The Church of St. Bunco. Gordon Clark

until he was threatened with blindness. He was a man of means, and no expense was spared to secure the best medical treatment. It was unavailing. He heard of Dr. Quimby, and, as the usual "last resort," applied to him. "He cured me," says the gentleman, "and I have had no trouble since. But how he did it I don't know. He sat and talked with me, and sometimes touched my head and face with his hands, moistened with cold water, though declaring even this to be of no vital consequence. He cured other people of all sorts of things, as easily as he cured me. Here I am with two good eyes, and you have the facts."[12]

      The ultimate value of "The New Thought," or "Mental and Moral Healing," is yet a problem; but that P. P. Quimby was the spring and fountain of the whole stream, with its various branches, is beyond all reputable dispute. It rests on these grounds:

      First. He claimed it himself in the presence of all whom he met, spreading the claim broadcast even in newspaper advertisements and business circulars.

      Second. Many of the most intelligent and trustworthy of his patients became, as we have seen, correspondents of the press to express their gratitude for his cures, and scores of their articles have been preserved. With no exception, these articles substantiate Dr. Quimby's declaration that he alone, of all persons then living, treated disease through the normal action of the human mind.

      Third. Dr. Quimby had a son, Mr. George A. Quimby, who acted for years as his father's secretary. This gentleman is living, and is a well and widely known citizen of Belfast, Maine. His distinct claim for Dr. Quimby is that "up to his time, no man, since Jesus, had attempted and succeeded in curing the sick, without medicine, applications, mesmerism, hypnotism or spiritualism, simply mentally—through the mind and sense—and who further claimed that he did it in a scientific manner which could be taught to others, ... and was in a normal state of mind all the time, as also was his patient."

      Fourth. A number of Dr. Quimby's patients and close friends long survived him, and several of them still live. With a single exception, every one of these people has said, in substance, exactly what Mr. George A. Quimby states in detail.

      Fifth. The single exception is a lady who once said what all the rest say—and who is completely on record as saying it—but who, for reasons easy to understand and explain, has since taken a lady's high and mighty privilege of "changing her mind." We will inspect this change.

CHAPTER III.

       Table of Contents

      DR. QUIMBY'S MOST DISTINGUISHED PATIENT.

      Dr. Quimby was at the height of his career during the early days of our Civil War. Among his patients at that time was one who has since become the most celebrated of them, and who now bears the name of Mary Baker Glover Eddy. Then, however, the patient was known as Mary M. Patterson—an incident which occurred through her being a very energetic and pious woman, who has attracted to herself a considerable variety of husbands.[13] It was in 1862, says Dr. Quimby's biographer, Mrs. A. G. Dresser, "that Mrs. Eddy, author of Science and Health, was associated with Dr. Quimby; and I well remember the very day when she was helped up the steps of his office on the occasion of her first visit. She was cured by him, and afterward became very much interested in his theory. But she put her own construction on much of his teaching, and developed a system of thought which differed radically from it."

      Mrs. Mary Baker G. Patterson (since Mrs. Eddy), was greatly surprised at her cure, and naturally grateful for it. She at once said so in print. It was in an issue of the Portland Evening Courier, of November 7th, 1862. Her account was this:

      "Three weeks ago I quitted my nurse and sick-room en route for Portland. The belief of my recovery had died out of the hearts of those who were most anxious for it. With this mental and physical depression, I first visited P. P. Quimby, and in less than one week from that time I ascended by a stairway of one-hundred and eighty-two steps to the dome of the City Hall, and am improving ad infinitum.... I have employed electro-magnetism and animal magnetism, and for a brief period I have felt relief ... but in no instance did I get rid of a return of all my ailments, because I had not been helped out of the error in which opinions involve us. My operator believed in disease independent of mind; hence I could not be wiser than my teacher. But now I can see, dimly at first, and only as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's faith and works; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth is my recovery. This truth, which he opposes to the error of giving intelligence to matter and placing pain where it never placed itself, if received understandingly, changes the currents of the system to their normal action, and the mechanism of the body goes on undisturbed. That this is a science capable of demonstration becomes clear to the minds of those patients who reason upon the process of their cure. The truth which he establishes in the patient cures him (although he may be wholly unconscious thereof), and the body, which is full of light, is no longer in disease."

      The communication of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy—then Mrs. Mary M. Patterson—which she published in the Portland Courier, was criticised, the next day, November 8th, 1862, by the Portland Advertiser. In reply to that paper she said:

      "P. P. Quimby stands upon the plain of wisdom with his truth. Christ healed the sick, but not by jugglery or with drugs. As the former speaks as never man before spake, and heals as never man healed since Christ, is he not identified with truth, and is not this the Christ which is in him?... P. P. Quimby rolls away the stone from the sepulcher of error, and health is the resurrection.... But light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth it not."[14]

      Dr. Quimby having died on the 16th of January, 1866, Mrs. M. B. G. Patterson—not to be Mrs. M. B. G. Patterson Eddy until 1867—"sent to me," says Mr. Julius Dresser in his True History of Mental Science, "a copy of a poem she had written to his memory." With the poem was sent the following letter: