orthodoxy of his time
constrained by no loyalty to the accepted faith and no critical
knowledge of its content. "Truth" and "Science" were characteristic
words for him and he shared his speculations and conclusions freely with
his disciples.

[Footnote 20: What is here said of Quimby is condensed from Dresser's
"The Quimby Manuscripts."]

_Quimby is Led to Define Sickness as Wrong Belief_

In his early thirties he was supposed to be dying of consumption and
suffered much from excessive medication. He recovered through an
emotional crisis but does not seem to have followed out the possible
suggestion of his recovery. He turned instead to mesmerism and travelled
about with one Lucius Burkmer over whom he had strong hypnotic
influence. When hypnotized Burkmer (or Burkman) claimed the power to
look as through a window into the bodies of Quimby's patients and
discover, often with illuminating detail, their condition; a good many
reputed cures followed. The testimonials to these cures and to the
strange powers of Burkmer are themselves an arresting testimony to the
lengths people go in the face of what they do not understand. "I have
good reason to believe that he can discern the internal structure of an
animal body and if there be anything morbid or defective therein detect
and explain it.... He can go from point to point without passing through
intermediate space. He passes from Belfast [Maine] to Washington or from
the earth to the moon ... swifter than light, by a single act of
volition."[21]

[Footnote 21: "The Quimby Manuscripts," p. 38.]

Quimby had too alert an intelligence to rest content with the merely
occult. He came to believe that Burkmer only saw what the patient
thought, could do no more than describe the patient's idea of his own
state, or else report the "common allopathic belief about the disease in
question," and the cure, he was persuaded, was not in the medicine
prescribed but in "the confidence of the doctor or medium." (Note that
Quimby here associates the cures produced by the medical faculty and his
own cures in one sweeping generalization.) What he was really dealing
with then was "belief." It might be the belief of the doctor or the
patient or the belief of his friends--but sickness was only "belief."
This also was a sweeping generalization but it becomes intelligible as
we follow the process by which Quimby reached his conclusions and it
helps us to understand the significance of Belief a