Popular Culture Review Vol. 2, No. 2, July 1991 | Page 56

48

The Popular Culture Review

hedges(3) because, in later years, she denied any Quimby influence,
stating that the latter was a magnetic healer while she was a
spiritual one.(4 ) All that can be said for certain is that the Belfast
doctor was a leader of the mental healing movement in the United
States(5) and that he attempted to identify his theory with theism.
"He believed that God must reveal himself to a scientific age
through law . . . and if this was so, then the saving knowledge of His
holy laws must come as an eternal science."(6)
Mary Baker Eddy was treated by Quimby from October 1863,
until his death in January 1866. The assertion that she was stumbling
toward a personal philosophy prior to her treatment is unproved.(7)
Evidently, Mrs. Eddy's affliction was mental because Quimby cured
her to the extent that she never had to visit a regular doctor for her
chronic aches and pains. Quimby impressed upon her his conclusion
that disease was both caused and cured by the mind. Before 1866,
Mrs. Eddy publicly denied that Quimby’s cure was "electromagnetic”
or hypnotic; she declared that it was both spiritual and truthful.(8)
After Quimby's death, his disciple, Julius Dresser, felt himself
inadequate to the task of perpetuating the mental healing
philosophy. At this time, Mrs. Eddy's confidence in the deceased
leader's teachings remained unshaken. Sometime between 1866 and
1872, probably during the genesis of her first work, The Science of
Man, Quimby's philosophy was submerged in her own.(9)
Through the forty-year reshaping of American philosophy,
1870 to 1910, Christian Science was claimed to have had antecedents
other than Quimbyism. At times, it was believed to be regressive, a
"recrudescence" of Mrs. Eddy’s "youthful memories" bred in a New
England atmo sphere where Shakers prayed and Bible-thumping
ministers shattered the stillness with their tirades. It was also
traced back to Charles Poyer's 1837 study of animal magnetism and
even further back along the same route to Mesmer.(lO) Idealist
philosophers, (11) American spiritualists(12) and Oriental
asceticism(13) were also tossed into the Christian Science grab-bag.
In the first decade of industrial consolidation, intellectuals
found it difficult to criticize Christian Science because it appeared to
be a religion but claimed to be a science.(14) Moreover, Mrs. Eddy
shared with Herbert Spencer a contempt for mortal man which belied
her transcendental belief in the upward progress of the human
spirit.(15 ) Her view of God was, in many ways, as inexorable as