went into any trance, and was a strong disbeliever in spiritualism, as understood by that name. He claimed, and firmly believed, 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.”[1]
There is less documentary evidence to draw upon in the years after 1847, the date of the last experiment in mesmerism of which we have record, and the time when Dr. Quimby was in full possession of his silent method of healing. Naturally newspaper writers were less interested, for this new work was not at all spectacular, like the public exhibitions with Lucius. Moreover, it was harder to understand. For there was now no “subject,” there were in fact no experiments, but simply the quiet development of a method in which Dr. Quimby depended upon his own impressions and intuitions.
So long as it was a question of alleged magnetism Quimby's work was subject to belief in the mysterious, and he himself was groping his way from belief in the medical faculty and in disease as an entity to a wholly different view. But when he comes to recognize the subtle influence of mind on mind, the power of what we now call suggestion, the expectant attention of onlookers, and his own ability to make an intuitive diagnosis in a wholly normal state, we find his thought moving in the realm of sure principles and fixed laws. His letters to patients indicate that he still gave much prominence to physical conditions, and advised his patients with reference to them. But that was because the patients must have concrete facts to interpret, substituting Quimby's new view for that of medical diagnosis. The patients ordinarily had no one to depend on save Dr. Quimby, since such healing was not then recognized. Hence they wrote frequently to him and reported their progress, that he might advise them anew.
Again, the experimental period was in a measure more intelligible to the public because the mesmeric activities turned upon the control of one mind by another. The excerpts quoted above have told us that Quimby had exceptional powers of concentration and remarkable control over his
- ↑ New England Magazine, March, 1888, p. 273.
