Page:The Quimby Manuscripts.djvu/102

98 pathway through life, accept them as a verity and bid him Godspeed.

[Writing under the head of “The Art of Healing,” another interested observer, signing himself “H.,” communicates to the Portland Advertiser, Feb. 1860, his conclusions in the case of Quimby's practice. He says in part:]

Every theory admitting evil as an element cannot annihilate it. If disease is ever driven out of existence, it must be by a theory and practice entirely at variance with what we now put our trust in. . . . In every age there have been individuals possessing the power of healing the sick and foretelling events. . . . Spiritualists, mesmerists, and clairvoyants, making due allowance for imposition, have proved this power is still in existence. Like this in the vague impression of its character, but infinitely beyond any demonstration of the same intelligence and skill, is the practice of a physician who has been among us a year and to whose treatment some hopeless invalids owe their recovered health.

I refer to Dr. P. P. Quimby. With no reputation except for honesty, which he carries in his face and the faint rumor of his cures, he has established himself in our city and by his success merits public attention. . . . He stands among his patients as a reformer, originating an entirely new theory in regard to disease and practising it with a skill and ease which only comes from knowledge and experience. His success in reaching all kinds of diseases, from chronic cases of years' standing to acute disease, shows that he must practise upon a principle different from what has ever been taught. His position as an irregular practitioner has confined him principally to the patronage of the ignorant, the credulous and the desperate, and the most of his cases have been those which have not yielded to ordinary treatment.

[In introducing the following letter to the Portland Advertiser, the editor says; “We publish this morning a communication over the name of ‘Vermont,’ from a very intelligent young lady who, with her mother, was a boarder at the International Hotel during the most of last winter. The mother was a lady, we judge, of about fifty years, and the daughter about twenty. The mother had been treated for