The Quimby Manuscripts - Chapter 16



CHAPTER 16
DISEASE AND HEALING

[Dr. Quimby is so greatly interested in calling attention to the power of
human beliefs in relation to all man's troubles that he does not give much
space to a description of the natural world, does not state his idea of
matter very definitely, and often leaves the reader wondering how he
distinguishes between matter and "spiritual matter" or the mind of
opinions. He is especially interested to point out that matter can be
"condensed into a solid by mind action," that it undergoes a "chemical
change" as a result of mental changes. He sometimes speaks of it as an
"error" or shadow, as "an idea seen or not, just as it is called out."
Whatever its objective reality in the Divine purpose, matter in itself is
inanimate, there is no intelligence in it. His view of matter is
idealistic, therefore, and in considering his theory of disease and its
cure we need to bear in mind that matter for him is plastic to thought.
The ordinary or external mind which is "spiritual matter" is the
intermediate term. Above this mind is the real man with his spiritual
senses, his clairvoyant and intuitive powers. The final term is Wisdom,
making known its truths in so far as there is responsiveness and
intelligence on man's part. This is said to possess a real "identity." To
find himself as an "identity" in every truth, man should know himself as
the "scientific man," able through Wisdom's help to banish all errors from
the world.]

THE RECEPTION OF THIS GREAT TRUTH

I BELIEVE now that the time has nearly arrived when the people will be
prepared to receive a great truth that will give an impulse and set. them
investigating a subject which will open to their minds new and enlarged
ideas of themselves and show man what he is and how he makes himself what
he is. It has been said that to know himself is the greatest study of man,
but I say that for man to know his error is greater than to know himself;
for every person is to himself just what he think he is, but to know his
error (1) is what ought to be his greatest study. For the last twenty-five
years (2) I have been trying to find out what man is and at last have come
to know what he is not. To know that you exist is nothing, but to know
what disturbs you is of great value to every person. The world has been
developing itself, and we look on and never think it is ourselves. Through
ignorance of Wisdom we have made a man of straw and given him life,
intellect and a head in the image of our own creation. To this image we
have given the idea "man" with certain capacities such as life and death,
and have made him subject to evils such as disease. To the man of straw
the words I have quoted are applied. This man of straw has been trying to
find himself out and in doing this has nearly destroyed or blotted out his
real existence. So in looking for man I found it was like the old lady
looking for her comb and finding it in her hair. I found I was the very
idea I was looking for. Then I knew myself and found that what we call man
is not man but a shadow of error.

(1) That is, his bondage to opinion, his mistaken view of his body, and
its supposed tendencies to disease. (2) This was written in 1865,

Wisdom is the true man and error the counterfeit. When Wisdom governs
matter all goes well, but when error directs all goes wrong. So I shall
assume the old mode of calling man as he is called and. make myself a
principle outside of man, just as man makes all "laws of God," as he calls
them outside of himself. So man admits he is not with God or a part of
Him. Therefore he belongs to this world and expects to die and go to his
God. So he lives all his life in bondage through fear of death. Now, this
keeps him sick and to avoid all these fears and troubles that disturb his
mind and make him sick he invents all sorts of false ideas and never
thinks they are the cause of his misery. He invents all sorts of disease
to torment himself. Standing outside of these ideas I know that they are
the works of man; that God or wisdom has never made anything to torment
mankind. Error has created its own misery.

Having had twenty-five years of practice I have seen the working of this
evil on mankind, how it has grown till it is increasing and at the present
time there is more misery from disease than all other evils put together,
and every effort to arrest this evil only makes it worse. Within the last
seven years I have sat with more than twelve thousand different persons
and have taken their feelings and know what they believe their diseases
were and how each person was affected, but I knew the causes. Therefore I
know what I say is true that if there had never been a physician in the
world there would not have been one-tenth of the suffering. It is also
true that religious creeds have made a very large class of persons
miserable, but religion like all creeds based on super­stition must give
way to Science. So superstition in regard to religion will die out as men
grow wise, for wisdom is all the religion that can stand and this is to
know ourselves not as man but as a part of Wisdom. But disease is making
havoc among all classes, and it seems as though there would never be an
end of it unless some one should step in and check this greatest of evils.

I have been in the habit of sitting with patients separately and
explaining the disease and the cure till I have come to the conclusion
that I can cure persons that are sick if I am in their company, and the
number only helps to hasten the cure. I have no doubt that I can go to an
audience of one thousand persons and cure more persons in one lecture than
can be cured by all the doctors in the state of Maine in the same time,
for I know that one-half my patients I do not see as long as to explain
what I should make clear in one lecture of two hours. There are a great
number of sick who are not able to be cured; for man's life and happiness
in this enlightened world (made so by the profession) has made dollars and
cents the test, so if a man has not these he must suffer. So my object is
to relieve man of some of his sufferings. I am sent for to go to different
parts of the country and have always found a large class of poor sick
persons not ready to be cured. I want to relieve those who are not able to
be cured, and also give directions to minds so that this wisdom shall
govern man. It is necessary to say that I have no religious belief. My
religion is my life, and my life is the light of any wisdom that I have.
So that my light is my eye, and if my eye is the eye of Truth my body is
light, but if my eye or wisdom is an opinion my body is full of darkness.

CONCERNING BELIEFS

It may be necessary to explain what calls out my arguments. All that I
write is intended to destroy some belief of the patient. A belief is what
I call a disease, for that embraces the cause and it sets the people to
reasoning until their systems are prepared like the earth to receive the
idea, and when the phenomenon is brought forth the doctors call that
disease. Belief in an idea that cannot be seen by the natural eye is as
real as belief in the natural world. Everything that does not come within
the natural senses is a belief. Disease is of this class. The phenomenon
is admitted and to make man believe it involves a notion that it exists.
It does not follow that he is diseased any more than it follows that a man
is in the war because he believes there is one. Yet he may be liable to be
caught. War like some diseases has its exempts. For instance, small-pox. A
man can procure a certificate from a physician that he has had it or has
been vaccinated. So the belief makes the thing to the person believing it
and as the belief becomes general every person is affected more or less.
Children are not exempts, they suffer if they are in the vicinity of the
disease, for their parents' sins. Their diseases are the effect o f the
community. These results come from the older inhabitants who embody the
superstitions of the world, and they are as tenacious of their beliefs.

See how the South fights for slavery under the belief that it is a living
institution. (1) The people believe the same of disease and each one will
fight for his peculiar disease till truth exterminates both. One is as
dangerous as the other and each has its sympathizers and traitors. Take a
person sick under the law of disease which he knows will kill him if the
law is put in force. People are as anxious to condemn themselves by
insisting that they have a certain disease as a rebel is to swear that a
Yankee is an abolitionist: each is working to have the victim condemned.
Both may be summed up as the effect of man's belief.

(1) This was written, Dec. 1862.

Religious sects fight for their various beliefs which contain not a word
of truth and the world has to suffer the consequences. The medical
faculty, spiritualists, and every class who have wit enough to have a
belief, keep up a warfare to keep their beliefs alive that they may obtain
a living. But when these are cut by truth they wither and die out and from
the ashes comes freedom or Science. War is always engendered by beliefs.
Slavery is the only name for all evils that have affected man, of which
disease is one. They all have to pass through a sea of blood before their
heads can be crushed and they can be handled by reason. Religious opinions
waded through blood before reason could control the mind, and then the
warfare was carried on by words. Universal freedom has not yet gone
through the sea of blood, but it is now in the storm and God only knows
how it will come out. The belief which makes man bind his fellow man is
very strong, for it appeals to religious prejudices, and these are really
at the bottom of many evils. The natural man believes slavery is right and
he is religious in this belief, although in everything else he is governed
by party-interest. Every sick person is suffering either directly or
indirectly from the effect of some belief, therefore my arguments are to
show the absurdity of the beliefs whatever they are, for beliefs are
catching. The child is affected by its parents' belief, which is as real
an enemy to health as slavery is to freedom. Science is the true man,
belief is the enemy of happiness, for every one knows that a man will die
before he will give up his belief. So when a person has a belief in any
particular disease, he will not give it up until it destroys the body,
although he knows that fighting is his own destruction.

When I sit by the sick I find them either like a child or a person in a
belief. If they have no ideas that come within their senses they are like
one affected by surrounding circumstances, as a child whose parents are
fighting is frightened and perhaps killed by the parents' evil acts. When
I have a patient who is frightened by some feeling in the system which has
not been named, the patient is like a spectator in a riot who finds
himself attacked and violently abused when he has been quiet all the time.
I have to reason with such persons and convince them of their error, and
as they learn the truth they are safe. I take the same course with such as
I should with a stranger who has been attacked by a mob. I enter the
crowd, take the man by the shoulders lead him out and befriend him till he
is safe.

A belief in a disease is like a belief in any other evil, but there are
those who putting entire confidence in the leaders accept certain beliefs.
Such are honest and are the hardest patients to cure, for they attach a
religious respect to their beliefs which are their very life. They often
say they would rather die than lose their belief.

A belief going to establish any religion is held on to as a child holds to
its mother when afraid of strangers. I frequently have a hard battle with
such where their beliefs make them sick before they will relax. They will
sometimes weep and lament as though I were really going to take their
life. As I have no belief to give them I try to show the absurdity of
their errors. It will be seen that in all I write my reasoning is to
destroy some belief that my patient has. Rheumatism or the state of mind
affecting people in that way is caused by various beliefs. Their minds as
I have said are deceived into bad company and they have to suffer the
consequences of their acts, although their intentions may have been good.

I will state a case. A man uses tobacco freely, both chews and smokes. His
wife being of a sympathetic nature enters into his error to try to reform
him. This brings her into the same company that he is in. She is regarded
as bad as her husband, she is beaten until blood starts out on her elbows,
shoulders, and limbs, and her hands become swollen and sore so that she
cannot work. Meantime her husband appears as well as ever. This is taking
a disease from sympathy and it shows that such evils are catching in the
world.

To such I stand in this way. I take the symptoms and know who is the
devil. I expose him, and when I make the patient know him, the devil
leaves, the error is cast out, the belief leaves and the patient is cured.
This is a process of reasoning from cause to effect, not from effect to
effect. The world reasons to make one disease in order to cure another. I
destroy the disease by showing the error and showing how the error effects
the patients. This was what Jesus tried to prove, so all His acts and talk
went to prove the truth of what I have said. Make man responsible for his
beliefs and he will be as cautious what he believes as he is in what he
sees or does, for he will see that just as he measures out to another so
it will be measured out to him. But does the clergy follow out this rule?
Do they not dictate to their audience what to believe and what not to
believe, without the least regard to their health? Now, to suppose a man
can believe one thing and still have a contrary effect is not true. If you
make a person believe that he is in danger of any trouble he will be
affected according to his belief. So all beliefs are to be analyzed like
food or drink to see what it contains and see how it acts upon the body,
for the belief being in the mind it shows itself on the body. So when
Jesus talked He had some object to obtain for the happiness of man. But to
suppose Jesus came from heaven to destroy one error and establish another
is to suppose that our beliefs alter the wisdom of God or make a man
believe what he cannot understand to insure his happiness in a world that
is based on belief. Now, I understand Jesus; I understand Him to condemn
all beliefs and show that man is better off without a belief than with
one.

What good is it to me whether I believe one thing or another if my belief
does not affect my life? If my belief affects my life I get the benefit or
misery of my belief, but it does not alter the wisdom of God or alter any
of His plans. So if there is a world beyond this my belief cannot change
it; my belief may change me. So if Jesus had no higher motive than merely
introducing a belief He was like all others who wanted to establish
peculiar views. But Jesus never meant to speak of what we call death. His
death was the end of sin or error. To lose opinions and find His truth was
life, not death. The Wisdom that taught this did not embrace the words
"life" and "death."

WORKS THE FRUIT OF OUR BELIEF

What proof can be brought to show that a man is just what he thinks he is?
My answer is: his works. Man is known by his works, for they are the fruit
of belief and where there is no fruit there is no belief, in that case man
is either perfectly ignorant or perfectly wise, and stops work because he
is God and God has finished His work. Now man is not supposed to be either
of the two, God or an idiot. So he must be a being between both. That
makes him a man of opinions and beliefs. To show whether the works are of
God or error is the great aim of man. Both cannot be of God, for one
reasons from what he believes and the other from what he knows.

I will introduce a man of error who bases his knowledge on others' belief,
still thinking he has an opinion of his own. The effect of his wisdom or
belief is seen by its fruits. The younger son is he who listens to the
wisdom of his brother and sees him contradict himself and shows him his
absurdity. This is the scientific man and he is not known, for when the
man of opinions is destroyed by the scientific man he is not seen at all.
Take two persons talking about mesmerism; one never heard anything, the
other is posted in all things pertaining to the law of mesmerism. Let A.
he the wise man and B. the ignorant man. A. sits down and expounds the
principles of mesmerism. He reads from those who have written on the
subject, how a man sits down, takes hold of another's hand, looks him in
the eye, and at length the man is affected; his eyes close and he goes to
sleep. Then B. asks how this is done. Here comes the mystery or "Science"
of A. Finally it enters the head of A. to go to the world of spirits. Here
is a large field for operation. C. finds the dead and explains about them
to A. and B. By this time they have become so wise that their light has
lit up the whole world of spirits, so that everything is perfectly plain.
This is as far as they can go. The whole world stops here and here ends
mesmerism according to the world's belief. At last there comes a report
that spirits made their appearance at Rochester, and raps and table
tipping take place. Then B. asks A. how he explains these things. A. "It
is by the presence of electricity." B. "I cannot believe that, I want to
see something of it." So they go to a medium and everything goes to prove
the belief of the medium that it is spirits. One rap means "yes" and two
means "no," and these prove the spirits. B. asks A. what he thinks of
that. A. says "It is a development of animal magnetism." B. says "No, I
believe it must be spirits." Here is a difference of opinion. B. is as
well posted as A. The medium agrees with C. B. believed A. till A. showed
his ignorance, then B. embraced the opinion of the medium. So it goes on.
One opinion is believed till some other opinion comes up that cannot be
explained, then some one states an opinion and the multitude follow.

Like the rest of the world I began with no belief or opinion. Like a child
I wanted to see. As B. did, I asked A's explanation and took it, then I
went to work to prove it and did prove beyond a doubt according to my
belief that it was governed by electricity. At last I ran against a
stumbling block which upset all my theory and left me without anything but
the bare experiments. I then went to work to prove my belief, and the
experiments proved anything I believed, and I concluded that man is just
what he thinks he is to himself. I have waded through the mire of
ignorance, crossed the ruin of superstition, have walked on the water of
my belief and at last landed on the shores of Wisdom, where I have found
the other branch of truth that tells me that the water or error had dried
up so that the dry land of reason is ready to receive the seed of Wisdom
into the earth, or mind of man. As I have passed through the fire of
superstition and been baptized in the water of error and belief, I have
come up out of the water and the heavens or Wisdom are open to me and I
see Wisdom in the form of a dove or sympathy saying to every one: "Behold,
the truth hath prevailed to open the book of superstition; it hath broken
the seal and introduced a new form of reasoning."

I have no belief in regard to religion of any kind, neither have I any
belief in another world of any kind. (1) I have no belief in what is
called death. In fact I am a total disbeliever in any wisdom that ever
taught any religion outside of man's belief. Then you may ask what kind of
a man are you without a belief? I have a belief like all men but it does
not apply to what I have been talking about. I have a belief on all
subjects that are agitating the country.

(1) Quimby sincerely believed in the real spiritual world of the living,
in contrast with "the other world" of the dead.

I believe there was one person who had these same ideas and to that person
I give all the credit of introducing this truth into the world, and that
was Jesus. I have no doubt of His being the only true prophet that ever
lived who had ideas entirely superior to the rest of the world. Not that
He as a man was any better, but He was the embodiment of a higher Wisdom,
more so than any man who has ever lived.

Perhaps you do not understand my meaning. Take the discovery of
electricity. There were men who had conceived some of the ideas of
Franklin,-not that Franklin was of himself the discoverer or the person
who reduced it to a science, but his mind was the medium that brought the
wisdom of the wise into focus, so that an experiment might be made to
prove the principle. The wisdom of the world is not confined to any
person, but when it begins to condense into a truth it must exhibit itself
through some medium. This great truth called Christ was exhibited through
the man Jesus, the same as a great truth was exhibited through the man
Franklin and called "electricity." There was a belief at the time of
destruction or overthrow of this great truth at the crucifixion of Jesus
that it should rise again. Since then there has been a constant
development of facts showing that there was some wisdom or power superior
to man and the superstition of the world has kept it down, as the
superstition of slavery has kept Freedom in chains.

Now, I as a man claim no preeminence or superiority over other men, but
admit my superiority to the learned and wise. . . . I have none of these
sins to answer for. I am free from all that false religion. But I had to
contend with the devil or error for more than twenty years before I was
free. Now [1864] I stand as one that has risen from the dead or error into
the light of truth,-not that the dead or my error has risen with me: I
have shaken off the old man or my religious garment, and put on the new
man that is Christ or Science, and I fight these errors and show that they
are all the makings of our own mind. As I stand outside of all religious
belief, how do I stand alongside of my followers? I know that I, through
this Wisdom, can go and impress a person at a dis­tance. The world may not
believe it, but to the world it is just such a belief as the belief in
spirits. To me it is a fact and this is what I shall show.

THE RELATION OF THIS TRUTH TO THE SICK.

What course of argument must be used to make the masses understand this
truth by which I correct the errors that make man sick? What relation has
this truth to any one and how does it stand to the sick? It is the sick
man's friend and those who can understand it are related to those who do
not understand as a teacher who wishes to make his pupil understand the
principles of mathematics. He is not to teach mathematics but to explain
what the rules mean, so the pupil is not to copy a mathematical work
because that gives him no wisdom in regard to the truth; the disciple is
not to be above the science, nor the teacher above the truth. but the
latter is to explain the science by the words of the truth. To illustrate:
I stand to this Science as the teacher or expounder of it, not as the
Truth itself. So when the truth says through me that all disease is in the
mind you want me to explain what it means. You ask the question because
you do not understand what is meant by the mind. It is this: all opinion,
belief, reason, everything that can be changed. Thought is a seed or an
effect of this great ocean of mind. The word mind covers all man's
reasoning as the word wood covers all vegetable substances. A chair is
made of wood but it is an idea made out of wood. In the same way mind is
the material, and disease is manufactured out of the material, but the
wisdom that forms the idea is called something else. Here you see that
mind embraces every part of man but his wisdom and here is the distinction
which the world makes only in a different sense. The world calls the parts
mind and matter. I call them wisdom and matter. Therefore when I use
"mind" I use it as matter containing no intelligence, but it is like sound
connected with something to which we attach intelligence.

PARABLE

When sitting by a sick person who had a pain in the left side which I felt
and described, I said, you think you have consumption. The patient
acknowledged it, saying that her physician had examined her lungs and
found the left one very much affected. This she believed and when I told
her that her disease was in her mind, it was as much as to say she
imagined what was not the case. I told her she did not understand what I
meant by the word mind. Then taking up a glass of water I said, suppose
you should be told that this water contained a poisonous substance that
works in the system and sometimes produces consumption. If you really
believe it, every time you drink the idea of poison enters your mind.
Presently you begin to back and cough a little. Would your fears then grow
less that the water was poison? I think not. Finally you are given over by
your doctor or friends and call on me. I sit down by you and tell you that
you are nervous and have been deceived by your doctor and friends. You ask
how? You have been told what is false, that the water you drink contains a
slow poison, and now your cure hangs on the testimony in the case. If I
show that there is no poison in the water then the water did not poison
you. What did ? It was the doctor's opinion put in the water by your mind.
As the mind can receive an impression it can be changed, This change was
wrought by the doctor's opinion; so calling mind something it is easy to
show that it can be changed by a wisdom superior to an opinion. This
wisdom that acts upon the mind is something that never has been described
by language, but it is looked upon as a superior "power." This power gives
rise to all religious opinions. Man has tried to condense it into a being
called God, and he worships it. My theory is based on this something that
man is ignorant of, and develops from it a language as comprehensible as
any language. It contains no words but speaks from impressions which
cannot be mistaken if man knows himself. This language is the feelings of
the sick, and to convey these feelings to the well so so that they may
have some idea of the misery of the sick and its causes has been my study
for twenty years. (1) I feel now that my labors have not been in vain.
Arranging words to convey this truth to the well is a task very few would
like to go through. But I think now that I have succeeded so that any
person of ordinary talent can see that it is the key to unlock the
mysteries of the spiritual world.

(1) Written, 1861.

ANSWER TO A QUESTION

"Why do you not rub your head when sick?" Because I have nothing to rub
out. Now here are the two modes of reasoning, the natural man does not see
that the misery follows his acts, so the natural man is courageous at
first, for he does not see his real enemy, or the natural result of his
acts, which is reaction, the true wisdom that will always measure to
action its own measure. The wise man sees the nature of thought before it
takes effect and destroys it. When the patient asked the question he had
the answer in the question, for his ignorance was what I was rubbing out,
so if he had known that he would not want any rubbing.

CURES

I am often asked what I call my cures I answer, the effect of a Science
because I know how I do them. If I did not know they would be a mystery to
the world and myself. Science is Wisdom put into practice. To the natural
man it is a power or mystery. All wisdom that has not been acknowledged by
the natural man is called a "gift" or spiritual demonstration, not a
science. The curing of disease has never been acknowledged to be under any
wisdom superior to the medical faculty, so people have kept the world in
darkness till now, and how much longer they will do so I cannot tell. If I
succeed in changing the minds of men enough to investigate they will see
that disease is what follows an opinion, and that wisdom that will destroy
the opinion and make the cure. Then the cure will be attributed to a
superior Wisdom, not a power.

I am accused of interfering with the religion of my patients. This is not
the case, but if a particular passage in the Bible or some religious
belief affects the patient I attack it. For instance, a person gets
nervous from his belief that he has committed the unpardonable sin. His
thought is then attached to the sin of his belief, and his belief is some
one's opinion about a passage in the Bible that he believes applies to his
case. I know this is all false, so of course I have to destroy his
opinion, and this destroys the effect which is disease. His senses are
attached to a disease, mine are attached to the Wisdom that shows the
absurdity of the opinion. His wisdom is of man, mine is of God or Science.
All disease is the punishment of our belief either directly or indirectly,
and our senses are in our punishments. My senses are attached to the
Wisdom that sees through the opinion, so that my love or Wisdom casteth
out their disease or fear; for their fear hath torment, and perfect wisdom
casteth out all opinions. . . .

I am often accused of opposing the medical faculty and the religious
creeds. In answer to this I plead guilty, but you must not gather from
this that I oppose goodness or virtue. I oppose all religion based on the
opinions of men, and as God never gave an opinion I am not bound to
believe that man's opinions are from God. The difference between man's
opinions and God's wisdom is more than one would naturally suppose, but
the former is taken for a truth. This makes the trouble with which the
wise have to contend. If a man knew himself he would not be misled by the
opinions of others, and as disease is the result of our opinions it is the
duty of all to know themselves, that they may correct their own errors.
Now if error is something to correct it must require more wis­dom than the
knowledge which invented it. When I find a person diseased I know his
trouble must have a father or beginning. If it is ignorant of its father,
it is not to be sup­posed that it is not without a father or mother. So to
destroy your earthly father is to destroy your opinions, and to be with
your heavenly Father is to be wise; so that every one that loses his
opinions and arrives at the truth is dead to the natural world, but alive
to Wisdom or Christ.

When I sit down by a sick person and he or she wants to tell me what the
doctor says, to me it is nonsense for I have not the least regard for
their knowledge. Their opinions are what I try to destroy and if I succeed
their opinions have no power to create disease. Man's profession, not his
wisdom, is the standard of his popularity. I stand in direct opposition to
all others in this respect and here is the conflict, whether man's opinion
is to rule or his wisdom. If the medical profession is based on wisdom,
then it will stand the test, and disease must have its origin outside of
the profession; either this must be true or the opposite. I assert that
disease is the off­spring of opinion. Ignorance produces the phenomenon or
effect, as in the brute creation, but the wild animal differs from that of
the domesticated animal. So it is with man; the perfect fool knows no
aches or pains, where there is no fear there is no torment. Fear is error,
Wisdom casts out fear, for it knows no fear. You often hear persons
attempt to explain my cures by their own opinions. Thus they make
themselves out wise by their own ignorance, since they deny the very power
of wisdom which they acknowledge by admitting it as a mystery to them. So
they admit a power outside of their knowledge and worship that of which
they are completely ignorant. Now I know that this something which is a
mystery to them is wisdom to me and that my wisdom sees through their
opinions; and also that the explanation is the conversion from an opinion
to truth or health. The two characters, wisdom and opinion, stand before
each other and the people choose the one they will obey, just as they do
in national affairs. . . .

Disease is the offspring of error and as long as the people worship men's
opinions, just so long will they be sick. To me it is perfectly plain that
if the people could see themselves they would discard all the priests' and
doctors' opinions and become a law unto themselves. All I do is to put the
world into possession of a wisdom that will keep them clear from these two
classes of opinions. You may think I have some feeling against the
character of the physicians but this is not so. Neither do I think that
they who know me have anything against me as a man, but they scout the
idea that I know any more about how I cure disease than any one else; they
think they have the wisdom and I have the power. I stand to the medical
faculty in the light of a harmless humbug perfectly ignorant of what I
profess to know, and all my talk being to amuse the patients and make them
believe that disease is in their imagination. If I succeed in doing this
it is all well, but so far as wisdom goes, that is folly. I am aware that
this is my position with the faculty and their opinions have such a strong
hold on the people that most of them look upon me in the same light, and
if by chance some one chooses to see that I am not the person these blind
guides call me, they in time are looked upon in the same light. I
acknowledge that all this is true with regard to my position in society,
and how do I feel in regard to it? I know that it is all false, although
my word does not prove it so, but I suppose I have the same right to give
my opinion with regard to these two classes as they have to give their
opinions about me and I will now give it and let the masses judge for
themselves.

The principles which I am trying to establish are something new. All
established theories purporting to help mankind are merely the effect of
the effort which one set of demagogues make to gain the ascendency over
another; the people are no better off, but worse. Disease of a person is
like that of a nation, each is governed by arbitrary laws and the
governing of both is alike. Disease is acknowledged to have an identity
independent of man, and man makes laws to govern it, attaches penalties to
their disobedience and calls these laws the "laws of God." . . .

I stand alone, as one arisen from the dead, or the old theories, having
passed through all the old ideas and risen again, that I may lead you into
this light that will open your eyes to the truth of Him who spake as never
man spake, and who spake the truth. This truth condemns all man's
opinions, it settles all creeds and priestcraft and upsets the medical
profession and brings peace and good will to man. It teaches that man in
order to break off from his wickedness or opinions and learn to speak the
truth, must not try to deceive his fellow man by pretending to know what
is merely an opinion.

Show me the doctor that really thinks his medicine has any curative
qualities or any intelligence except as it is associated with his opinion
and I will show you a fool, for no intelligent physician would dare risk
his reputation on a homeopathic pill to cure a cough, supposing the
patient took the medicine in his food and did not know it. This shows that
they believe they work on the imagination of the patient. There are
certain drugs that will act as an emetic or cathartic; but if the patient
should take an emetic by accident, it would make him vomit. Now when the
patient vomits, if a wrong direction is given, another effect might be
produced; so it all goes to show that the mind must be guided by some
wisdom superior to itself. If error directs, nothing certain is known of
the effect. If wisdom is at the helm no medicine is wanted, for Wisdom can
break opinions in pieces.

Ignorance not knowing how the mind can be affected by a direction outside
of itself, identifies wisdom with error or matter, so that truth is a
stranger, and it is all the time fighting against itself to get rid of an
enemy of its own creation. Now teach men this simple fact, that in all
action the wisdom of reaction is in the act though the act knows it not,
and their happiness will be the result.

IS THERE ANY CURATIVE QUALITY IN MEDICINE?

Common opinion would answer that there is and according to my opinion
there is but it is all owing to the patient's belief, and to perfect
wisdom there is no curative virtue in medicine.

I will relate one case out of a hundred to show medicine proves itself
according to the patient's belief or the direction of some other person. I
was attending a gentleman who was sick and he thought he had consumption,
but was not fully settled in his own mind, so of course he was very
nervous. Under this nervousness the glands around the throat were excited
and kept him hacking and raising, and also kept him heated, which heat
would be thrown off in a perspiration. After I had told him the cause of
his trouble, the explanation so far as he understood relieved him, he
breathed more easily and was improving. One day he read in a paper an
advertisement of a medicine which would cure the catarrh and prevent the
discharges from the head; thinking it might cure him he bought a bottle
and commenced taking it, but instead of lessening the secretion it grew
worse and he ran down very rapidly.

My theory explains this fact in this way. His belief admitted that his
head was diseased and in the condition of a sore and that the medicine
would cure it. Under this belief the glands of the nose were excited and
the medicine then proved his belief that the matter was in his head, for
it was taken to make the head discharge. His belief did this by exciting
the glands and the medicine was taken to throw it off, so when the matter
and even blood commenced running it showed that the medicine was doing
what it agreed to do. But another belief came up that I had given him, for
I had exposed the absurdity of medicine and after he saw the effect he
remembered what I had told him, and abandoning his medicine he returned to
me again and in a few days recovered what he had lost. This is how the
disease worked. His own belief produced the phenomenon; his knowledge gave
the medicine the praise or blame, just as people give God the praise for
their own acts while the devil has to take the blame for their troubles. I
have observed the effect of medicine and have found that there is more
virtue or misery in the advertisement than in the medicine.

Everyone knows how the mouth will water by a desire for something that the
person wants, and low the mouth and throat will become parched by fear of
detection in crime. This was known by the ancients and magicians, and from
the fact that the mind could be changed by fear, so that criminals could
be detected, those who understood it took advantage of it to detect a
thief. The magicians made a paste that would dissolve when laid on the
tongue of a person in a perfectly calm state of mind, but in case of
unusual warmth or feverish thirst it would not dissolve, so when a theft
was committed by the servants all the people were collected in one room
and the magician was sent for. Believing in his power, their minds of
course were controlled by their knowledge and if the thief were present he
knew it and being sure of detection grew nervous, this would prevent the
glands from acting and thus bring out his guilt. The others feeling
innocent were safe, for if they were nervous it did not produce the state
of mind to prevent the paste from dissolving. So the mind was the medium
to detect the thief and out of his own mouth he was condemned. People put
extravagant confidence in medicine supposing that it contains curative
qualities. Frequently Indian doctors appear who have discovered an herb or
root to cure some disease that man is afflicted with, as though God had
made both the disease and the cure. The same class of people say that God
has made a remedy for every disease, showing that their superstition is
woven into a belief that God made all diseases and made medicines to cure
them. This is the belief of mankind and it is not strange that man has
gone out of the way. Now I disbelieve in diseases and remedies as
understood by the world and as I once understood and believed. . . .

The opinion that God has provided a remedy for every disease gives rise to
a belief that there are certain roots and herbs intended by the Creator to
cure all diseases. Absurd as it seems it is the belief of ninety-nine out
of a hundred, and this being the case a door is open to quackery, for new
discoveries will come up every day. Dr. Herrick's pills, Ayers'
sarsaparilla, and countless others are advertised as the cure-all. Then
follow certificates of cures and of recommendations from some M. D., and
these give the medicines a run. Next a man comes who exhibits the effect
of laughing gas and also states that it will cure neuralgia and
rheumatism, and the sick rush to him for a time. After he goes a learned
M. D. arrives with flaring advertisements announcing free lectures on
anatomy and the digestive organs. He explains the action of these organs
and dwells upon the danger of getting sick by overeating and drinking,
receives some fifty dollars from the poor sick and leaves. Among the
throng of humbugs, where all seems dark and despairing, an announcement is
whispered in the ear of the sick that God has opened a way for their
recovery and sent an angel of mercy who has discovered a flower that will
cure everything that can be cured. So here is introduced an imposter who
will give Lobelia emetics till they cease to affect the patient,
pretending that all diseases must yield to it. This has its day, and
another comes up. All this goes to show that the mind of man is like an
old fiddle played on by every kind of quackery relating to roots and
herbs. With my wisdom I understand them all as Job said to Zophar, "What
ye know the same do I also, I am not inferior unto you." I use nothing,
yet I could easily use all kinds of drugs. . . .

I have seen the working of popular belief and know that diseases and
remedies are the invention of man, and the very proof which is brought to
establish their wisdom goes to substantiate what I say. For instance, an
emetic . . . when people have eaten too much they can take a Lobelia
emetic; also if they think their lungs are diseased take a Lobelia emetic,
and if they have dropsy take the same. Now I will call your attention to
what this belief amounts to carried out toward God. What kind of a God is
it that made the earth to bring forth, trees herbs and everything that
bath life? All this was before man was created, therefore did He make
these medicines and the codfish with a liver to cure consumption before
the disease was made? This belief would certainly suppose that God made
the remedies before the disease, and if He made all the remedies these
quacks say He did, He certainly is the greatest enemy to mankind. Absurd
as this sounds we believe it and are affected by our beliefs and this
makes man the most dependent of all God's creatures. He is merely a target
to be fired at by every person's opinion. I can show by facts that every
person will admit that no kind of medicine has any more effect of itself
than almost any kind of food or drink that we use daily, but our ignorance
places some kind of virtue in the medicines as we place wisdom in some
one's opinion. The truth which places all disease in the mind can explain
the operation of remedies. God is Wisdom and man is opinion, therefore man
cannot live in Wisdom and be diseased. To show that there are diseases
according to the belief of man is to show that they are made by
circumstances which cannot be controlled except by correcting the error
that brought them about, while ignorance would prescribe some medicine
that God had made from the foundation of the world.

OUTLINES OF A NEW THEORY FOR CURING DISEASE

All medical practice claims that their mode of treatment is the best; yet
no one has even hinted or dares to risk his reputation on the ground that
disease is an invention of man and ought to be treated as an error or
deception forced upon mankind by ignorance and superstition as slavery has
been forced upon this country, and with all the attendant evils. My theory
is that all phenomena called disease are the result of false beliefs
originating in the darkness of Egyptian superstition. African slavery is a
disease of ignorance and super­stition and is the cause of the present
misery in this country, but it is merely the figure of white slavery which
has riveted its fetters on the minds of men, while the world of mind lies
crushed and humbled by the tyranny of superstitious belief. Disease is
what follows a belief and a belief is like an atmosphere so universal that
every one is liable to be affected by it as by chilly winds. God never
made the wind to injure any person, nor has He put any intelligence into
it so man should be afraid of it, but man does not "see it in this light."
How often we hear this remark, "Don't expose yourself to the damp, cold
air." This belief that God made the air an enemy to man is a part of the
clouds that rise in the mind of every person, and when this cloud is seen
and felt all persons, old and young, are affected, for the fear is the
punishment of the belief, and it is no excuse that the ignorant have no
belief, as they must suffer for the sins of their parents. Science is the
sun that burns up the clouds or changes the beliefs of man, and a little
ray of intelligence springs up and the cloud of superstition vanishes, as
the true God appears. The people will bail the truth, as the peak of
Teneriffe hails the rising sun long before it is seen by the horizon of
the common minds.

I will bring some cases to show that phenomena that once took place can
never be produced again. This fact holds good in the vegetable as well as
in the mental world. Take a primeval forest, cut down the old growth and
another will spring up, not like the first, but a more solid, thicker
growth. So it is with error; like an old growth, error is tall and porous
with a great show. Science is denser and more substantial. Error is the
natural growth of man; it is a wilderness filled with all kinds of
superstition and every one is liable to be caught by a native of this
land. It is inhabited by every variety of creature such as consumption and
liver complaint. Science is the axe in the hands of Wisdom to hew down the
wilderness and destroy its inhabitants and introduce a better state of
society. Like all superstition error is very religious, religion and
slavery always go hand in hand; freedom and science also go together and
are the same. . . . Science in religion has not made much progress except
as an indirect result of some other development. Astronomy has destroyed
some of the hideous features of religion and introduced a happier state of
society, but it was not the design of astronomy to destroy religion. Still
it is the natural result of science to destroy error and prejudice. It
sometimes comes in contact with the most enlightened state of
intelligence, for that is cursed with the shackles of religion of dark
ages. You will see religion in its purest state under the most despotic
form of government, and you will always find disease under some despotic
power of religion, and those who undertake to rid the world of this evil
are like demagogues in a despotism. Such is the essence of hypocrisy
intended to keep the masses weak so they can be ruled. Starve the masses
and you destroy their energy and make them desperate, then the more
enlightened will submit to the leaders for their own safety. This keeps in
power those demagogues. So it is with disease. Religion is despotism and
in politics and disease the misery of the sick is the torment of their
belief. Religion makes no compromise, it is rule or ruin. It sometimes
takes to itself the name of reform, giving every man the liberty of
speech, and then it subjects every one to its laws. Just so with the poor
slave, or sick, for the sick are merely slaves of superstition, made so by
the sins of our parents.

DISEASE (1)

What is disease? It is false reasoning. True scientific wisdom is health
and happiness. False reasoning is sickness and death; and on these two
modes of reasoning hang all of our happiness and misery. The question is,
how can we know how to separate the one from the other? The truth cannot
be changed; the false is always changing. The one is science, and the
other is error, and our senses are attached to the one or the other. One
is the natural development of matter or mind, and disease is one of the
natural inventions of error. To show how disease is not what it is
supposed to be, by those who use the word, I must show the absurdity of
error's reasoning, for error is the father of disease.

(1) Published in part in "The Philosophy of P. P. Quimby," 1895.

We are all taught by this error to call disease something that is
independent of man. To make it more plain and show where the two modes of
reasoning act, I will suppose a case and take that of a young man who
feeling a little disturbed calls on a physician. The physician sounds his
lungs, examines his heart, and tells the patient he is very liable to have
the heart-disease. The patient asks him how he got it, and is told that he
is liable to catch disease and have it and to catch it is to admit that it
exists independent of himself. Though the patient were dead it would exist
the same and others would be liable to get it. At last the patient really
has the heart-disease, which his physician described to him.

And has he created it himself, or has the doctor created it for him? Now I
propose to show that he has made what the world calls heart-disease
without any one's help. To show how a building is raised is to frame one
and then take it down again, so I will take down this building heart-
disease which this man has raised, and then you can see how ideas are made
or raised. I will say to the patient, "You have built the disease
yourself, in your sleep of ignorance." This he cannot understand. So I
will tell him how he has worked in his sleep and made this very edifice,
heart-disease. So I begin to tell his dream by telling bow he feels, in
which he admits I am correct. Now when he was asleep, or ignorant of the
feelings that disturbed him, behold a spirit in the form of a doctor sat
by him. And to and behold, be called up from the dead a person with the
heart-disease, as he calls it. "And he handled you, and your sleep
departed from you, and your limbs became cold and clammy, and your pulse
quickened. This excited your brain, and at last a figure of a person arose
like unto the one you saw in your dream, and then you were afraid, and you
awoke in a fright. At last the image became more terrible, till at length
it overshadowed you and became a part of yourself, so that when you awoke
you looked, and lo! and behold the dream had become a reality, and you had
the heart-disease. Now whose dream was it, the doctor's or yours? Did you
catch the doctor's or did you create it yourself, by your own reasoning in
your sleep or ignorance, according to the pattern set you by the doctor?

"I say you made it yourself. Now to cure you, or take down the building,
is to show you that all the feeling you had at the commencement arose from
a trifling cause, and that when I can make you understand it I have
performed the cure." Instead of giving medicines or going to work by guess
to destroy the building, I commence by showing the patient how he framed
it by his own hand. So I reason in this way: "You listened to the doctor
to try and understand what caused heart­disease. He explained every
variety of feeling or symptom, and you listened until you understood it.
Now without knowing it you created in your mind the disease, as much as
you would if an artist or mechanic had taught you how to draught a
building, and you should carry in your mind the building and in your sleep
create it. The only difference would be that one would please you, for it
would contain wisdom, while the other would bind you, for it would contain
fear and would threaten to destroy your life. Your trouble is the material
with which to build the building. A chemical change in the fluids of your
system takes place, governed by your belief, and you condense the changes
into a phenomenon corresponding with your plan. Your ingenuity in
manufacturing the disease has been the destruction of your happiness. To
destroy the disease I convince you that what the doctor said was an idea
gotten up by error, not knowing how to account for some little
disturbance, which in itself amounted to nothing, but by the doctor's mode
of reasoning about what he knew nothing, you were led astray into the
darkness of heathen superstition where all kinds of evil spirits and
disease dwell in the brain of man. Superstition always shows itself
through the ignorance of man's reasoning, assuming as many names and forms
as the father of all lies, the devil or the error of mankind."

DISEASE, LOVE, COURAGE

The question is often asked, what is disease? It could be very easily
answered by a physician of the old school by simply pointing out a person
coughing and saying that person has consumption. Now instead of calling
that phenomenon by a name, explain how it came. This the doctor does not
do, except by another phenomenon as much in the dark as the former. So you
may chase him from one lie to another until you are tired and only find
out at last that it is a mystery. Where do I stand as far as disease goes?
I know that the bottom of these phenomena is a lie in the beginning and
started by a liar till it was received as true; then the phenomenon is
called disease.

Every idea is the embodiment of an opinion resolved into an idea. This
idea has life or a chemical change, for it is the offspring of a man's
wisdom and his senses are attached to it. For instance, you see something
you would like. You attach your senses to the idea and then the value is
in the idea in the shape of love or worth. If it is love, it is not in the
idea but in the essence or author of the idea. I will try to make it
plain. You see a person, at first sight you are affected, and you attach
your senses to the idea in the form of love. You may, or may not be
deceived. Passion or excitement is matter governed by error subject to
love. Love is wisdom, passion is error acting upon ignorance. Science is
to keep the two separate or in subjection to Wisdom. When two persons meet
we think that the first impression comes from the idea or per­son, but
this is not the case: the atmosphere around the idea is what is affected
and this is not known to us, so we reason from a false basis, not knowing
ourselves.

To give you a clearer idea of what I wish to convey, I must take myself as
one person and my patient as another. When I sit down I am one person,
that is, I am quiet, perfectly at ease, not afraid of any impression from
my patient. My wisdom is my strength. My opponent's wisdom is in his
error, for if he knew the truth he would not want me. So there are two
persons in one body, or two mentalities acting through one medium, and as
error is a coward it assumes a sort of courage. I do not know how to
describe true courage, for wisdom needs no such word. I never knew that
God showed any courage. It seems to be a sort of braggadocio element. If a
dog shows courage it is based on the assumption that he is not afraid, for
when overpowered his courage fails, so it shows that what is called
courage in us is an element not perfectly understood. Take away the fear
of danger, then man has courage. Some men see danger where others do not
and so no two men reason alike, so no two men's courage is alike. I know
no way of giving you a test of courage as well as to take myself.

When I first commenced my practice I thought I had courage as much as my
neighbors, but as I found I was liable to be affected by another's
feelings my courage failed. So I used some sort of strategem to get the
advantage of my patients and being rather reckless I ran risks which the
world would call courageous. For instance, I was not afraid of an insane
man if I could get his eye. To the world this looked like courage, but to
me it was wisdom. I had no fear for I saw no harm. I have been trying to
get wisdom in regard to the disease of mankind, for disease is like all
other evils that come within our senses. When I first took the feelings of
patients, it took courage to keep from taking the disease. I knew this
kind of courage, it was fear lest I should be called a coward, so I would
assume courage. But if I had known what I know now I should not have been
in any more danger than a person would be in a boat where the water was
not over three feet deep. But my courage admitted water twenty feet deep,
rough at that, and myself in a leaky craft. As I began to touch bottom or
get wisdom, I found that the depth of the water or the dan­ger was in my
patient's mind and I believed his story without looking for myself, and
the patient seemed two men to me. Thus I found out the trouble his fears
were one man and his ignorance another. To make courage out of fear was to
make him believe there was no danger; then his courage would come, and to
destroy both was to let him know the truth.

I know that disease is the invention of man, therefore it requires no
courage to say so, for there is no danger. Danger is that which calls out
fear and courage is the element to face it; so just as a man loses fear he
gains courage. Some men never see danger, so their courage is not courage,
but a sort of artificial pride which makes them wish to be praised for
what they know not, for their ignorance destroys their fear. This was the
case with myself. My ignorance made me bold, for I knew no danger, but as
soon as I found I was liable to be affected by the sick my fears came.
Then just as I saw danger my fears increased and my courage failed; but I
would feel the same reckless propensity to kill disease, so I would be
more cautious and more careful till I found my enemy had the same fears
that I had. At last it became a sort of warfare between myself and a
patient. I found that my courage was my protection and that error was an
element or odor, while ignorance and fear was what arose from that. So I
came to the conclusion; that ignorance begets error, error begets fear,
fear begets courage, and Wisdom destroys them all. So as man grows wise he
grows strong and his wisdom makes him happy and good, for goodness is
wisdom, and Wisdom is the religion of Jesus.

The [conventional] religion is the opposite of that. One is the invention
of man, the other is the wisdom of God which Jesus illustrated by taking a
little child. I will do the same, to show that goodness is a science and
also that all religion based on man's opinions must fall. One can be
proved, the other cannot. I will illustrate the two by the child. Every
one will acknowledge that the child's character somewhat depends upon its
bringing up. If this is admitted it shows that if the parents could see
what was best for the child's happiness much of its misery might be
avoided; this fact is evident to all. It is a fact like all others in
science; sometimes it works well, sometimes ill, but when it works ill we
see how it might be avoided, showing that if we had more knowledge we
might do better. This shows that Science Wisdom reduced to practice, so as
goodness is the result of our training, it is certain that to be good is a
science, and as goodness is religion, that is a science. It is all summed
up in this, that the world is made of ignorance, disease, religion and
error, hyprocrisy and all sorts of evil; and to be a follower of Jesus and
believe in the Christ is to separate yourself from the world and stand
alone in your wisdom. Thus you will learn that man without wisdom is of
all things the most miserable; he is liable to get into trouble by every
act of his life.

WHAT DO I IMPART TO MY PATIENTS?

The question is often asked me, do you impart anything to your patients
when you talk? I answer, I do, and I will try to make you understand how.
To do this I must give you an illustration in language applied to
something that you wish to know which gives you trouble. Suppose you are
purchas­ing goods, and in your hurry you lose your wallet containing all
your money. You do not miss it till you go to pay your bills, and then you
find you have lost your cash. Now the shock excites your system or mind
according to the amount you are disturbed. You become excited and very
nervous. This is accompanied by a feverish state of mind or body, for the
bodily condition is only the reflection of the state of the mind. At last
you let your trouble be known to some person and begin to look for the
money. You can't find it, and borrow money to pay the person for assisting
you. This adds to the trouble, and at last you take your bed and send for
a physician. He feels of the pulse, says your head is affected, and orders
your head shaved and a blister applied. This only aggravates the nervous
excitement. So you keep on till you finally give up and dismiss all the
doctors, and come to the conclusion that your money is gone and you must
make the best of it. The next day you feel more reconciled, and your
doctor calls a friend and finds you better and says the medicine you took
has had a good effect on you. Now the question arises, who gave the
medicine? Not the doctor, but wisdom took possession of you and you began
to reason and send for me. I know nothing of the trouble, but have found a
pocket­book, containing $10,000 and am going to advertise it. At the sight
of the pocket book you start and say, "that is mine." The shock changes
the mind and the cure is made. Now who imparted the cure? The $10,000 I
gave you. So this is the way I cure. The person has lost something that he
cannot find or has got into some trouble he cannot get rid of. He wants
something to satisfy his desires, and whatever that is it is the same as
the money, and the one who can impart it gives him the remedy. Suppose a
person receives a shock from falling into a river, and returns home
excited with a state like a cold. This produces a cough. Now, as there are
many ghosts in the form of disease, he fears some of them may get hold of
him. So he goes to a doctor and lays his case before him. The doctor says
you are very liable to have consumption. Now of course you are troubled,
and are all the time like the man who was looking for his lost money. So
he inquires of every person what is good for a cough; or if they can tell
where his money is. So every person gives his opinion, and there is just
as much in one opinion as another. At last in despair he gives it up, and
I am sent for. I first tell him what he is afraid of by telling him how he
is affected. Here is something he can't get from the doctor. This makes
him feel more comfortable, and then I go on to show him how he has been
living on husks or opinions about an idea that never had an existence only
in the superstition of the people. As he is full of these opinions I have
to give him something in the form of truth that will dissolve the error
and satisfy him.

EXPERIENCE OF A PATIENT WITH DR. QUIMBY

For many years I was very sick and finding no benefit resulting from the
various modes of cure that I had employed, I thought of visiting Dr.
Quimby. So I inquired of some friends in regard to his treatment. Some
said he was a spiritualist and others that he was a mesmeriser, and others
said he made war on all religious beliefs, and as I could not see what my
belief had to do with my disease I gave up the idea of going to see him,
but finally I was brought to the subject again through utter hopelessness
and despair of recovery, so I went to see him. In my first interview I
asked him if he could cure the spinal disease. He answered that he never
wished a patient to tell him his feelings. "Very well" said I, "what do
you want me to do?" "Nothing," said he, "but listen to what I say." I then
asked him if he gave medicine. "No." "Do you employ any agent from the
world of spirits?" "No" said he. "Then," said I, "it must be mesmerism."
He replied "that may be your opinion but it is not the truth." "Then will
you please tell me what you call your way of curing?" He said he had no
name. (1) "Well," said I, "is it original with you?" He said he never knew
anyone who cured as he did. "Can you give me some idea how you cure?" He
said, "it would be very hard to convince a person how he felt unless I
feel myself." "Yes," I said, "it would be hard for you to tell my
feelings." "Well," said he, "if I tell you how you feel will you admit
it?" "Certainly, but how do you cure?" He answered, "I will illustrate one
thing. Do you believe the Bible?" "Certainly," I said. "When Jesus said to
His disdiples 'a little while I am with you, then I go my way and you
shall seek me. Where I go you cannot come,' What did He mean by the
passage?" "I suppose He spoke of the crucifixion." "Then you think," said
he, "that Jesus alluded to another world when He said 'If you loved me you
would rejoice that I go to the Father.... In another place He says 'if I
do not go away the Comforter will not come, but if I go away I will send
the Comforter who will guide you to all truth.' Now I suppose you think
all this refers to another world?" I said, "Yes."

(1) This is the kind of statement a critic distorted into the notion that
Dr. Quimby did not know how he cured.

"Well," said he, "now I will sit down and see if I can tell your
feelings." He then sat down and took my hand and soon passed his hand on
one of the vertebrae of my spine and said "You have a very sharp pain in
this vertebra at this time." I said I had. Then he placed his hand on the
left temple and said "you have a very bad pain here and it affects the
sight of your left eye." I then told him he was right. "Now," said he, "I
will explain how I cure. Will you admit that Jesus took upon Himself our
infirmities?" I said yes. "Have I not taken your pain in the spine, also
in the temples and eyes?" "Yes," I said. "I will now explain those
passages which I have mentioned. My theory is that disease is the
invention of man, a burden bound on the people, laid on their shoulders,
grievous to be borne; that man has been deceived and led away and is
unable to get back to health and happiness; that Jesus' mission was to
break the bands that bound the sick and restore them to health and
happiness. In order to do this He had to find them, for they had wandered
away like sheep without a shepherd. So He took their aches and pains to
show them He was with them and knew how they felt and said, 'Come unto Me
all you who are heavy laden and I will give you rest."' I said, "You seem
to talk a great deal about the Bible. I came here to be cured and not to
have my religion destroyed." He answered, "Have I said anything about
religion?" "No, but I cannot see why you quote the Bible." "I will tell
you" said he, "you admit I took your feelings?" "Yes." "Well, I want to
give you to understand that when I take your feelings I am with you, not
myself as a man but this great truth which I call Christ or God." "What do
you mean by that? That you are equal with Christ?" "What do you mean by
Christ?" he asked. "I mean Jesus." "Then Jesus and Christ are one?" "Yes."
"Then" said he, "how is Jesus God?" "God manifest in the flesh," I
replied. "He asked "What do you mean by God manifest in the flesh?" "That
God took upon Himself flesh and blood to convince man of His power and
save man from an endless eternity of misery." "Can God exist outside of
matter?" he asked. I answered "Yes." "Is there anything of man that exists
when God is out of him?" "Yes," said I, "flesh and blood." "Then flesh and
blood is something of itself?" "Yes." "What do you call that, the natural
man?" "Yes," "This Jesus would be the natural man of flesh and blood and
Christ the God manifested in the man Jesus?" I said, "Yes, I think so."
"Well," said be, "that is just what I want to prove to you, that the
Christ is the God in us all. Do you deny that you have a particle of God
in you?" "No. I believe it" I said. "Then we do not disagree in this. I
want to make you understand that this Christ or God in us is the same that
is in Jesus, only in a greater degree in Him-,like this: You teach music?"
"Yes," I said. "Do your pupils know as much about the science of music as
you do?" "No, if they did I could not teach them." "Then you have the
science more than they?" "Yes." "They have some?" "Yes." "What they know
is science? Is it not equal to the same amount in you?" "Yes," I said.
"Then if one of your pupils should say I understand the science of music,
it is to be understood that he is equal to you?" "No." "Well, so it is
with me" said he; "when I say that by this great truth I cast out error,
or in other words correct your opinion and free you from that curse of all
evils, disease, I do not mean to say that P. P. Quimby is equal to the man
Jesus or equal to His wisdom or Christ, but merely admit that I recognize
the great principle in man, of God as a distinct Being.

"While I am explaining this Christ I will give you the trinity that I
believe in, that is P. P. Quimby's trinity, not that P. P. Q. is the
trinity but that P. P. Q. believes it. He believes in one living and true
wisdom called God, in Jesus (flesh and blood) a medium of this truth, and
in the Holy Ghost or explanation of God to man. Here is my trinity and the
Holy Ghost is the Science that will lead you into all truth: it will break
the band of error and triumph over the opinion of the world. 'This Holy
Ghost is what is with your Christ that your fleshly man knows not of; this
is the Christ in you that has been cast into prison since you were first
sick; it is the Christ that Jesus speaks of that preached to the prisoners
long before the flood. This same Christ was crucified at the death of
Jesus and laid in the tomb of Joseph's new doctrines, not with the body of
Jesus. The Jews crucified Christ by their false religion and the masses
crucified the man Jesus, so Christ in the tomb of every true disciple had
the Christ lying in his breast crucified by the world of opinions. This
Christ is the one that Jesus Christ spake of, not of the flesh and blood
that the people saw by their natural eyes. So all the truth that came
through the man Jesus was Christ and it was the garment of Jesus. So Jesus
was clothed with the gospel or wisdom of God. When the error mur­dered the
man, they stole the body of Christ and parted His garments or wisdom among
them, while the people believed that the flesh and blood that was laid in
the tomb was the one that they heard, when it was nothing but the medium
of the one whom they never saw, only in a mystery. This same Christ rose
again and is still in the world of matter recon­ciling the world of error
to the science of God.

"I will now commence anew to preach Christ to you to cure you of your
errors or disease and bring you into this living Truth that will set you
free from the evils of man's opinions that binds burdens upon you in the
form of a disease. So when I say I am with you I mean this Christ or
truth, not P. P. Quimby as a man. I have acknowledged it as my leader and
master. So when I speak of it I speak of it as a wisdom superior to P. P.
Q's, and you have the same Christ in you confined by the errors of this
world. So I will now sit down by you again and listen to your groans, for
I feel the pain of the bands that bind you across the chest. Now this that
feels is not P. P. Quimby, but the Christ and that which complains is not
Mrs. P. but the Christ in Mrs. P. struggling to roll the stone from the
sepulchre of her tomb, to rise from the dead or error, into the living God
or Wisdom. You see that, I, that is, this Wisdom, makes a sick man two,-a
man beside himself and the servant above his master. When the master is
acknowledged the servant is not known, no more than an error is known when
the truth comes. I will show my meaning by an illustration: If you believe
your lungs are diseased, the servant or belief is the master, and Wisdom
the true master becomes the servant; but when the Lord of the vineyard
comes, then the wicked servant is cast out and another is put in his place
that will render to his Lord his dues. So when I, this truth, shall
convince the error of its wrong, it cannot stand the fire of Truth, so it
will submit to Wisdom, then truth will resume its sway and health and
happiness will be the result. Your disease is the result of your belief
and to change your belief is to convince you of an error that binds you
and the pains and depleted state of mind are the natural results of your
punishment. Truth never binds or separates one truth from another and all
belief that has a tendency to separate us is error and makes unhappiness.
Error always tries to separate one from another.

"I will illustrate: Suppose you are my child and you become sick as you
are now; according to the religious belief we must separate and perhaps at
some future time we shall meet again in that world whence no traveller
ever returned. The chances according to your own and your friends' belief
are that you are bound for that world of spirits. Suppose I believe as you
and the rest of the religious world, what must be my feelings when I see
you hastening to that world whence no traveller returns; how must you
feel, knowing that you are about to be snatched from the bosom of your
friends to enter that dark and dismal grave, with only the hope of a
resurrection from the dead and that based on a belief? Is not that enough
to rock the very foundation of your building and make the walls of your
belief tremble even to the foundation? To me this is a horrid belief.

"Now this is your true state, standing trembling between hope and fear,
holding back through fear and clinging to your friends, while the nearest
and dearest of them are trying to drive you off through their blind faith.
Suppose you are a parent and your only son should be pressed into the army
and your neighbors who have sons should come round and console you by
saying he would be better off for going even if he should die fighting for
his country, would you feel happy to part with him? Must not the
separation be almost enough to break your heart? Then your husband is
called upon and now your cup is filled to overflowing. Can all this happen
without a sunken eye, a pale and hollow cheek, with hectic flush, a purple
lip, and nervous cough? In all this the chances are not one out of fifty
that they will not both re­turn to cheer you up in your last moments when
your life is almost run out. In all this your spirits mingle as though you
were only separated like other friends, but when they die, according to
our belief, the thread that binds us is severed by the knife that cuts our
life and our souls launch into the world of our belief. Which is worse? To
go through either is bad enough, but I believe the religious belief is
worse. The religious belief prepares the mind for the medical belief, one
is based on old superstitions; this gets the mind worked up like mortar,
then the potter or doctor moulds the mind into disease. I have no sympathy
with either. Science knows no such beliefs; Science never separates, it is
from everlasting to everlasting, it has no beginning nor end.

"I will now return to you again as my child to convince you that although
your eyes are sunken and your cheek hectic your pains and trouble are all
in your false ideas of yourself. We are all a part and parcel of each
other, that is, in our wisdom or that life eternal which cannot be
severed, but our beliefs may hold it in bondage. Now as you sit and
listen, suppose you grow quiet and pass into that happy state of mind
where you meet your husband and son, talk with them about the war and
learn from them that they find it rather a hard life, but they will not
return till the rebellion is crushed. On the whole you are satisfied that
they are better off so far as their situation is concerned than you
thought for. Would you not feel relieved? I know you would. While you are
in this state suppose you believed you were dying and your friends were
weeping around you for the last time and you could not speak. Which do you
think would have the most reviving effect on you when you awoke? You need
not answer. Now, my belief is this: Wisdom never separates you. from me
but makes us a part of each other in Wisdom; for what I feel I know and
what I do not know I cannot feel. To believe my child is separate and
apart from me is a horrid belief to us both, but to know that God cannot
be divided is to know that we cannot be separated from our Heavenly
Father. The error is only held together by opinions that can deceive, but
Science is eternal life. This is in all mankind and is progress, it knows
no death or separation. To know this is more than the religious world ever
had. This was the doctrine of Jesus; Christ is the child of this wisdom
and this is what I am trying to get into your mind like the little leaven
that leaveneth the whole lump. If this is infidel doctrine, then P. P.
Quimby is an infidel; but I would rather part with everything on earth
than part with this Truth which is my shepherd that leadeth me through the
dark valley of the shadow of death, and lodges me where no belief or
opinion can give me one drop of water to cool my tongue when tormented by
religious belief."

THE SILENT METHOD

[It is noticeable that Quimby does not spend time analyzing the process of
healing, does not write about concentration, meditation or "the silence."
Possessing exceptional powers of concentration, he immediately turned to
the patient to make his intuitive diagnosis, then gave his thought to the
realization of the Divine ideal of health and happiness. The nearest he
comes to a description of the process is in the following illustration,
drawn from his experience as a daguerreotypist in his early years.]

A patient comes to see Dr. Q. He renders himself absent to everything but
the impression of the patient's feelings. These are quickly daguerreotyped
on him. They contain no intelligence, but shadow forth a reflection of
themselves which he looks at: this contains the disease as it appears to
the patient. Being confident that it is the shadow of a false idea, he is
not afraid of it, but laughs at it. Then his feelings in regard to the
disease, which are health and strength, are daguerreotyped on the
receptive-plate of the patient, which also throws forth a shadow. The
patient, seeing this shadow of the disease in a new light, gains
confidence. This change of feeling is daguerreotyped on the doctor again,
and this [new impression] also throws forth a shadow, and he sees the
change and continues to treat it in the same way. So the patient's
feelings sympathize with his, the shadow grows dim, and finally the light
takes its place, and there is nothing left of the disease. [This
description refers to the successive intuitions concerning the whole
individual, the error to be banished, the fears to be overcome, the
haunting mental pictures to be blotted out; and the picturing of the
Divine image of health, made concrete by Quimby's great power of focussing
the attention, as well as his insight into the causes on which he based
the explanation following the silent treatment. The "receptive-plate" of
the patient includes part of what we now call the subconscious. When
actual changes were wrought the patient began to feel the benefit. Then
the process of re-education could be begun. Quimby judged by the ideal or
"scientific" man, in contrast with which the patient's own idea of himself
as a sick person was a mere shadow.]

TREATMENT OF A CHILD

To show the effect of the will upon the mind of a child, I will state the
case of one about two years old who was brought to me to be treated for
lameness. The mother held the child in her lap and informed me that it was
lame in its knee. This was the information I received from its mother; but
when I sat by the child I experienced a queer feeling in the hip and
groin, but no bad feelings in the knee. I told the mother that the
lameness was in the hip, and that I would show her how the child walked,
and how it would walk were it lame in the knee. I then imitated the walk
of the child, and also showed how it would walk were the lameness in the
knee. After I explained the difference to her the mother admitted I was
right.

I then informed her that to cure the child's lameness I must cure her (the
mother) of the disease which was in her senses [mind] while the phenomenon
was exhibited in the child. She said the doctor told her the disease was
in the knee, and ordered it splintered. To splinter up the knee and keep
it from bending would be to encourage the evil in the hip, and make a
cripple of the child. I was obliged to explain away the doctor's opinion.
When I suceeded in doing that, it changed the mother's mind so much that
when she put the child down she could see that her will guided its motion.
This was so apparent to her that she could in some measure counteract the
wrong motion of the child. With my own wisdom attached to the child's will
I soon changed the mind so that the child walked much better.

THE HEALING PRINCIPLE

It is an undisputed fact that Dr. Quimby cures disease, and that without
any medicine or outward applications. How does he do it? is the question
that agitates and interests the people. If he has any new way different
from the mysterious and superstitious mode acknowledged by others who have
appeared to cure disease by personal virtue alone, what is it? Where does
he get his power?

He denies that he has any power or gift superior to other men. He contends
that he operates intelligently under the direction of a Principle which is
always his guide while with the sick. He follows this Principle in
practice and theory, and under it he learns facts of real life that he
could never get in any other way. He has found the way by which all errors
can be corrected. . . .

It might be called the Principle of Goodness. It is the highest
intelligence that operates in the affairs of man, always producing
harmony, and making man feel that he has more to learn and is a
progressive being. . . . It has been his aim to develop this principle in
relation to human misery and make life a science. The cause of all misery
is in ignorance of ourselves, and in proportion as he develops this
higher, happier portion of mankind, which he calls Science, he sees
through the miseries and the ills, and just in proportion as he sees
through them he can correct them. . . . With a knowledge that all trouble
is a false alarm . . . he proceeds to undermine the foundations, and the
structure gives way. However well established are the facts of any
disease, he believes the basis all wrong, dependent on the opinions of men
for an existence. . . . To destroy the belief identified with a. patient's
feelings, changes the mind, and that is the cure. . . . The mind is
something and embraces a much larger compass of our being than we are
taught to consider it. It includes all opinions and [conventional]
religion, and everything about us which can change; not that part which is
seen by the natural eye, but that which acts upon the natural man. It
embraces all excitement and agitation, and all the variations of
humanity.... It is not matter that comes to our bodily senses. It is
another kind which is just as sensible to him as that which he touches
with his hands. Around every one is an atmosphere of intelligence which
contains our whole identity, and he has become so sen­sitive to that
atmosphere that its existence is a fact, and with that he operates. [If
this seems to imply a sixth sense, the answer is that Dr. Quimby has not]
found any one faculty that would answer to a "sense," but he has refined
and spiritualized those faculties which mankind exercise toward each other
till he has arrived at the true way of communicating with and influencing
minds. For instance, his sympathy for his patients is pure from any
feeling like blame or contempt, or discouragement, and is a transparency
to reflect their feelings just as they come to him, with light from a
higher source, to account for and explain them to the patient, and his
explanation illumines the patient's mind.

How does he know he has got hold of a true method? How does be know he is
not mistaken? There are many reasons which confirm his method as a
science. One is that he constantly improves it. He finds he can cure more
quickly, and harder cases. Then as he explains his method to others and
they understand it confirms him. . . . Admitting that there is a First
Cause or God, it is not so hard to demonstrate that Dr. Quimby knows more
about His wisdom in regard to health . . . and unto Him he gives all the
glory. He knows that while treating disease he is purely under the
influence of the highest truth. . . . He knows that his peculiar belief is
not an invention of his own, for it is contrary to what as a natural man
he has been taught: it rests on the facts of his own experience with the
sick. . .

HEALTH AND DISEASE

Disease is that part of the mind that can be compared to a wilderness. It
is full of erroneous opinions and false ideas of all kinds, and it opens a
field for speculators to explore. . . . When I sit by a sick person he
tells me the story of his travels, and his experience of the evils that
beset him in this wilderness. The scientific character is like the
prodigal son, it desires to enter this land of mystery to see what it can
gain. . . . As health is the thing most desired, to find out how to keep
it and when lost how to restore it, is the object of our journey into this
territory.

The question may be asked, What is health? I know of no better answer than
this: it is perfect wisdom, and just as a man is wise is his health; but
as no man is perfectly wise no man has perfect health. Ignorance is
disease, although not accompanied by pain. Pain is not disease itself, but
is what follows disease. According to my theory, disease is a belief, and
where there is no fear there can be no pain; for pain is not the act but
the reaction of something which creates pain.

But, says some one, I never thought of pain till it came. But if it came
something must have started it. Therefore it must be an effect, whether it
came from some place or from ourselves. I take the ground that it is
generated in ourselves, and that it must have a cause. Every one knows
that in his natural state a person is sensitive to what is called pain,
and if his sensitiveness is destroyed he shows no signs of pain. But to
suppose his senses are destroyed because he feels no pain is not correct:
his senses [or consciousness] may be detached from his body and attached
to another idea, so that he is not sensitive to any effect upon the body
which in his natural state would give him pain. This shows that pain is in
the mind, like all trouble, though the cause may be in the belief or body.

For instance, suppose a tumor appears on the body, the person feeling no
sensation or trouble from it. He consults a physician who, after examining
it, asks the man if he has shooting pains and hot flashes. The man says,
"No, why do you ask the question?" The doctor replies that it looks like a
cancer, and then explains the nature and symptoms of the disease. In the
course of an hour the man feels shooting pains. Now where is the pain, in
the tumor, or in the belief in a cancer? I answer, in the belief. . . .
Error gives direction to the mind, and a cancer is formed just as far as
the belief is received by the patient. Every thought is a part of a
person's identity, and if it contains a belief he must suffer the penalty
of his acts; for to believe is to act.

LEARNING TO HEAL

How can a person learn to cure the sick? As a pupil in mathematics learns
to work out a problem. Every word is supposed to have a meaning. Now words
are like nuts, some are full, some partially full, some are empty, the
food or wisdom is in the word, and if the word contains no wisdom, then it
is like husks or froth, it fails to satisfy the desire of the person who
seeks the substance. Natural food is to satisfy the natural man and
spiritual food or wisdom is to satisfy the inner or scientific man. The
child before it begins to know is fed by natural food, while its spiritual
food is opinions expressed in words. Therefore as I said, words contain
more or less truth; all are not full and some are empty; but when a person
speaks a word that contains the real substance and applies it to the thing
spoken of, that is what is called the bread of life and he neither hungers
nor thirsts for wisdom in regard to that. The sick have been deceived by
false words and have fed on food that contains no wisdom. Hungry and
thirsty they apply to strangers for food; they ask for health or the bread
of life and the natural man taking bread as a natural substance, brings
bread to them, but their state of mind does not hunger for natural food,
therefore to them it is a stone.

There is a bread, which if a man eat, he is filled, and this bread is
Christ or Science. It is the body of Christ. Jesus says, "whoso eateth my
flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life." "For my flesh is meat
indeed and my blood is drink." The Jews of His days were like the scholars
of the present day. Bread is bread, and blood is blood, and they say, "how
can this man give us his flesh to eat?" They do not understand that Wisdom
is a body and opinion a shadow. The natural man's belief is his body, and
to eat and drink the world's wisdom is to eat condemnation or disease.

Now I will illustrate a cure. I sit down by a sick person and you also sit
down, I feel her trouble and the state of her mind, and find her faint and
weary for the want of wisdom. I tell her what she calls this feeling that
troubles her, and knowing her trouble my words contain food that you know
not of. My words are words of wisdom and they strengthen her, while if you
should speak the same words and the sound should fall on the natural ear
precisely as mine, they would be only empty sounds and the sick would
derive no nourishment from them.

I will describe this food that you may taste it and be wiser for your
meal. In order to prove that food satisfies a person's hunger, I must find
a person who is hungry, and in order to prove that my words satisfy the
sick, I must take one who hungers and thirsts for the bread of life or
health. Being weak and faint from exhaustion she applied to a physician
for food to satisfy her desire, for she was famished for the want of
wisdom in regard to her trouble. Instead of giving her wisdom which would
have satisfied her, he in his ignorance gave her these words full of
poison. "Your trouble is a cancer in the breast." As she received these
words she became more faint and exhausted till she became sick at her
stomach. She ate of this poisonous food till seeds of misery began to
agitate the matter, the idea began to form and a bunch appeared in the
breast. As she attached the name cancer to the bunch the name and the
bunch became one body. The physician's words contained the poison, the
poison pro­duced the bunch, their ignorance associated the name with the
bunch and called it cancer.

I was called to see the lady and being perfectly ignorant of her trouble,
I felt the faint and hungry feeling and as I felt the effect of the
doctor's food or opinions on her, I said, The food you eat does not
nourish you, it gives you a pain in the breast. This I said in reference
to the way she reasoned in regard to her trouble.

"How do you know?" said she. I then told her that she thought her trouble
was a cancer and she admitted that it was so. I then told her she had no
cancer except what she made herself. I will admit the swelling, said I,
but it is of your own make. You received the seed from the doctor, and he
prepared the mind or matter for its growth, but the fruit is the work of
the medical faculty.

Let us see how much the idea cancer exists in truth. The name exists
before the bunch, then the bunch before it ap­peared must have been in the
mind, for it was not in sight when the word was first applied to it, or
when you were first told that you had one.

You know that you can be affected by another mind. Now I wish to show you
that every phenomenon that takes form in the human body is first conceived
in the mind. Some sensation is felt which we cannot account for, we then
conjure up some idea which we create into a belief, and soon it is
condensed into a. form and a name given to it. Then every phenomenon
taking the name of disease, is a pattern of some false idea started
without the least foundation in truth.

Now, this bunch I call a phenomenon, for I cannot call it a cancer,
because if I do I admit a thing outside of the mind. The senses are the
man independent of flesh, that is one thing, the word cancer is another.
Now, I want to find the matter that the word is applied to. To say a thing
exists and to prove its existence are two different things. If any doctor
will tell where that cancer was before it was in sight, I will ask him how
he knows. Let him say it was in the blood, that the state of the blood
indicates the presence of cancerous humor.

Now, do you deny that I told your feelings? "Certainly not." Then have I a
cancerous humor? "By no means." Then there is no wisdom in that argument.
Again, he never knew you had an ill-feeling till you told him. Then where
did he get his knowledge? Not from you for you never thought of a cancer.
It must have been from what you said about your pain. Suppose I had said
that I felt these same pains and you had kept your peace, then according
to his theory I must have a cancerous humor. Now, I know that I have no
humor nor had I an idea or pain till I sat by you, therefore his story of
a cancer is a lie made out of whole cloth, without the least shadow of
truth. It is like the stories of Sinbad the Sailor, or some witch fables
that have no existence in truth. Then you will ask, what is this bunch? It
is a bunch of solid matter, not a ghost or any invisible thing, but it was
made by yourself, and no one else.

I will tell you how you made it. You remember I spoke of your having a
heat. This heat contained no good or ill, but it was a mere decomposition
of your body brought about by some little excitement. It troubled you,
then your superstitious fear of disease began to haunt you in your sleep,
creating an action in the part of your breast where the error had made a
stand. You commenced then to foster the idea till at last you have excited
the muscles to such an extent that the bunch has appeared. If now I have
proved the cure I have affected it and the bunch will disappear.

Do you wish to know why? "Yes." Can the effect re­main when the cause is
removed? "I presume not." How do you feel ? "I feel easy." How do you feel
in regard to your trouble, and in regard to what I have said? "I think you
are right, and it looks more reasonable than the doctor's story." Then
your senses have left his opinion and have come to my wisdom. This is the
new birth, you have risen from the dead and you are free from the doctor's
ideas. This truth has destroyed death, and brought life and health through
Science. Now, I say unto you, Take up your bed or this Truth and go your
way, and when the night of error comes spread out the garment of Wisdom
that enfolded Jesus, and wrap yourself in its folds or Truth, till the sun
of Life shall shine upon your body, and you rise free from the evils of
the old belief. (1)

(1) 1864

STRENGTH

What is strength? This question sounds as though it might be easily
answered, but on consideration it is not so easy. Words are so misused
that it is impossible to get at the original meaning, feeling or state
when the word was introduced. If you choose to apply the word strength to
machinery, then I have no fault to find with the definition, but if it is
applied to man also the definition is wrong; for man's strength is in his
will, and that is independent of the thing you call "strong." If you say,
"that is a strong lever," then it does not include the force that is
applied to it. If the person who first used the word applied it to his
wisdom as a powerful intellect, then it will only apply where there is
intellect, the quality of which is taken into account. This confusion of
meaning makes a great deal of trouble, for we put intelligence into
everything that has resistance instead of in the intelligence having the
strength. A man's legs are a combined lever, and if you mean that they
have strength you might as well say that a lever has strength, for one is
as much alive as the other and neither of itself can do anything.

The word strength does not convey the author's feelings when he made the
expression. He either meant to apply it to wisdom or to matter. If the
author meant to give a name to the phenomenon called will, then it makes a
vast difference in reasoning about strength. For instance, a person is
"weak" in the back or limbs. Now the medical faculty prescribe
strengthening linaments, as though there were intelligence in the medicine
and it imparted strength to the weak part. This absurd idea is carried out
through all our lives, and it deprives man of the true wisdom that might
make him happy and intelligent.

My theory disproves the assertion, for I have seen that the word strength
is a mere word with no more meaning than to lead man astray.

The corner stone of the medical science is based on this word strength.
This or that thing is said to give a person strength. In the case of a
fever the whole invention of the medical faculty is brought to play to
discover some medicine that will give strength. The chemist is employed to
discover the chemical properties which such and such things contain, and
numberless articles are said to contain strengthening virtue. The food is
strengthening, the air is strengthening and you can find no end to the
strengthening things given to the sick, and all the while they are growing
weaker.

Every one knows that a horse is stronger than a man, it cannot be the
food, for a man fed on grass would die accord­ing to our belief, while the
animal will live, and so he will live on the same food as man and still
grow no stronger. Man puts the construction on the word to suit himself.
If the power applied to man's will is called strength; the thing that will
is applied to is not called strong. You may ask what this has to do with
the curing of disease. I will tell you, for it is the very thing to
correct. There is such a term as resistance and this is opposed to
strength. For instance, you wish to raise a stone, the wish that wants to
raise a stone is one thing, and the stone is another. If wisdom chooses to
apply its strength through the arms its motive or will is applied
according to the idea of resistance. If a horse is attached to a dead
weight it applies its will or strength and if it fails it makes another
effort to overcome the resistance. Strength is intelligence; it embraces
all man's wisdom, and if his wisdom is of God or Science his strength is
not in himself, and to be wise is to be strong.

I will illustrate my idea of strength as I apply it to the sick. When I
use the word I couple it with skill. These two are governed either by
natural wisdom or scientific wis­dom. I will state a case of my own
experience. I treated a man who had lost the use of his lower limbs, he
could not move them when he was sitting in his chair. The doctor called it
spinal affection. When he attempted to rise he had not strength enough in
his spine to keep his body erect, he would give out at the pit of the
stomach, and this took all the power from his legs. This was the doctor's
theory and the man believed it and applied his will or strength according
to his wisdom. His hope was cut off. He believed the spine was diseased
and so did all his friends and physicians. According to my theory his body
was like the weight to be moved, his will or strength was applied to his
body just as it would be to a lever which you believed would break if you
applied too much power to it; his reason directed the power, and being
deceived he could do nothing. To cure him, or make his legs strong and his
spine well, was to first convince him that there never was any strength in
the idea body, that strength came from some other source.

Every one knows that, the will being put into action, an effect is
produced called strength. For instance, a person by the power of his will
can hold another. What is the grasp? Strength, or is it the will applied
to the hand? No one supposes that the hand would catch hold and grasp
unless directed by another power. This power is the will governed by the
wisdom and the effect is called strength. Strength is the name of the act,
so will without an act or motive is no will or strength and availeth
nothing. So to sit till his legs grew strong would be as absurd as to make
a steam engine and after it was ready to work sit and wait till the wood
made its own fire, its steam, and let its steam on to the piston head. For
a man that has lost his strength to sit still and wait for it to come is
just as absurd as to prepare a clay bin and then wait for it to make a
vessel. Such an idea of strength is so absurd that it takes away a man's
reasoning faculties. Let man know that this darkness is the want of right
direction to his ambition, then his strength is in putting his will into
action, both are the result of his wisdom. Destroy a man's prospects and
happiness, and you destroy his strength. So as you rouse his ambition and
will, his strength comes. The course taken by the medical faculty in their
mode of reasoning destroys man's natural powers and makes him. a mere tool
in the hands of a quack. Every man who reasons that strength can be made
by food, air, or rubbing, or any linament, is a fool, although he may be
honest.

I have tried the experiment and know. I do not guess at it when I say that
there is not one particle of virtue in any sort of medicine that people
take to give them strength. Neither is there any kind of strength in one
kind of food more than another, but it may be all summed up in this, the
gratification of man's desires embraces all there is of him, and these
vary according to circumstances. All men have a desire for happiness, and
this desire creates an appetite, and the desire wants to be gratified.
This brings up this feeling [activity] called will, and then it is forced
on by wisdom to accomplish a desire. The wants of the animal are limited,
therefore it is lively and happy, for it acts according to its will. It is
often said that the beasts are sick. Granted, but man takes their freedom
from them as well as from the human species. Let both be wild and you see
a bold race.

Look at the uncultivated savage and you will not see him creeping around
as though he had done some mean, dirty act, like the civilized man. Of all
mean looking things a human being completely under the medical faculty is
the lowest, he is as much a slave as the negro at the South, and in fact
more so. Look at a sick woman suffering from some opinion that the doctors
have made her believe, see the mind completely under the doctor, she is
not allowed to eat or drink or even walk or think except as the family
physician gives direction. The sick have given their souls to the priests
and their bodies to the physicians. They then tell about the good doctor,
how much he has done for them, showing that he has deprived them of all
noble manly feelings, left them sick, feeble in mind and body, while the
doctor struts around like a slave-driver, and the sick curl under the lash
of their tongue, as the negroes under the lash of their masters. This may
seem strange, but it is God's truth, that the sick are a mere tool in the
hands of the medical faculty, to be treated just as they please. It never
will be any better till the sick rise in their wisdom and declare their
independence. You may say I am making war for my own gain, but I think I
can convince any one who is out from under these slave drivers, that I
could make ten dollars where I now make one. My object is to raise my
fellow man to his original state. I am a white abolitionist. The blacks it
is true are slaves, but their slavery is a blessing compared with that of
the sick. I have seen many a white slave that would change places with the
black. The only difference is that white slavery is sanctioned by public
opinion. But make the slave know that he is one, and you will see a
difference in the result. It is hard for me to keep myself in bounds when
I think of the groans of the sick, knowing that it is all the effect of a
superstitious ignorance. Does not the South quote the Bible to prove that
slavery is of Divine origin? Do not the priests and doctors quote the old
heathen superstition to bolster up a weak and feeble edifice just ready to
crumble and crush the leaders? Is not Science raising her voice and crying
aloud to the people saying how long shall it be till the old heathen
idolatry shall come to an end and man shall learn wisdom and be his own
master and not a slave? (1)

(1) Nov., 1861.

MIND AND DISEASE

Men create ideas which are matter. These ideas have a real existence in
the spiritual world, and their power is according to the nature that is
attributed to them, and the fear that men have of them. Fear of an idea
thus created, on the part of its creator, condenses its matter so that it
might be seen even by the natural eye, a creation composed of the
loathsome characteristics conceived of by the person's own belief, an
offspring of an excited and degraded mind. Such an idea is disease, the
child of the devil. This disease was first one simple, uncompounded idea.
But when that finally was pushed into an identity, when men were once
afraid of it, then it grew rapidly, like a poisonous weed, and derived its
sustenance from the very life-blood to which it owed its existence. All
its horrible characteristics it draws from the mind of men, who, could
they only understand what they are doing, would plant a good seed in their
soil or mind, which could bear no fruit fit for disease to live on, and
thus it would starve to death. . . . As mind is matter, its form can be
annihilated.

The basis of Dr. Quimby's theory is that there is no intelligence, no
power or action in matter of itself, that the spiritual world to which our
eyes are closed by ignorance or unbelief is the real world, that in it lie
all the causes for every effect visible in the natural world, and that if
this spiritual life can be revealed to us, in other words if we can
understand ourselves, we shall then have our happiness or misery in our
own hands; and of course much of the suffering of the world will be done
away with.

He does not deny that cures, as many and great as you please to claim,
have taken place under the old belief, but that they were brought about by
the inherent efficacy of the medicine itself he does deny.

He admits the possibility of a derangement of the bodily organs, but it is
in regard to the cause of this effect that he differs from all others.
Doctors consider the cause of disease to lie in the body, while he does
not. The doctors have set up a standard of right and wrong with regard to
health, and have made the people accept and believe it, and now disease
comes from the belief in this.

When our belief embraces disease, we must be liable to it. Consumption
will be in the world as long as people are under their present rulers. But
when they come to understand that matter is nothing of itself except it be
used by mind, and everything that is embraced in this, then consumption
will no longer be in existence.

It is hard to talk about it before the science is admitted. . . . It is
nothing more than or less than the Christian religion rendered
intelligible by being revealed as a Science.

Happiness is not dependent on externals, but lies within us, and is the
consciousness of keeping our loftier impulses free from contamination, and
revealing in our acts a strength which arises from uncorrupted motives.

Disease is the effect of a wrong direction given to the mind. Unhappiness
is its handmaid.

By "spiritual matter" Dr. Quimby does not mean the matter which is visible
to the natural eye, but a matter which can be changed into any form which
a person chooses. This mind or matter surrounds every person, and contains
an expression of character. You know how often in sitting down by a person
we have different impressions. For instance, we say such a person is
disagreeable, another is gentle, a third selfish; and these impressions we
have without being able to account for them in any way to ourselves or
others. We should have had the same if we had been blind. Now that which
we perceive without the aid of the natural senses is the mind or spiritual
matter, or atmosphere or vapor, or whatever you choose to call it, that
surrounds every one and is an index of character. This is what we come in
contacts with in our intercourse with men, and through this medium we
influence others and are influenced ourselves. It contains opinions,
thoughts, and everything in us which can be changed.

What we know we have no opinion about. That is eternal and never can be
changed. What we do not know, if we have ever been excited on the subject,
we have some opinion or belief about, and that opinion or belief may be
the cause of unhappiness.

In order that a disease shall be created, a shock must first be produced.
You cannot move anything unless you first start it. There must be a shock,
be it ever so slight, a little excitement, fright, pleasure, anything
which would produce a disturbance in the system. When thus disturbed, the
natural heat of the body always either increases or diminishes. Suppose
you turn red. A stranger meets you and says you look flushed. That would
not be likely to take down your color but would increase it. After two or
three remarks of that kind you would begin to feel uncomfortable, your
head would feel hot, and the heat might be so great that you would have
pain, and presently you would be informed that you look feverish. That
would keep up the excitement, and when you went out of doors you would be
likely to cough from the irritation caused by, the upward tendency of the
heat. That would frighten you a little, though you might not own it or
know it. But the disturbance would keep up till some kind friend should
inform you that you had taken cold, for your face was flushed and you
coughed. That, mind you, is an opinion, for a person may flush and cough
from excitement without any cold at all. Now you only need a little help
from mistaken friends and a finishing touch from a doctor to put you into
a lung, brain, or any other kind of fever they please. That, to use a very
simple case, is the way a disease is made.

The countless opinions we are brought up with, and believe as much as we
do in our existence, of course affect us, and we have a body according to
our belief. The belief comes first, then the system changes accordingly.

Even before the child is born, it is affected by the mother, and receives
its mental and physical constitution from her. After it has taken up
existence on its own account, it is still affected by her, whether she
speaks or not. The greater number of influences which act upon us do not
come through the natural senses, and are all the more dangerous of course
because unknown.

One object of Dr. Quimby's theory is to bring our spiritual existence to
our senses, or rather to prove that our senses are not located in the body
as we think they are. Thus we shall be able to protect ourselves.

By thoughts we are all affected, and even by the settled opinions of
people, whether they trouble themselves to apply them to our case or not.

Dr. Quimby never accuses any one of imagining that they are sick. He
admits every sensation that a person may claim. Indeed he takes their
feelings himself, so he has positive proof that they exist independently
of what the patient says.

You tell me I "look sick." I say I do not feel sick, in fact I don't know
what you mean by the word, so you have to invent some story to tell me or
explain by some intelligent sign. I lay my hand on my left side, you ask
me what I feel. Now if I had never heard of sickness or disease, I should
not know what to say, neither would I be frightened, so it would pass off
without anything of any account. But you tell me that people. often die
with just such a feeling as I have. This starts me, although I have no
idea what you mean, my feelings not containing danger or trouble, but your
opinions trouble me exceedingly. I begin now to twist and turn, not
knowing what to do. This convinces you that I have disease of the heart
and you try to explain to me what I have and how it affects a person. By
mesmerizing me into your belief you disturb my mind and create the very
idea you have invented, and at last I die just as you foretold. All this
is disease and you made it. If I had never seen you nor any one wiser than
myself I should not have died.