Gordon Clark

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:

Lynn, February 15, 1866.

Mr. Dresser:

"Sir,—I enclose some lines of mine in memory of our much loved friend, which perhaps you will not think overwrought in meaning: others must, of course.

"I am constantly wishing that you would step forward into the place he has vacated. I believe you would do a vast amount of good, and are more capable of occupying his place than any other I know of.

"Two weeks ago I fell on the sidewalk and struck my back on the ice and was taken up for dead, came to consciousness amid a storm of vapors from cologne, chloroform, ether, camphor, etc., but to find myself the helpless cripple I was before I saw Dr. Quimby.

"The physician attending said I had taken the last step I ever should, but in two days I got out of my bed alone, and will walk; but yet I confess I am frightened, and out of that nervous heat my friends are forming, spite of me, the terrible spinal affection from which I have suffered so long and hopelessly.... Now can't you help me? I believe you can. I write this with this feeling: I think that I could help another in my condition if they had not placed their intelligence in matter. This I have not done, and yet I am slowly failing. Won't you write me if you will undertake for me if I can get to you?...

"Respectfully,
"Mary M. Patterson."

The poem by the lady destined to become Mrs. Eddy, author of Science and Health, was published by her, with her name attached, under the caption of

The complete identity of Mrs. Mary M. Patterson with Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy has been fully established by the highest Christian-Science authority in the world—Mrs. Eddy herself. In a letter dated March 7th, 1883, addressed to the Boston Post, she said:

"In 1862 my name was Patterson, my husband, Dr. Patterson, a distinguished dentist. After our marriage I was confined to my bed with a severe illness, and seldom left bed or room for seven years, when I was taken to Dr. Quimby and partially restored. I returned home, hoping once more to make that home happy, but only returned to a new agony to find that my husband had eloped with a married woman from one of the wealthy families of that city, leaving no trace save his last letter to us, wherein he wrote: 'I hope some time to be worthy of so good a wife.' I have a bill of divorce from him...."

In her letter to the Boston Post Mrs. Eddy made some other interesting assertions. She said:[15]

What an astonishing look these statements by Mrs. Eddy in 1883 have, when compared with the statements of Mrs. Mary M. Patterson from 1862 to 1866. Let us see.—

On March 7th, 1883, Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy made, in the Boston Post.

In October, 1862, the same lady, through the Portland Courier, made

Then, in the Portland Advertiser, came Mrs. Eddy's extraordinary comparison of Dr. Quimby's words and deeds with those of Christ, and

On the publication of Julius A. Dresser's True History of Mental Science—to which reference has been made in our previous chapter—Mrs. Eddy was greatly exercised over it. In her Christian Science Journal for June, 1887, she devoted the leading article, under her own name, to the Dresser pamphlet.

This little thing was a calm statement of facts, proved as they were given. From the facts, Dr. Quimby's theory was drawn, and Mr. Dresser frankly recounted what the general reader would consider Dr. Quimby's foibles and prejudices, as well as his doctrines and gifts. The pamphlet contained Mrs. Mary M. Patterson's opinion of Dr. Quimby in 1862, and her poem of 1866. It agreed with what was then the substance of her own assertions, by summarizing Dr. Quimby "as the first person of this age who penetrated the depths of truth so far as to discover and bring forth a true science of life, and openly apply it to the healing of the sick."

But, in criticising Mr. Dresser's quiet monograph, the amiable "Mother of Christian Science," proclaimed that Mr. Dresser had "let loose the dogs of war."; had unleashed a "pet poodle," alternately "to bark and whine" at her "heels"; and she identified the "pet poodle" with a certain "sucking litterateur," who had renounced allegiance to her.[16] But when her preliminary high-tide had ebbed a little, her pen dropped this:

"Did I write those articles in Mr. Dresser's pamphlet, purporting to be mine? I might have written them, twenty or thirty years ago, for I was under the mesmeric treatment of Dr. Quimby from 1862 until his death, in 1865. He was illiterate, and knew nothing then of the science of Mind-healing; and I was as ignorant of mesmerism as Eve before she was tempted by the serpent."

Those Patterson-Eddy "articles," then—no possible mendacity being adequate to their extinction—have been grudgingly and angrily admitted by their author to be genuine. But she would ignore them on the ground of "mesmerism." Her "head," she says, "was so turned by Animal Magnetism and will power" under Dr. Quimby's treatment, that she "might have written something as hopelessly incorrect" as the articles referred to.

But was Mrs. Mary M. Patterson under "mesmeric treatment," or did Mrs. Mary Patterson Eddy ever really believe she was under such treatment, when with Dr. Quimby? And was she then a truly "ignorant Eve," without a fig-leaf of knowledge pertaining to mesmerism? In 1862 she thought not, and we have seen that, in writing her first newspaper letter on Dr. Quimby, she turned her thought into these words:

"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."

Mrs. Patterson continued her letter by saying what has already been quoted in full—that Dr. Quimby cured her by "a great principle" of "science," through which he established "the truth" in "the patient"—a truth which he opposed to the error of giving intelligence to matter, and placing pain where it never placed itself.

In Mrs. Eddy's magazine article of June, 1887, she went so far as to say of Dr. Quimby,

"His healing was never considered or called anything but Mesmerism."

Well, Mrs. Mary M. Patterson, from 1862 to 1866, both "considered" and "called" the Doctor's healing something wholly different from mesmerism; and, saying it was done "by the truth which Christ taught," she considered and called it something "in contradistinction to all Isms."

Meanwhile, for more than three years of Mrs. Eddy's close acquaintance with Dr. Quimby, all his advertisements, even, told her, what she then fluently repeated, that he cured disease by implanting truth in the human mind, in place of error—"the truth being the cure." In other words, everything around her proclaimed that Dr. Quimby's cures were performed wholly by Mind-healing.

Mrs. Eddy's reversal of herself has been so agile and exhaustive since her comparisons of Dr. Quimby with our Lord Jesus Christ, that she has latterly preferred to speak of the good old doctor, who taught and healed her, as "unlearned"—a "mesmerist" who cured a patient by "rubbing" her—an "illiterate" man who said that he was only "John" while she was "Jesus," and whose "scribblings" she, to a considerable extent, wrote herself. From all this it must be adduced that Mrs. Eddy, in her Patterson days, went to Dr. Quimby to be cured of disease, but taught him to do it.

It is true, as we have noted, that Dr. Quimby was not an educated man, in the sense of the schools. It would have been impossible for him to write like Mrs. Eddy. When, for instance, she excogitated that first letter of Mrs. Patterson's to the Portland Courier, she opened it in this way:

"When our Shakespeare decided that there were more things in this world 'than were dreamed of in your philosophy,' I cannot say of a verity that he had a foreknowledge of P. P. Quimby. And when the school Platonic anatomized the soul and divided it into halves, to be united by elementary attractions, and heathen philosophers averred that old Chaos in sullen silence brooded o'er the earth until her inimitable form was hatched from the egg of night, I would not at present decide whether the fallacy was found in their premises or conclusions, never having dated my existence before the flood."

No: P. P. Quimby, even if aided by all the freshmen and sophomores that ever lived, could never have risen into the state of gorgeous, ponderous culture evinced in the foregoing power-house and epitome of all learning. Besides, when that incomparable paragraph was erected, Mrs. Eddy was young—not yet fifty years of age. At sixty, her literary style had lost something of its dazzle; but, in matter, all her work, especially her world-renowned book, Science and Health, compares beautifully with her grand production of 1862.

P. P. Quimby was a plain man of great natural genius. When he wrote—generally in great haste—he paid little attention to capital letters, punctuation, or form of any kind; but his manuscripts were carefully revised, under his own direction, by his two faithful friends, the Ware sisters, or by his son, Mr. George A. Quimby. Mrs. Mary M. Patterson borrowed and read some occasional jotting—that was all. In the possession of Mr. George A. Quimby are eight hundred pages of his father's writings, prepared before Dr. Quimby had the honor of knowing that Mrs. Patterson (to be Eddy) was on the face of the earth. These writings contain the substance of all his thoughts.

The knowledge that such writings exist has much disturbed Mrs. Mary Baker Glover Patterson Eddy. On the 21st of May, 1887, she published, through a Boston newspaper, an offer to print the Quimby manuscripts, at her own expense, provided she should "first be allowed to examine said manuscripts," and to see that "they were his own compositions," not hers, which she "had left with him many years ago."

Now Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy, author of Science and Health, filled with "immortal mind" and the only "divine science" ever "demonstrated," is of course an honest woman. Many delightful innocents of all sizes would take her word for anything she promised. There is not a single member of her Church-Scientist who is not sure that her little hatchet is infinitely cleaner and brighter than George Washington's. Still, the possessors of the Quimby manuscripts, not yet having teetered themselves above all "earthly wisdom," would rather not trust her with their property.

A few years ago, the eldest of Dr. Quimby's two devoted friends, the Ware sisters, passed away. With the younger sister she left the following statement, in the form of an affidavit, which is here printed with permission:

"I, Emma G. Ware, of Portland, Maine, in the United States of America, do hereby declare that I knew personally the late Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, and that I and my sister, Mrs. Mackay (formerly Sarah E. Ware), were his patients while he resided in Portland, between the years 1859 and 1865, and that we both owe our restored health to his treatment or mode of teaching. I have learned that attempts are being made to deprive him of the credit of being the first to introduce the method of healing through the mind (or, more correctly, of applying moral philosophy to the cure of diseases), and I make this declaration out of regard to him, in order that the credit to which he is entitled may not, without protest, be assumed by others. I know that while Mr. Quimby resided in Portland he wrote out his ideas on Mental Science: he was not a scholarly man, and on that account copies of his writings were made by my sister, myself, and by Mr. Quimby's son, George A. Quimby. These copies were read over to Mr. Quimby, and such corrections made as he thought fit. They are now in the possession of Mr. George A. Quimby, who resides in Belfast, Maine, and my sister and I have also copies of a number of them. Beyond these, there are no other copies of his writings, if I except a few fugitive pieces which he gave away while he resided in Portland. The mode of reasoning pursued by Mr. Quimby is not new, but its application to disease as a remedy has not, so far as I am aware, been previously made in modern times. His teaching may be thus summarized: that all diseases, whether mental or physical, are caused by an error in reasoning, and that correcting the error will remove the cause, and restore the sufferer to health."