The Quimby Manuscripts. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby
So far as Lucius is able to follow, such cases merely show Mr. Quimby's power to exert “magnetic influence,” whatever that was supposed to be. He speaks, for example, of a patient to whom Quimby was taken by a Dr. Richardson. “The case was that of a woman who fell down and injured the elbow joint so that she couldn't move it without excruciating pain. He magnetised her and made her move her arm about just as he pleased without any pain.”
Turning to Mr. Quimby's own account of his experiments, we find once more that what Quimby was interested in was not the alleged “magnetism,” but the activities which resulted when a subject or patient accepted a certain idea and responded to it. For example, in an article dated 1863, Mr. Quimby states that he found his mesmeric subject possessing a psychical sense of smell such that Lucius could not only detect any odor at a distance, but “describe the flower or person that threw the odor.” Noticing Lucius's responsiveness to what he had perceived, or at other times merely thought he perceived, Mr. Quimby resolved to try an experiment of another sort, namely, to prove that similar consequences would follow when there was no real object at all, but merely an idea.
“I said,” writes Mr. Quimby, that “I could create objects that my subject could see. So, of course I could create things that would frighten him, and I could create all kinds of fruit which he would eat and be affected by. For instance, when awake he was very fond of lemons, and was always eating them. I thought I would break him of it. So when I had him asleep I would create mentally a lemon, and he would see it. Then I would make him eat it till he would be so sick that he would vomit. Then he would beg me not to make him eat any more lemons. I never mentioned the conversation to him in his waking state. After trying the experiment two or three times, it destroyed his taste for lemons, and he had no desire for them and could not even bear the taste of them.”
From this experiment Mr. Quimby infers that “ideas that cannot be seen are as as real as those which can be seen … Then man can account for his troubles as easily as he can account for injuries caused by an accident. … Some ideas contain no intelligence because the author puts none in them.” If a subject or a patient can be unpleasantly affected by a mere suggestion, one can utilize this power by directing the mind with intelligence, and so disabuse it of its errors. Since minds are reached directly in any event by mere “opinions,” working mischief, we all have it in our power to reach minds wisely, and no “subject” is required. Thus it becomes a question of developing that “wisdom,” as Quimby later called it, which should free people from adverse suggestions.
Mr. Quimby further saw that even when a subject is clairvoyant this state is of short duration, and the subject readily lapses into the mere mind-reading of those present. So the diagnosis of a disease, as well as the opinion that a certain remedy will be effective, may be in part mere mind-reading. In an article addressed to the editor of a Portland paper, February, 1862, protesting against being classed with spiritists, mesmerists, and clairvoyants, Mr. Quimby says,
“I was one of the first mesmerisers in the state who gave public experiments, and I had a subject who was considered the best then known. He examined and prescribed for diseases just as this class do now. … The capacity of thought-reading is the common extent of mesmerism. Clairvoyance is very rare. …
“When I mesmerised my subject, he would prescribe some little simple herb that would do no harm or good of itself. In some cases this would cure the patient. I also found that any medicine would cure if he ordered it. This led me to investigate the matter, and arrive at the stand I now take: that the cure is not in the medicine, but in the confidence of the doctor or medium. A clairvoyant never reasons nor alters his opinion; but, if in the first state of thought-reading he prescribes medicine, he must be posted by some mind interested in it, and must also derive his knowledge from the same source from which the doctors derive theirs.
“The subject I had left me, and was employed by——, who employed him in examining diseases in the mesmeric sleep, and taught him to recommend such medicines as he got up himself in Latin; and, as the boy did not know Latin, it looked very mysterious. Soon afterwards he was at home again, and I put him to sleep to examine a lady, expecting that he would go on in his old way; but instead of that he wrote a long prescription in Latin. I awoke him, that he might read it; but he could not. So I took it to the apothecary who said he had the articles, and that they would cost twenty dollars. This was impossible for the lady to pay. So I returned and put him to sleep again; and he gave me his usual prescription of some little herb, and [the patient] got well.”
This result convinced Mr. Quimby that if mediums and subjects had not acquired their alleged knowledge from the “common allopathic belief,” and if it were not for “the superstition of the people,” very few cures would be wrought. The fact that the medium's eyes are closed, for example, adds to the mystery. The people as readily responded to the suggestions of doctors who helped them create their diseases, in the first place, as to the supposed wisdom of the medium in the second. It is all a matter of suggestion any way. But real service to the sick would consist in showing them how they had been deceived. Mr. Quimby's experience with mesmerism had taught him the real secret of humbuggery in the case of both mediums and of mesmerists or supposed “magnetic healers.” He had to pursue his investigations far enough to be thoroughly convinced, and to come into possession of the true principle. Moreover it was necessary for him to experiment with Lucius long enough to make the highly important discovery that he, Quimby, was clairvoyant, too, without the aid of mesmerism, and without any of the psychical manifestions through which the spiritists influenced people.
1 ↑ This sentence, a characteristic one, is given exactly as found in the journal.
2 ↑ These preliminary cases must have taught Mr. Quimby much in regard to the re-establishing of confidence, for later we find him beginning as soon as possible to encourage patients to make an effort to walk or raise their arms, in instances where this power had been lost.
V
THE PRINCIPLES DISCOVERED
To note how radical was the change through which Mr. Quimby passed as he turned from the mesmeric point of view, we need to revert for the moment to his first experiments. In one of his descriptive articles he tells us that the first time he sat down to try to mesmerise another man he took a chair by him and the two, joining hands with a young man as subject, tried to will the latter to sleep. Their hypothesis was that electricity would pass from their organisms into that of the subject. So by “puffing and willing,” they tried to convey their electricity until at last the subject fell asleep. Having the young man in their power the two men then tried to determine which one had the greater influence.
“So we sat the subject in the chair, the gentleman stood in front of him and I behind him, and the gentleman tried to draw him out of the chair; but he could not start him. Then we reversed positions, and I drew the subject out of the chair This showed that I had the greater power or will. This ended the first experiment.”
Later, Mr. Quimby, experimenting alone, put the subject asleep in five minutes. But as he was new at that sort of thing he did not know what to do next. So procuring books he learned what one is supposed to do. He did not then realize that the results obtained depended upon the theory one adopts and the phenomena one accordingly anticipates. But later he became convinced that acceptance of the theory of magnetism and the mesmeric sleep predisposed his mind to produce the results, and that if had never heard of a book on the subject the results would have been very different. Furthermore, he concluded that however absurd the ideas acquired by the operator, the operator will prove them “true” by his experiments, since, as he tells us, “beliefs make us act, and our acts are directed by our beliefs.” Mr. Quimby had to be credulous in the beginning in order to find out that he had merely proved a belief and was far from truth.
At the outset, then, the hypothesis was that the subject responded merely because the operator contained more electricity and had the stronger will, and will-power itself seemed to be little more than magnetism, so-called.