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 [an] account of what his troubles were, [Quimby] 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 [so] that the patient would have more confidence in him; but he always insisted that he possessed no “power” nor healing properties different from anyone else, and that his manipulations conferred no beneficial effect upon 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 patient’s 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 the name of his son who was killed. 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 patient’s 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.
Quimby’s escapades with Lucius and his clairvoyant abilities had no small influence on spiritualists of the time, and, based upon their performances, many began utilizing the Mesmeric trance to achieve clairvoyant capabilities. It was on account of these unexplainable mind readings that Quimby came to question what was happening in Mesmerism, eventually developing his own system of spiritual healing. In Quimby’s teachings, the emphasis was on the action of God, rather than merely the influence of one human mind on another. Quimby was convinced that he had rediscovered the healing method of Jesus. He abandoned his assistant Lucius and developed his own theory of healing, called the “Quimby Method,” reintroducing the earlier Hermetic ideas that God was the driving force behind the success of Mesmeric treatment.
“Now for my particular experience,” writes Mr. Quimby in an article quoted in The True History of Mental Science:
I had pains in the back, which, they said, were caused by my kidneys, which were partly consumed. I was also told that I had ulcers on my lungs. Under this belief, I was miserable enough to be of no account in the world. This was the state I was in when I commenced to mesmerize. On one occasion, when I had my subject asleep, he described the pains I felt in my back (I had never dared to ask him to examine me, for I felt sure that my kidneys were nearly gone), and he placed his hand on the spot where I felt the pain. He then told me that my kidneys were in a very bad state—that one was half-consumed, and a piece three inches long had separated from it, and was only connected by a slender thread. This was what I believed to be true, for it agreed with what the doctors had told me, and with what I had suffered; for I had not been free from pain for years. My common sense told me that no medicine would ever cure this trouble, and therefore I must suffer till death relieved me. But I asked him if there was any remedy. He replied, “Yes, I can put the piece on so it will grow, and you will get well.” At this I was completely astonished, and knew not what to think. He immediately placed his hands upon me, and said he united the pieces so they would grow. The next day he said they had grown together, and from that day I never have experienced the least pain from them.
Now what was the secret of the cure? I had not the least doubt but that I was as he described; and, if he had said, as I expected he would, that nothing could be done, I should have died in a year or so. But, when he said he could cure me in the way he proposed, I began to think; and I discovered that I had been deceived into a belief that made me sick. The absurdity of his remedies made me doubt the fact that my kidneys were diseased, for he said in two days that they were as well as ever. If he saw the first condition, he also saw the last; for in both cases he said he could see. I concluded in the first instance that he read my thoughts and when he said he could cure me he drew on his own mind; and his ideas were so absurd that the disease vanished by the absurdity of the cure. This was the first stumbling-block I found in the medical science. I soon ventured to let him examine me further, and in every case he could describe my feelings, but would vary about the amount of disease; and his explanation and remedies always convinced me that I had no such disease, and that my troubles were of my own make.
At this time I frequently visited the sick with Lucius, by invitation of the attending physician; and the boy examined the patient, and told facts that would astonish everybody, and yet every one of them was believed. For instance, he told of a person affected as I had been, only worse, that his lungs looked like a honey comb and his liver was covered with ulcers He then prescribed some simple herb tea, and the patient recovered; and the doctor believed the medicine cured him. But I believed the doctor made the disease; and his faith in the boy made a change in the mind, and the cure followed. Instead of gaining confidence in the doctors, I was forced to the conclusion that their science is false.
Man is made up of truth and belief; and, if he is deceived into a belief that he has, or is liable to have, a disease, the belief is catching, and the effect follows it. I have given the experience of my emancipation from this belief and from my confidence in the doctors, so that it may open the eyes of those who stand where I was. I have risen from this belief; and I return to warn my brethren, lest, when they are disturbed, they shall get into this place of torment prepared by the medical faculty. Having suffered myself, I cannot take advantage of my fellow men by introducing a new mode of curing disease by prescribing medicine. My theory exposes the hypocrisy of those who undertake to cure in that way. They make ten diseases to one cure, thus bringing a surplus of misery into the world, and shutting out a healthy state of society . . . . When I cure, there is one disease the less . . . . My theory teaches man to manufacture health; and, when people go into this occupation, disease will diminish, and those who furnish disease and death will be few and scarce.
What really were the differences between Dr. Quimby’s methods and those of Mesmer? Quimby studied and