Who is the Founder of Mental Healing?
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One E. J. Arens of Boston, published in 1880 and 1881, pamphlets containing many pages taken from Mrs. Eddy’s works on Mental Healing, or Christian Science, that she had published in class-books for students in 1870, and is now very possibly interested in the late scheme of one Richard Kennedy of Boston, to bring before the public, a hint that she was not the founder of the Mental Science of treating disease, that she discovered in 1866, after the death of Dr. Quimby.
The aforesaid E. J. Erens studied, for the first time in his life, Mental Healing in the year 1879; his teacher was the late Dr. Asa G. Eddy, and Mrs. C. E. Choate of Boston, was one of his classmates. He was uneducated, knew nothing of Metaphysics and is incapable of the simplest correct authorship. He could not in a life-time have written so profound a work as the pamphlet he issues entitled, “The understanding of Christianity or God;” much less could he have done this in one year after he put himself under the instruction of Dr. Eddy.
The following article, clipped from the Boston PostEditorial Note: This article, in the form of a letter, appeared in the Boston Post on February 19, 1883. It is signed “E. G.,” but Mary Baker Eddy is its author., is a reply to an article that appeared in the same paperEditorial Note: This is a reference to an article by Julius A. Dresser that appeared in the form of a letter in the February 8, 1883 issue of the Boston Post., stating that the late Dr. P. P. Quimby of Belfast, Maine, was the founder of Mental Healing. The truth is, Dr. Quimby was a very unlearned man, never claimed any literary ability whatever, never in his life published a work of his own, and has been dead some twenty years. How then can he have founded Mental Healing?
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LETTERS FROM THE PEOPLE.
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The Founder of the Mental Method of Treating Diseases.
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TO THE EDITOR OF THE BOSTON POST:
We were interested in your late article on mental healing, having been acquainted with the late Dr. Phineas P. Quimby, who died many years ago, and whom we regarded highly. He was a contemporary of noted mesmerist, Dr. Newton, and often amused us with his unique descriptions of their mesmeric performances. He, Dr. Quimby, told us one evening, on our way to a lecture at the city hall in Portland, that he would exhibit some of his power to us in the hall. Accordingly, after we were seated, he said to us I shall set them to coughing, and immediately one after another commenced coughing until the assembly in general joined in chorus, longer or shorter, according to directions. Then all of a sudden the coughing stopped but our laughter was not over, for immediately the people commenced sneezing as if a sudden choryza had seized them, and pocket handkerchiefs were in quick requisition.
Dr. Quimby’s method of treating the sick was manipulation; after immersing his hands in water he rubbed the head, etc. He never called his practice a mental method of treating diseases, to our knowledge, and we knew him and his history. He was very successful in many cases of lameness. We asked him several times if he had any system, aside from manipulation and mesmerism of treating disease, and he always evaded the subject. We were his patient, but he never gave us any further information relating to his practice, but always said it is a secret of my own, and I have thought best not to divulge it. After treating the sick he would retire to a side room and note with pen the especial case with such other paraphrase as he thought best. This copy he gave to certain individuals to bring out, or, as he said, “put into shape.” His scribblings were fragmentary, but sometimes very interesting. He requested us to transform them frequently, and to give them different meanings, which we did. He never took a student, to our knowledge, or gave information that was practical, of his healing. He called his scribblings, essays, but never the “Science of Health.”
“Science and Health”Editorial Note: Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy. is a work by Mrs. Mary B. G. Eddy, issued in 1875. She discovered the science of healing embodied in that work, after years of practical proof through homeopathy, that mind instead of matter is the principal of pathology, and finally sealed her proof by a severe casualty, from which she recovered through her exercise of mental power over the body, after the regular physicians had pronounced her case incurable. For some 18 years she has been toiling with pen and tongue to explain her discovery of the Science of Mental HealingEditorial Note: Christian Science, and thousands owe their recovery from hopeless suffering and their knowledge of Mental Healing to her unselfish labors. Her books have been widely circulated. “Science and Health” is in the fifth edition, and the first edition was 1000 copies. A grateful multitude acknowledge the blessings of her mental system of treating disease. Perhaps the following, in the words of her husband, the late Dr. Asa G. Eddy, best express it: “Mrs. Eddy’s works are the outgrowths of her life. I never knew so unselfish an individual.”Editorial Note: This quotation by Asa Gilbert Eddy is found in a forward to the third edition of Science and Health titled “To the Public.”
The last time Mrs. Eddy saw Dr. Quimby, and a short time before his death, he said to her; “I owe to you all the popularity I have in Portland.” She had sent some leading articles through the press that helped destroy the prejudice against Dr. Quimby, and announced his practice an improvement on animal magnetism. Mrs. Eddy has established a metaphysical college in Boston, chartered by the commonwealth in 1881, where the mental treatment of disease is taught on the strict principle of Christian Science.