Page:The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Wilbur).djvu/128

90 kindly, sympathetic healer, above all, Quimby the unconscious hypnotizer. Ignorance will cover all his errors, good intentions all his accomplishments. He would never have claimed to have originated anything had he known all there was to be known of Mesmer. Quimbyism was but an excrescence on the natural growth of mental suggestion from Mesmer to the Nancy school. Quimbyism is not embryonic Christian Science; it is merely Mesmerism gone astray.

When Mary Baker entered Mr. Quimby’s office he sat down beside her, as was his custom with his patients, to get into the sympathetic and clairvoyant relation with her nature which he called rapport. Gazing fixedly into her eyes, he told her, as he had told others, that she was held in bondage by the opinions of her family and physicians, that her animal spirit was reflecting its grief upon her body and calling it spinal disease. He then wet his hands in a basin of water and violently rubbed her head, declaring that in this manner he imparted healthy electricity. Gradually he wrought the spell of hypnotism, and under that suggestion she let go the burden of pain just as she would have done had morphine been administered. The relief was no doubt tremendous. Her gratitude certainly was unbounded. She was set free from the excruciating pain of years. Quimby himself was amazed at her sudden healing; no less was he amazed at the interpretation she immediately placed upon it, that it had been accomplished by Quimby’s mediatorship between herself and God.