England magazine. / Volume 6, Issue 33, March 1888]
{Significant because his son, George Quimby, was privy to his father’s affairs. He describes Quimby’s method of inducing young Lucius Burkmer during the first years of his investigation and describes the latter years when he dealt with patients and the technique employed. He describes how the Misses Ware suggested to Quimby that he make notes. Evidently it was Quimby’s wish that George should continue his work but, alas, George’s interests lay elsewhere.}
In a magazine article, it is impossible to follow the slow stages by which he reached his conclusions; for slow they were, as each step was in opposition to all the established ideas of the day, and was ridiculed and combated by the whole medical faculty and the great mass of the people. In the sick and suffering he always found staunch friends, who loved him and believed in him, and stood by him; but they were but a handful compared with those on the other side.
While engaged in his mesmeric experiments, Mr. Quimby became more and more convinced that disease was an error of the mind, and not a real thing; and in this he was misunderstood by others, and accused of attributing the sickness of the patient to the imagination, which was the very reverse of the fact. No one believed less in the imagination than he. If a man feels a
pain, he knows he feels it, and there is no imagination about it, he used to say.
But the fact that the pain might be a state of the mind, while apparent in the body, he did believe. As one can suffer in a dream all that it is possible to suffer in a waking state, so Mr. Quimby averred that the same condition of mind might operate on the body in the form of disease, and still be no more of a reality than was the dream.
As the truths of his discovery began to develop and grow in him, just in the same proportion did he begin to lose faith in the efficacy of mesmerism as a remedial agent in the cure of the sick; and after a few years he discarded it altogether.
Instead of putting the patient into a mesmeric sleep, Mr. Quimby would sit by him; and, after giving him a detailed account of what his troubles were, he would simply converse with him, and explain the causes of the troubles, and thus change the mind of the patient, and disabuse it of its errors and establish the truth in its place; which, if done, was the cure. He sometimes, in cases of lameness and sprains, manipulated the limbs of the patient, and often rubbed the head with his hands, wetting them with water. He said it was so hard for the patient to believe that his mere talk with him produced the cure, that he did this rubbing simply that the patient would have more confidence in him; but he always insisted that he possessed no power nor healing properties different from any one else, and that his manipulations conferred n beneficial effect upon the patient, although it was often the case that the patient himself thought they did. On the contrary, Mr. Quimby always denied emphatically that he used any mesmeric or mediumistic power.
He was always in his normal condition when engaged with his patient. He never went into any trance, and was a strong disbeliever in Spiritualism, as understood by that name. He claimed, and firmly held, that his only power consisted in his wisdom, and in his understanding the patients case and being able to explain away the error and establish the truth, or health, in its place.
Very frequently the patient could not tell how he was cured, but it did not follow that Mr. Quimby himself was ignorant of the manner in which he performed the cure. 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 it not real? 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 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 patients 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 without other remedial agencies than the mind.
In the year 1859 Mr. Quimby went to Portland, where he remained until the summer of 1865, treating the sick by his peculiar method. It was his custom to converse at length with many of his patients, who became interested in his method of treatment, and to try to unfold to them his ideas.
Among his earlier patients in Portland were the Misses Ware, daughters of the late Judge Ashur Ware, of the U. S. 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 of throwing an idea or truth at the reader till it would be firmly fixed in his mind.
The first article he wrote was entitled, Mind is Spiritual Matter, and he thus explains what he means: He says:
I found that I could change the mind of my patient, and produce thereby a chemical change in the body * * * The world makes mind intelligence. I put no intelligence in it, but make it subject to intelligence. * * * I call the power that governs the mind, spirit, in this piece, not using the word wisdom; but you will see that I recognize a wisdom superior to the word mind~ for I always apply the word mind to matter, but never to the first cause.
In a circular to the sick, which he distributed while in Portland, he says that, as
“my practice is unlike all other medical practice, it is necessary to say that I give no medicines and make no outward applications, but simply sit by the patient, tell him what he thinks is his disease, and my explanation is the cure. And 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.”
In an article over his own signature, published in the Portland Advertiser of February 13, 1862, he says :
“As you have given me the privilege of answering an article in your paper of the 11th inst., wherein you classed me with spiritualists, mesmerizers, clairvoyants, etc., I take this occasion to state where I differ from all classes of doctors, from the allopathic physician to the healing medium. All these admit disease as an independent enemy of mankind. * * * Now, I deny disease as a truth, but admit it as a deception, without any foundation, handed down from generation to generation, till the people believe it, and it has become a part of their lives. * * * My way of curing convinces him that he has been deceived; and, if I succeed, the patient is cured. My mode is entirely original.”
Mr. Quimby, although not belonging to any church or sect, had .a deeply religious nature, holding firmly to God as the first cause, and fully believing in immortality and progression after death, though entertaining entirely original conceptions of what death is. He believed that Jesus mission was to the sick, and that he performed His cures in a scientific manner, and perfectly understood how He did them. Mr. Quimby was a great reader of the Bible, but put a construction upon it thoroughly in harmony with his train of thought.
His greatest desire was that the writer of this sketch should become interested in his work, and learn to heal the sick as he did. He always asserted that it was a science that he could teach, but that, if it were not communicated by him, others would take the work up and complete it. He wished the writer, after becoming conversant with the principles by which he cured, to fit himself for the lecture platform, and, as he expressed it,
“You lecture, and then we will call the sick on the stage, and cure them by wholesale, right in public.”
It may not be out of place to state here that the writer did not attempt to learn to practice as Mr. Quimby did; not because he could not, but for the reason that he was not at that time interested in the matter, and his tastes led him to adopt other pursuits.
Mr. Quimbys idea of happiness was to benefit mankind, especially the sick and suffering; and to that end he labored, and gave his life and strength. His patients not only found in him a doctor, but a sympathizing friend, and he took the same interest in treating a charity patient that he did a wealthy one. Until the writer went with him as secretary, he kept no accounts and made no charges. He left the keeping of books entirely with his patients; and although he pretended to have a regular price for visits and attendance, he took at settlement whatever the patient
chose to pay him.
The last five years of his life were exceptionally hard. He was overcrowded with patients and greatly overworked, and could not seem to find an opportunity for relaxation. At last, nature could no longer bear up under the strain; and, completely tired out, he took to his bed, from which he never rose again. While strong, he had always been able to ward off any disease that would have affected another person; but, when tired out and weak, he no longer had the strength of will nor the reasoning powers to combat the sickness which terminated his life.
An hour before he breathed his last, he said to the writer:
“I am more than ever convinced of the truth of my theory. I am perfectly willing for the change myself, but I know you all will feel badly, and think I am dead; but I know that I shall be right here with you, just the same as I always have been. I do not dread the change any more than if I were going on a trip to Philadelphia.”
His death occurred January 16, 1866, at his residence in Belfast, at the age of sixty-four years, and was the result of too close application to his profession and of overwork.
A more fitting epitaph could not be accorded him than in these words :
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”
For if ever a man did lay down his life for others,
that man was PHINEAS PARKHURST QUIMBY.
In JANUARY, 1903. Mark Twain issued a statement about MEB as regards Quimby. Although Twain was a Presbyterian, he was sometimes critical of organized religion and certain elements of Christianity through his later life. He wrote, for example, "Faith is believing what you know ain't so," and "If Christ were here now there is one thing he would not be – a Christian." Nonetheless, as a mature adult he engaged in religious discussions and attended services, his theology developing as he wrestled with the deaths of loved ones and his own mortality. His own experiences and suffering of his family made him particularly critical of "faith healing," such as espoused by MBE and Christian Science. His more inflammatory work on religion require a nuanced understanding of his theological arguments and criticism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain
The “Quimby Manuscripts” edited by Horatio W. Dresser were released in 1921.
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