# The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur)/Chapter 07

CHAPTER VII
THE APOTHEOSIS OF A HYPNOTIST
IN order to understand what sort of meeting it was which took place between the emaciated sufferer and invalid, Mary Baker, and the mesmeric healer, Phineas Quimby, at the International Hotel in Portland, Maine, in October, 1862, it is necessary to survey briefly the latter’s life and work up to this period.
Quimby was the son of a poor blacksmith and was apprenticed as a lad to a clock-maker. He had no schooling and grew up illiterate but industrious and honest. He made with his own hands hundreds of clocks and having his interest thus awakened in mechanics, tinkered with small inventions, and is said to have perfected a number of tools, especially a hand-saw. Part of the time he earned his living making daguerreotypes.
Thus he lived until he was thirty-six years old, a nervous, shrewd little man with a piercing black eye and determined mouth. He was argumentative and somewhat combative, inquiring, inventive, and doggedly determined. These traits were partially due to lack of education; to him an axiom was not a self-evident proposition; he refused to accept anything as a truth unless he could experiment with it and prove it for himself. He was not religious, but ​a man of good morals and of a kindly nature, always ready to help his neighbor.
In 1838 Charles Poyen, the French hypnotist, visited Belfast, Maine, Quimby’s home town, where he gave a course of lectures on mesmerism with illustrative experiments. At his first exhibition in the town hall his efforts were something of a failure, and he declared that some one in the audience perverted the hypnotic influence. He invited whomsoever it was to remain and meet him after the others had gone. The man who remained was “Park” Quimby, as the townspeople called him. Poyen talked with him and assured him that he had extraordinary hypnotic powers which, if developed, would make him an adept in mesmerism. Quimby was gratified and absorbingly interested. He at once began to experiment on his friends and acquaintances, and whenever he found a willing subject tried to put him into a mesmeric sleep. As he was very often successful in these efforts, people began to talk about him and if any one in the town did an eccentric thing, or had a mishap, the gossips said with waggish appreciation, “Park Quimby has mesmerized him.”
His townsmen came to believe Quimby could compel a man to come in from the street by fixing his eye on him; and nothing more greatly entertained the villagers than to assist at such an exhibition at the corner store. Quimby’s method of hypnotizing at this time was to fix his eyes in a concentrated gaze upon his subject. If he wished thoroughly to mesmerize the subject, that is, to put him to sleep, he ​would make passes across the subject's forehead, continuing his strokes down the shoulders and the length of the arms, shaking his hands after every pass. His subjects professed to thrill and tingle as though electric currents had passed through them, and some of them would perform Quimby's hypnotic commands, however absurd they might be. Quimby soon found an unusually good subject in a youth named Lucius Burkmar. As his experiments with this young man absorbed his interest and attracted considerable attention, he abandoned his workshop and devoted himself to mesmerism.
In his clock-tinkering days in Belfast, Park Quimby had been regarded as eccentric, and his home town now thought him quite mad in his new rôle. A few persons took him seriously and sought to have him cure minor illnesses, but more often he was derided, and sometimes even condemned as an infidel. Not appreciated at home, he left Belfast, taking Burkmar with him, and together they gave exhibitions in other towns where he was not so well known to his audiences and could command greater respect for his hypnotic feats. These are said often to have been so startling as to frighten susceptible persons, arousing in them suspicion of witchcraft and magic. More than once on his travels he stirred up a mob from which he and Burkmar had to escape by taking to their heels.
Wonder-working soon proving not entirely agreeable as a method of earning a living, Quimby returned to Belfast and settled down in his workshop again until another mesmerist visited the town in the ​person of John Bovee Dods. Dods was the author of a book which was published in 1850. It contained ideas he had taught for twenty years and was entitled “The Philosophy of Electrical Psychology.” He gave public lectures in Belfast, exchanged ideas with Quimby, and took into his employ Quimby’s subject, the lad Burkmar. When Quimby again employed Burkmar he found that Dods had been using him to read clairvoyantly the minds of patients and influencing him to prescribe remedies which Dods manufactured.
Quimby thought that overreaching, and when Burkmar diagnosed cases for him, he influenced him to prescribe simple herbs. These remedies appeared to effect cures as well as the higher-priced ones and Quimby began to believe that it was not the medicine that was doing the curing but the patient’s confidence in the doctor or medium. This was a decided step in a progression of reasoning which, had he possessed the mental equipment, might have carried him into the realm of psychological discovery. He was working honestly and cautiously, however, and so accomplished a modicum of success as a magnetic healer. He first abandoned medicines and second, dismissing the subject he had so long relied upon, began to sit directly with his patients, for he had discovered his own clairvoyant ability to read his patient’s thoughts or induce him to tell “all his sensations.” His cures were in part accomplished by directing the patient’s thoughts to another part of the body from that supposed to be affected. Thus a ​boil on the back of the neck became a toothache at his suggestion. He rubbed the heads of his patients and otherwise manipulated their bodies, believing in his personal magnetism as the important part of the curative agency.
In relieving the sick of their pains he found that he took their conditions upon himself, and he often related how he had to go into his garden and hoe vigorously, or to his woodpile and saw wood most industriously, to get rid of rheumatic pains or agues, and to reestablish his own equilibrium and recharge himself with electric currents; for Quimby was never all his life rid of the theories of Dods relating to the transmission of human electricity. Quimby is said to have cured cases of chronic disease of long standing and to have secured a worthier reputation than when working wonders with Lucius Burkmar. He now began to travel about New England again and issued circulars advertising himself far and wide as a healer with a new theory. Avidity for the mysterious in the rural mind carried these circulars to the remotest hamlets. A curious account of his statements as to himself and his methods appeared in the Bangor Jeffersonian in 1857. It was headed, “A New Doctrine of Health and Disease,” and it said in part:
A gentleman of Belfast, Dr. Phineas P. Quimby, who was remarkably successful as an experimenter in mesmerism some sixteen years ago, and has continued his investigations in psychology, has discovered and in his daily practise carries out, a new principle in the treatment of disease.
​His theory is that the mind gives immediate form to the animal spirit and that the animal spirit gives form to the body as soon as the less plastic elements of the body are able to assume that form. Therefore, his first course in the treatment of a patient is to sit down beside him and put himself en rapport with him, which he does without producing the mesmeric sleep.
He says that in every disease the animal spirit, or spiritual form, is somewhat disconnected from the body, that it imparts to him all its grief and the cause of it, which may have been mental trouble or shock to the body, as over fatigue, excessive cold or heat, etc. This impresses the mind with anxiety and the mind reacting upon the body produces disease. With this spirit form Dr. Quimby converses and endeavors to win it away from its grief, and when he has succeeded in doing so, it disappears and reunites with the body. Thus is commenced the first step toward recovery. This union frequently lasts but a short time when the spirit again appears, exhibiting some new phase of its trouble. With this he again persuades and contends until he overcomes it, when it disappears as before. Thus two shades of trouble have disappeared from the mind and consequently from the animal spirit, and the body already has commenced its efforts to come into a state in accordance with them.
In 1859 Quimby went to Portland, Maine, and remained there until the summer of 1865. During this period he had many patients and performed a number of cures. His hypnotic practise now seems to have changed its form to a large extent, notwithstanding he manipulated his patients always and ​this seems to have been the feature upon which he laid the greatest stress. But he now embellished these magnetic treatments with conversation, endeavoring to account for the origin of disease in opinions and notions, oscillating between weirdly speculative and practical points of view and nowhere confining himself to stringent definition.
It was expedient to survey Quimby’s life up to this point and it is now necessary to arrive at a clear conception of what sort of thinker he was. Unless we are quite clear here, we shall stray into a quagmire and find ourselves believing that all that follows in the life of Mary Baker Eddy was the result of her meeting with this man. This argument is advanced only by those who have a vague and confused idea of Quimby. Its claims are these: that Quimby cured Mary Baker of her invalidism, that he gave her the germ ideas of her philosophy, that he presented her with manuscripts which she afterwards claimed as her own, that he focussed her mind, that he was the impetus of all her subsequent momentum. Were these contentions just, none but a perfidious ingrate would deny them. But not to deny them, circumstantially and in totality, is to leave open the gate to the quagmire that Christian Science is mesmerism religionized. For to interpret Mary Baker Eddy and Christian Science by Quimbyism is to lose sight forever of the unique and powerful significance of her life.
Summarizing Quimby, therefore, it may be stated that though he was no scientist, he was trained by over twenty years’ experience in practising mes​xmerism and without knowing it was really a remarkable hypnotist. It would have been very extraordinary if from his quarter of a century’s experience in mesmerism, clairvoyance, and magnetism he had not reduced his observations to some sort of philosophy however crude and empirical. Though he liked to call it his wisdom, what he actually attained was a jumble of reasoning which even he did not understand. He combated with vigor and manliness sickly ideas in the minds of his patients, but his healthy physical presence, not philosophy, did the work. Saturated with Poyen’s theories of mesmerism and Dods’ doctrines of electrical currents, he was forever trying to convey something of himself to his patients, some subtle fluid or invisible essence. He never eliminated his personality.
Quimby was not even a religious man. He habitually and stoutly denied the Messianic mission of Jesus, declaring that Jesus was a healer and never intended to establish a religion. His notion of the Creator was confused with ideas of nature, and he is said to have called God the Great Mesmerizer or Magnet. Possessing neither education nor the least training in philosophic thinking, and having no real religious faith, this man was ill-equipped for stating a philosophy. Moreover, his belief in his personal magnetism blocked the way for forming a sound philosophic doctrine, even if his lack of cultivation had been modified by reading and scholarly association.
Quimby has been delineated that he may have his due, — Quimby the illiterate mesmerist, Quimby the blundering and stumbling reasoner, Quimby the ​kindly, sympathetic healer, above all, Quimby the unconscious hypnotizer. Ignorance will cover all his errors, good intentions all his accomplishments. He would never have claimed to have originated anything had he known all there was to be known of Mesmer. Quimbyism was but an excrescence on the natural growth of mental suggestion from Mesmer to the Nancy school. Quimbyism is not embryonic Christian Science; it is merely Mesmerism gone astray.
When Mary Baker entered Mr. Quimby’s office he sat down beside her, as was his custom with his patients, to get into the sympathetic and clairvoyant relation with her nature which he called rapport. Gazing fixedly into her eyes, he told her, as he had told others, that she was held in bondage by the opinions of her family and physicians, that her animal spirit was reflecting its grief upon her body and calling it spinal disease. He then wet his hands in a basin of water and violently rubbed her head, declaring that in this manner he imparted healthy electricity. Gradually he wrought the spell of hypnotism, and under that suggestion she let go the burden of pain just as she would have done had morphine been administered. The relief was no doubt tremendous. Her gratitude certainly was unbounded. She was set free from the excruciating pain of years. Quimby himself was amazed at her sudden healing; no less was he amazed at the interpretation she immediately placed upon it, that it had been accomplished by Quimby’s mediatorship between herself and God.
​She had come to Quimby prepared to find him a saint who healed by virtue of his religious wisdom, and as soon as she met him she completed her mental picture, endowing him with her own faith. Thus the hypnotist had almost nothing to do. Her faith returned upon her, flooding her with radiance, healing her of her pain. The modest mesmerist was astonished at the faith he believed himself to have evoked. It covered him with confusion to have her religious emotion, engendered by years of suffering, ascribe to him a spiritual nature which he knew he did not possess.
Mrs. Patterson’s case struck Quimby as one of his most remarkable cures. He watched with interest for her return on the following day and his gratification was equal to her gratitude when he found that she was apparently in the same radiant condition of well-being as when she stood erect the day before and said she was well. However, he again administered his mesmeric treatment, stroking her head, shoulders, and back, until she declared she felt as if standing on an electric battery.
“It is not magnetism that does this work, doctor,” she declared. “You have no need to touch me, nor disorder my hair with your mesmeric passes.”
“What then do you think does the healing?” he asked.
“Your knowledge of God’s law, your understanding of the truth which Christ brought into the world and which had been lost for ages.”
Quimby sat abashed. He was not religious, worshipful, or reverent, but he caught at the wonder of ​this idea, the glory of it, and vaguely conceived the renown of it. He stumbled, however, in his first step to the pedestal of a greatness which he knew was not his.
“I see what you mean,” he said musingly, “that Christ has come into the world again; but in that case I must be John and you Jesus.”
Delicate religious apprehension and clear mental acumen developed by years of prayer, study, and discussion had fitted Mary Baker’s mind to meet such a statement. She took instant umbrage at the startling irreverence.
“That is blasphemy,” she declared quietly, and Quimby’s eyes, already half whimsical over his tentative remark, dropped before hers. He became instantly serious, and said:
“I didn’t mean it so; I don’t understand the way you explain your cure. No one before ever believed it was divine truth that operated through me. They have said I healed through some mysterious force in myself. I have told them it was healthy electrical currents together with my ‘Wisdom’ that I imparted which effected the cure. But the faith in Christ which you declare enables me to heal I have not. It makes me think it is your faith in Christ that heals you, and all I can do is to acknowledge it. If the spirit of Christ is with you and I acknowledge it, then I bear the relation to you of John to Jesus.”
As is very well known to-day the subject under hypnosis reveals the inner recesses of his mind and gives up to the hypnotizer the thoughts of years. Mrs. Patterson remained for three weeks in Port​land and was daily at Mr. Quimby's office. Quimby always spoke of her as a remarkable woman and would daily question her as to her understanding of her cure. She regarded him with the enthusiasm one rescued from drowning feels for the swimmer who has brought him to shore. She continually invested his mind with her own ideas. He was eager to take advantage of her superior mental qualifications to add something to his “Wisdom,” and he would converse with her by the hour for that purpose.
“You say there is a principle which governs the healing,” he would remark. “Now what do you think that principle is?”
“I think it is God,” she would reply. “You should understand, Dr. Quimby, much better than I that this is not your magnetism or your wisdom but God's truth. I try to understand my cure every day, but I am still confused. You should make clear statements concerning your understanding of this truth for your patients’ sake, not in scribbled notes, but in a developed argument summed up in a treatise. There must be a truth underlying your healing. Do you analyze your processes?”
“I do not understand entirely what I do,” the doctor would say; “so how can I make the patient understand?”
“But there can be no science of health until the laws can be stated,” Mary Baker would reply. “If this is a philosophy it can be reduced to philosophic arguments. This is a very spiritual doctrine, the eternal years of God are with it, and it must be stated so that it will stand firm as the Rock of Ages.”
​Such portentous appreciation greatly excited the ambition of Quimby. He desired to measure up to this conception of himself and his work. He would retire to his study after treating to attempt to reduce a history of his cures to a science. He gathered from Mrs. Patterson’s conversation that he should write something, and perhaps with a quite innocent idea of copying a model he asked her to write something out first. For this purpose he gave her some notes he had made, commenting on the symptoms of recent patients. She took these to her boarding-house and occupied several days striving to piece them into an essay.
Her efforts were not a brilliant success. His penciled thoughts continually contradicted themselves and not only themselves, they directly contradicted her conception of her own cure or any other she had known of. When Mrs. Patterson talked with Quimby, he did not contradict her; on the contrary, he quickly adopted both her language and ideas; but such words as science, principle, truth, inserted at random in his subsequent notes, found no place in his jumble of theories and produced an extraordinary result. As an example of this result, the following quotation is said to be from Quimby’s pencil:
I will now try to establish this science or rock, and upon it I will build the science of life. My foundation is animal matter or life. This set in action by wisdom produces thought. Thoughts, like grains of sand, are held together by their own sympathy, wisdom or attraction. Now man is composed of these particles of matter, or thought, ​combined and arranged by wisdom. As thought is always changing, so man is always throwing off particles of thought and receiving others. Thus man is a progressive idea; yet he is the same man, although he is changing all the time for better or for worse. As his senses are in his wisdom, and his wisdom is attached to his idea or body, his change of mind is under one of the two directions either of this world of opinions or of God or Science, and his happiness or misery is the result of his wisdom.
Though Mary Baker’s own pure stream of religious thought wrought such confusion to Quimby’s materialistic theories as to make his utterances sound like philosophy gone mad, her cure, whether a temporary one wrought under hypnotism, or a permanent one achieved through a momentary realization of God, was secure. She consistently maintained that God was the “wisdom” Quimby brought to his patients. Quimby never told her so, and the hypnotist to-day would say that Quimby may have allowed her to hypnotize herself with that thought. However that may be, by seeing God as the principle of her cure, she stood safe on her own foundation, laid in the years of orthodox religious experience, though she was not to understand this until Quimby the hypnotizer lay in his grave.
Quimby really seemed to desire to adopt the idea of bringing God to his patients and would declare with all the wisdom he had that God was the great mesmerizer. Continuing to mesmerize his patients, he began to occupy the position of a lesser god in the minds of many who gathered round him. They ​quickly took up this idea of God as the great mesmerizer, and Quimby in a sense became His representative. When Quimby, “condensing his identity,” would visit them in waking hours of the night, or when they had returned to their homes, it was to them the shadow of the Almighty. This produced hypnotism more absolute than anything Quimby had hitherto dreamed of. It quite appreciably increased his success as a healer. Though he acquired the idea of God as the healer from Mary Baker, he reversed it and made of the Supreme Being a necromancer.