Page:The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy.djvu/128

94 never to my knowledge, thought that matter was mind; and he never intimated to me that he healed mentally, or by the aid of mind. Did he believe matter and mind to be one, and then rub matter in order to convince the mind of truth? Which did he manipulate with his hands, matter or mind? Was Mr. Quimby's entire method of treating the sick intended to hoodwink his patients?

Quimby's followers freely admit that, on some occasions, he dipped his hands in water and rubbed the patient's head. They deny, however, that this was an essential part of the cure. Mr. Julius A. Dresser explains the circumstances thus:

Some may desire to ask, if in his practice, he ever in any way used manipulation. I reply that, in treating a patient, after he had finished his explanations, and the silent work, which completed the treatment, he usually rubbed the head two or three times, in a brisk manner, for the purpose of letting the patient see that something was done. This was a measure of securing the confidence of the patient at a time when he was starting a new practice, and stood alone in it. I knew him to make many and quick cures at a distance sometimes with persons he never saw at all. He never considered the touch of the hand as at all necessary; but let it be governed by circumstances, as was done eighteen hundred years ago.

In Mrs. Eddy's early days, she treated in precisely the same way. As will be described in the next chapter, she lived in several Massachusetts towns, teaching and practising the Quimby cure. She always instructed her students, after treating their patients mentally, to rub their heads. In addition, Mrs. Eddy would dip her hands in water and lay them over the stomach of the patient, repeating, as she did this, the words: "Peace, be still." Several of Mrs. Eddy's students of that time are still practising, and they still, in accordance with her instructions of nearly forty years ago, manipulate their patients. It was not until 1872 that she learned that the