The Quimby Manuscripts. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby
with him. [This of course involved the silent realization known as a treatment.] … The Doctor also contends that if he can cure an individual case … he can produce the same effect by addressing himself to many at the same time. He has [the intention] of publishing his ideas at some future time, and also the idea of treating disease publicly, when he feels that the people are ready.
[It will be noticed, that the writers in the above excerpts from the press uniformly speak of the fact that Dr. Quimby practised according to a “new principle,” not by giving medicine or by making any material applications, and not by the use of mesmerism or spiritism. These excerpts have not been selected and published here because they are favorable, but because they are frank statements of Dr. Quimby's practice as it impressed contemporary observers. The newspaper excerpt which shows the least understanding of Quimby's practice is the following from the Bangor Jeffersonian, 1856. This excerpt was republished in “The Philosophy of P. P. Quimby,” 1895. When the writer quoted below uses the term “animal spirit,” he is using his own term, not Quimby's, for this term was not employed by Dr. Quimby. What Quimby taught was that the false ideas and mental imagery causing the disease were directly impressed on the plastic substance of the mind, which included what we now call the subconscious. Quimby did indeed find the soul, (not the “animal spirit,”) partly disconnected from the body in certain extreme cases, when the patient lay at the point of death, and he conversed with the soul, or, as he says in most of his writings, “the scientific man.” The statement quoted below shows that it was difficult for some observers to understand what Quimby meant.]
A gentleman of Belfast, P. P. Quimby, who was remarkably successful as an experimenter in mesmerism some sixteen years ago, and has continued his investigations in psychology, has discovered, and in his daily practice carries out, a new principle in the treatment of disease. … His theory is that the mind gives immediate form to the animal spirit, and that the animal spirit gives form to the body. His first course in the treatment of a patient is to sit down beside him and put himself en rapport with him, which he does without producing the mesmeric sleep. He says that in every disease the animal spirit or spiritual form is somewhat disconnected from the body, and that when he comes en rapport with a patient, he sees that spirit form standing beside the body; that it imparts to him all its grief, and the cause of it, which may have been mental trouble, or a shock to the body, or over-fatigue, excessive cold or heat, etc. This impresses the mind with anxiety, and the mind reacting upon the body, produces disease. … With this spirit form Dr. Quimby converses, and endeavors to win it away from its grief, and when he has succeeded in doing so, it disappears, and reunites with the body. In a short time the spirit again appears, exhibiting some new phase of trouble.
[The following is one of the last newspaper references to Dr. Quimby and his work in Portland, after he had announced his intention of retiring from his practice there, that he might revise his writings for publication. It was written by a former patient.]
It is with feelings of surprise and regret that many of your readers receive the announcement, given in your advertising columns, that Dr. P. P. Quimby has determined to leave Portland. The Doctor has been in this city for nearly seven years, and by his unobtrusive manners and sincerity of practice has won the respect of all who know him. To those especially who have been fortunate enough to recieve benefit at his hands—and they are many—his departure will be viewed as a public loss. That he has manifested wonderful power in healing the sick among us, no well-informed and unprejudiced person can deny. Indeed, for more than twenty years the Doctor has devoted himself to this one object, viz., to cure the sick, and to discover through his practice the origin and nature of disease. By a method entirely novel, and at first sight quite unintelligible, he has been slowly developing what he calls the “Science of Health;” that is, as he defines it, a science founded on principles that can be taught and practised, like that of mathematics, and not on opinion or experiments of any kind whatsoever.
Hitherto he has confined his efforts to individual cases only, seeking to discover in them what disease is, how it arises, and whether it may not, with the progress of truth, be entirely eradicated. The results of his practice have been such as to convince him that disease, that great enemy to our happiness, may be destroyed, and that, too, on grounds and by a method purely rational; and he goes from us not to abandon the cause, we are rejoiced to learn, but to enter a broader field of usefulness, wherein he hopes not only to cure, but as far as he can, to prevent disease.
The path he treads is a new one and full of difficulties; but with the evidence he has already given, in numberless instances, of his extraordinary ability in detecting the hidden sources of suffering, we are led to hope he may yet accomplish something for the permanent good of mankind. An object so pure, and a method so unselfish, must, when understood, claim the favorable attention of all. We bid him God speed.
1 ↑ The editor of a Lowell, Mass., paper prints a communication from Miss B. in which she gives the same facts cited above, and says, “The young lady who sends us the following … has relatives in this city whom she has recently visited. We have no question of the entire truthfulness of her statements, which we have heard orally and with more particularity.” The communication is dated Oct. 22, 1860.
2 ↑ This communication was reprinted in full in "The Philosophy of P. P. Quimby," p. 25.
3 ↑ i.e. spiritistic.
4 ↑ The writer puts in his own opinion when he speaks as if Quimby had only wealthy and educated patients. This was not true. According to his own statement above, “medical” should be omitted in the last sentence.
5 ↑ What most impressed people who, like Capt. Deering, supposed Quimby would undertake to exercise some mesmeric control over their wills, was the fact that after making his intuitive diagnosis and giving his silent treatment he would put his patients in command of the curative principle and aid them to help themselves the first moment possible. This convinced them that he was no charlatan but a genuine friend to the sick.
6 ↑ This case shows the clearness with which Quimby discerned a patient's condition at a distance, also his skill in telling how long his absent work would take before the patient would be up and about.
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