Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/241

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MESMERISM DETHRONED
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was of Mind Science. He practised without her sanction and with indifferent success for a time and later became a homeopathic physician.

Wallace W. Wright, a bank accountant, came to grief in his practise of Mind Science. He was the son of a Universalist clergyman of Lynn, and a brother of Carroll D. Wright, who afterward became United States Commissioner of Labor. His relations with Mrs. Glover were interesting because the rock upon which he struck was not superstition, as in the case of Tuttle, or dogma, as in the case of Stanley, but psychology. He precipitated a discussion which finally led Mrs. Glover to draw the line sharply between mesmerism and Mind Science, to indicate once and for all what Quimbyism was, what mesmerism is, and to rid her practising students of the custom of laying hands upon their patients.

Wright had entered her class with some intellectual perturbation but left it with enthusiasm. When he had completed the course he began to practise in Lynn and later he carried his work elsewhere with success, which continued so long as he was an obedient follower. But he began to alter in his mental attitude and to question the spirituality of what he was doing. He began to believe he was practising mesmerism. Thereupon his power to cure began to wane, until he lost it utterly. He wrote of his peculiar experience to a Lynn paper which published his letter. He said:

The 9th of last June found me in Knoxville, Tennessee, as assistant to a former student. We met with good success in a majority of our cases