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240 During twenty years prior to my discovery I had been trying to trace all physical effects to a mental cause; and in January of 1866 I gained the scientific certainty that all causation was Mind, and every effect a mental phenomenon.

Mrs. Eddy further states that about the year 1862 her health was failing rapidly, and she "employed a distinguished mesmerist, Mr. P. P. Quimby—a sensible, elderly gentleman, with some advanced views about healing.... There were no Metaphysical Healers then. The Science of Mental Healing had not been discovered."

Whether or not Mrs. Eddy is indebted for her ideas to Mr. Quimby has since been the subject of heated discussion; for the short time which has elapsed since the "discovery" has been long enough for the development of several rival schools, which have engendered toward one another as much intensity of feeling as the odium theologicum and odium medicum combined. Speaking of her rivals, Mrs. Eddy modestly observes: "Some silly publications, whose only correct or salient points are borrowed, without credit, from 'Science and Health,' would set the world right on Metaphysical Healing, like children thrumming a piano and pretending to teach music or criticise Mozart." The history of the discovery is of sufficient importance to be given. "The cowardly claim that I am not the originator of my own writings, but that one P. P. Quimby is, has been legally met and punished.... Mr. Quimby died in 1865, and my first knowledge of Christian Science, or Metaphysical Healing, was gained in 1866.... When he doctored me I was ignorant of the nature of mesmerism, but subsequent knowledge has convinced me that he practiced it." Mrs. Eddy says that after having been for many years a sufferer from chronic diseases, she met with an