Mary Baker Eddy - Study With Phineas Quimby and His Influence

Study With Phineas Quimby and His Influence

In October 1862 Mary became a patient of Phineas Quimby, a magnetic healer from Maine. She benefited temporarily by his treatment. From 1862 to 1865 Quimby and Eddy engaged in lengthy discussions about healing methods practiced by Quimby and others. It is said by Quimby's supporters that his beliefs influenced her later thinking and writing, although to what extent has been frequently disputed. Originally, Eddy gave Quimby much credit for his hypnotic treatments of her nervous and physical conditions and initially thought his brand of mesmerism entirely benign. An experience in 1866, when Eddy had a physical healing of serious injuries while reading the Bible, led her to investigate more and more into the system of healing she would eventually term “Christian Science.”

Quimby was steeped both in the Protestant Christianity of his time and the science of the industrial revolution. Quimby wrote in 1864, "The wise man, in like measure knows that the light of the body or natural man is but the reflection of the scientific man. Our misery lies in this darkness. This is the prison that holds the natural man, till the light of Wisdom bursts his bonds, & lets the captive free. Here is where where Christ went to preach to the prisoners bound by error before the reformation of science." Quimby writes many such passages linking the healing power of Christ with right perception and understanding, which Quimby equates with Science. The impartial student may see Quimby as a precursor in the theory and practice of Christian Science, though Eddy's relationship with Quimby was a subject of controversy even within her own lifetime.

While Quimby had his own notions on the nature of these unseen forces, which Eddy accepted early on, she would later draw decidedly different opinions on the nature of thought on the body and reject any form of hypnotism. It is evident that Eddy and Quimby worked together, appreciated one another and learned from one another. Quimby later said he learned more from Eddy than she did from him. Eddy clearly respected him and at one point referred to him as an “advanced thinker” with a “high and noble character.”

Still, the controversy over how much Eddy took from Quimby and vice versa has existed from their day to the present. Quimby’s work and writings, as seen above, included references to “Christ” and “scientific man” and “wisdom,” all words which Eddy used in her writings and teachings. However, it is clear, based on scholarly work on this subject (see, for example, the Gillian Gill and Robert Peel biographies of Eddy), that Quimby continued to practice various forms of hypnotism, mesmerism, and physical manipulation of the body. In contrast, Eddy’s healing method became firmly grounded in The Bible and the healing example of Jesus before the first edition of her book Science and Health was published in 1875.

Phineas Quimby died in January 1866.