ed P. P. Quimby, and in less than one
week from that time I ascended by a stairway of one hundred and
eighty-two steps to the dome of the City Hall, and am improving _ad
infinitum_. To the most subtle reasoning, such a proof, coupled, too,
as it is with numberless similar ones, demonstrates his power to
heal." Mrs. Patterson, afterward Mrs. Eddy, proclaimed after his death
a doctrine very similar to Quimby's. She called it "Christian
Science," a name Quimby applied to his teaching, although usually he
called it "Science of Health."

Another patient of Quimby's was Julius A. Dresser, who visited him
first in 1860. Of him Mr. Dresser says: "The first person in this age
who penetrated the depths of truth so far as to discover and bring
forth a true science of life, and publicly apply it to the healing of
the sick, was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby of Belfast, Me."

Rev. W. F. Evans was still another patient and disciple of Quimby's.
His testimony is as follows: "Disease being in its root a wrong
belief, change that belief and we cure the disease.... The late Dr.
Quimby, of Portland, one of the most successful healers of this or any
age, embraced this view of the nature of disease, and by a long
succession of most remarkable cures ... proved the truth of the
theory.... Had he lived in a remote age or country, the wonderful
facts which occurred in his practice would have now been deemed either
mythical or miraculous."

These three, Messrs. Evans and Dresser and Mrs. Eddy, proved to be
Quimby's most famous patients and disciples. Evans became a noted and
voluminous writer on mental healing, Mr. Dresser has been identified
with the New Thought movement of which his son H. W. Dresser is
probably the best exponent, and Mrs. Eddy ruled the Christian
Scientists with a rod of iron.

Warren F. Evans visited Quimby twice in the year 1863, and at these
times obtained his knowledge of Quimby's methods. Up to this time he
had been a Swedenborgian clergyman, and his beliefs enabled him the
better to grasp the new doctrines. On the occasion of the second visit
he told his healer that he thought he could cure the sick in this way,
and Quimby agreed with him. On returning home he tried it, and his
first attempts were so successful that he became a practitioner, using
only mental means, and continued in this work. He wrote several books
on the subject of mental healing, the first one, _The Mental Cure_,
appearing in 1869, six years before Mr