Chapter 4
Inventing Psychotherapy The American Mind Cure Movement, 1830–1900
Every new [medical] discovery or procedure is hated on sight and denounced; then it is endured from familiarity, afterward pitied and sympathized with, and finally embraced and accepted. Many are the remedies and methods which were scouted and denounced, and the advocates fined and imprisoned; after which some member of the dominant party perceiving merit in the innovation, and perhaps some hope of profit and reputation, ventured to "introduce" it to the "regular" profession. It then becomes "scientific," which, in conventional usage, means orthodox.
Alexander Wilder, M.D. (1900)
The remarkable vogue of certain pseudo-philosophic and pseudo-religious healing methods in America is not an unmixed evil; one of the benefits which may accrue to us as a people may be the awakening of so-called "regular" medicine and so-called "orthodox" religion to their sins of omission.
Lewellys Barker, M.D. (1910)
The American medical profession's recognition of the theoretical and practical limitations of the somatic paradigm can be attributed only in part to the issues raised by the discovery of and efforts to treat railway spine, neurasthenia, and other so-called functional nervous diseases. That the experience treating these disorders contributed to a growing awareness of psychogenic notions of causality and the possibility of treating certain "bodily" diseases by mental means cannot be denied. What they did not do, however, was generate any widespread
consideration of employing mental therapeutics to the exclusion of somatic therapies. Acting more as catalysts than as causal agents, they were only indirectly responsible for the birth of psychotherapy in the United States. A more significant inspiration came from what William James termed "the mind cure movement."[1]
At its core mind cure was an effort to contest the growing hegemony of what James himself had disparagingly labeled "medical materialism" and to offer an alternative or, at the very least, a supplementary approach to questions regarding sickness and health.[2] Composed of a loosely organized collection of men and women who held that mental therapies were by themselves sufficient to cure all diseases, the American mind cure movement distinguished itself not only from Spiritualism, antivivisectionism, and other movements aligned against what Steward W. Holmes has termed "science-engendered materialism" but also from a host of other nineteenth-century healing sects including Thomsonism, homeopathy, and hydropathy.[3] All these trends "formed a link in a chain of organizations opposed to the scientific revolution in late nineteenth-century medicine, and to the growing power of doctors."[4] This opposition to materialism was not a rejection of science per se. On the contrary, it was an effort to preserve an older, more holistic, vitalistic, and Baconian science against the new reductionist materialist experimentation.[5]
Proponents of the mind cure movement came from a variety of walks of American life. Although they often held antagonistic views, to those not directly involved in the movement they appeared to agree more than they disagreed. James chose to treat the many different schools as a single entity because, he maintained, "their agreements are so profound that differences may be neglected."[6] In certain respects this interpretation was understandable. Throughout the ages outsiders have often been blind to the fierce, sometimes lethal, debates that have raged within the larger context of various religious and political movements. That the considerable efforts and energies expended by various proponents of mental healing to differentiate their practices from those of their competitors went largely unnoticed by those not intimately connected with the movement is yet another illustration of this phenomenon. Try as they might practitioners of mental healing—regardless of their cultural status, scientific credentials, and even their ability to free people from mental and physical distress—proved unable to make the case that they were not all of a single breed.[7]
The rapid expansion of the mind cure movement in the United States just before and shortly after the turn of the century compelled certain
segments within a hitherto hostile American medical profession to consider seriously the role that mental factors played in the etiology, pathology, and treatment of certain functional nervous diseases.[8] Indeed, many who would soon champion so-called scientific psychotherapy readily acknowledged their intellectual debt to the indigenous mental healers. As early as 1894 James publicly assailed a proposal to proscribe the practice of mental healing. "What the real interest of medicine requires," James proclaimed, "is that mental therapeutics should not be stamped out, but studied, and its laws ascertained."[9]
Over the course of the next decade an increasing number of American physicians grudgingly embraced James's position. Chicago psychiatrist Richard Dewey declared,
[The] phenomena of mental healing are worthy of more attention than they have received. Those of Eddyism (which is the proper name for so-called Christian Science), of osteopathy, or "divine healing," whether by saints' relics or waters of Lourdes, or the holy coat of Trier, have in them lessons for our profession. ... In mental therapeutics it is my belief that psychiatry has a new and rich domain to conquer and annex by separating the false from the true in the fads and frauds of the day, and by placing upon a scientific basis the facts of mental influence upon physical states.[10]
Dewey was far from alone in his assessment. As Robert Edes later explained, "Considering the very prominent position which psychic treatment in one form or another occupies in the public mind and the extravagant claims made for it, ... it is worthwhile to consider what morbid processes can be beneficially affected by mental action."[11] "The extraordinary popular and pseudo-scientific interest in matters relating to the possible alleviation of disease by mental means," added another prominent physician, had forced the medical profession to focus its attention on the subject.[12]
Such views were by no means confined to elite northeastern psychiatrists and neurologists. While their motives doubtless differed, a growing number of physicians throughout the nation began questioning the limits, if not the allure, of their somatic remedies. An Illinois Medical College dean captured the frustration felt by many of his medical brethren when he spoke of the threat posed by the mind curists.
It is preposterous to deny the profound influence of mental suggestion over bodily functions; and the doctor is a fool who does not avail himself of this means of treating his patients. ... To avoid sending from our college a lot of poor fellows to be driven into the poor house by these Christian Scientists, faith-curists, and the like, we have created a lectureship on psycho-
therapy, and promise to make them more proficient in all these isms than their professional exponents themselves.[13]
Arguments of this nature were becoming increasingly common. In an article appearing in an 1898 issue of the Medical Record , New York physician W.F. Hartford declared, "I see no good reason why we should allow the army of irregulars to carry away the best patients from our business."[14] Despite these and a host of similar admissions few historians of American psychiatry have examined this vital link between the American mind cure movement and what later became known as psychotherapy. Although there are a number of notable exceptions to this historiographical lacuna, most standard histories of American psychiatry and psychoanalysis make little or no mention of the indigenous mental healing movement and its subsequent impact on the American medical profession. Moreover, many of the most illuminating studies of mind cure in the United States fail to consider the movement's relationship to American medicine. Instead, most are limited to an analysis of the movement's religious and cultural significance.
This interpretive strategy is derived in large measure from James's initial characterization of mind cure as "a religious or quasi-religious movement."[15] For instance, in his illuminating study of the history of religion in America, Sydney Ahlstrom maintains that mind cure is yet another example of "harmonial religion," which "encompassed those forms of piety and belief in which spiritual composure, physical health, and even economic well-being are undertook to flow from a person's rapport with the cosmos. Human beatitude and immortality are believed to depend to a great degree on one's being 'in tune with the infinite.'"[16] More recent scholars have interpreted the movement as an example of "transcendental medicine," "Christian physiology," and "physical religion."[17] The last, declares Catherine Albanese, was "above all, healing religion—religion in which acts of caring and curing constituted the central ritual for believers."[18] The problem with these and other similar modes of interpretation is that they fail to take seriously the pressure that American mind cure discourse exerted on the American medical community.[19]
A similar shortcoming can be found in the literature that treats the mind cure movement as a form of protest against such sweeping social and cultural phenomena as industrialism, urbanism, and modernism. Examples of this line of analysis can be found in the writings of Donald Meyer and Gail Thain Parker. In a fascinating study of "religion as pop psychology" Meyer argues that mind cure was "a protest against an in-
adequate science of medicine. It was a protest against a theology no longer nourishing. It was a feminine protest against a society careless in meeting the needs of many of its members for worthy roles."[20] More recently, Parker has suggested that "it is more logical to see in the appeal of mind-cure ideas a reflection of those terrors which the developing economy held for middle-class Americans."[21] While these and other similar interpretations are not without their merits, in neglecting to distinguish mind cure from other middle-class responses to social and cultural upheavals they fail to capture what was in fact unique about this particular movement—namely, its ideas about mental therapeutics. The mind cure movement generated widespread enthusiasm in large part because of its enticing claims concerning its capacity to relieve both nervous and physical ailments that neither mainstream medicine nor traditional Protestantism proved capable of addressing.
Just as there were practical reasons to consult a physician if one fractured an elbow, there were practical reasons to seek out a metaphysical or Christian Science healer if one were experiencing anxiety, insomnia, or nervous distress, or—worse still—diagnosed as suffering from some incurable ailment. Sufferers, from time immemorial, have sought comfort where they could find it. "It is a suggestive fact," Horatio Dresser observed, "that a large proportion of the cases which come under the care of the mental practitioner are those which have been given up by the best physicians of the regular school."[22] That American victims of nervous distress and "incurable" diseases flocked in increasing numbers to the various mind cure movements thus comes as little surprise. Many had nowhere else to turn.[23]
Mental Healing in America: Controversies and Consensus
The origins of the American mind cure movement can be traced to the particular healing theories and practices of an eccentric and obscure clock maker, Phineus Parkhurst Quimby.[24] Writing in 1908, Richard C. Cabot, perhaps the leading American medical advocate of psychotherapy, conceded that "a great deal which physicians have now taken into their practice they really owe to Quimby and to Christian Science."[25] Born in Lebanon, New Hampshire, Quimby spent his formative years in a small coastal town in southern Maine. Like
thousands of other Americans, Quimby had the opportunity to witness one of the scores of demonstrations of mesmerism performed by Charles Poyen, a Frenchman, during his visit to the United States in the late 1830s. Quimby witnessed a similar demonstration in 1839—this time by Robert Collyer.
Introduced in the United States during the 1830s, mesmerism had an immediate and profound impact on both professional and lay audiences. Initially believed to operate according to some underlying physiological mechanism involving the manipulation of certain invisible vital fluids, mesmerism was soon dismissed by respectable scientists and physicians as little more than mere psychic suggestion.[26] The rejection of mesmerism by the mainstream medical community was not solely attributable to the alleged psychological basis of the practice, however. Echoing their previous reaction to phrenological doctrines, many American physicians refused to sanction a practice that had been so readily exploited by myriad unsavory characters.[27]
Popular enthusiasm for the practice was especially evident in those caught up in one of the midcentury's most popular fads, Spiritualism.[28] The link between mesmerism and Spiritualism was the writings of the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg.[29] Although a small number of Americans had known of Swedenborg's work for some time, Whitney Cross suggests that his ideas did not achieve widespread popularity until the appearance of a new English edition of his work in 1845.[30] Swedenborg's writings, embraced by a wide range of Americans, appeared to confirm what many wished to believe—the existence of an "interaction between the physical and metaphysical orders of reality as a lawful occurrence."[31] No less a figure than the dean of American transcendentalism, Ralph Waldo Emerson, took it on himself to discuss Swedenborg's ideas in an 1850 collection of essays entitled Representative Men .[32]
One of the first Americans to connect mesmerism to Swedenborgianism was an apprentice cobbler from Poughkeepsie, New York, Andrew Jackson Davis. In 1843 Davis had the opportunity to participate in a lecture-demonstration conducted by the famed phrenologist and mesmerist J. Stanley Grimes.[33] This event proved to be a turning point in Davis's life, for it was from this experience that he discovered his capacity to enter an entranced state during which he was able to perform a number of "standard Mesmeric feats [such] as reading while blindfolded and reporting clairvoyant travels to distant locales."[34] The apparent connection between mesmerism and Swedenborgianism that
Davis had first articulated was soon taken up by Davis's contemporary, George Bush.[35]
A former Presbyterian clergyman and recent convert to Swedenborg's Church of the New Jerusalem, Bush sought to explore the nexus between mesmerism and Swedenborgianism that Davis had recently uncovered.[36] "The main phenomena of Mesmerism," Bush wrote, "are mental . They involve the laws of mental communication between one spirit and another. They bring us, therefore, into precisely the sphere of phenomena which Swedenborg professes to unfold."[37] Efforts to link mesmerism to Swedenborgianism peaked during the Spiritualist fad of the 1850s and 1860s. Through séances and other efforts to communicate with the spirits of the dead, proponents of Spiritualism sought to establish the existence of universal laws that might apply to both the physical and the metaphysical spheres.[38]
The seeds that the mesmerists planted in both American cultural soil and Quimby's head swiftly began to mutate. At first sprouting into an ever-increasing fascination with mesmerism itself, they soon blossomed into a vibrant mental healing movement—largely as a result of Quimby and his disciples. Following Collyer's performance, Quimby embarked on an intensive investigation of animal magnetism. Beginning in 1843 the former clock maker set out on a four-year tour of New England with Lucius Burkmar. With Burkmar's aid Quimby performed hundreds of public demonstrations in which he revealed the wonders of animal magnetism.[39] By 1847 Quimby's interest in the practice of mesmerism began to wane, and he embarked on what Dresser maintains was a twelve-year investigation of "Science and Health."[40] Finally, in 1859, Quimby settled down in Portland, Maine, where he devoted the last six years of his life to establishing a successful healing practice in which he claimed to have treated more than twelve thousand men, women, and children.
A self-educated man, Quimby wrote in a style that was confusing and at times incoherent—particularly in his discussion of mind and matter. "Men," Quimby charged, "create ideas which are matter."[41] Although his theories and practices were discussed in a number of newspaper articles and interviews that appeared before his death and in scores of letters that he exchanged with former patients, Quimby never succeeded in publishing his findings.[42] He did, however, prepare more than eight hundred pages of handwritten notes and articles that remained unpublished until 1921 and that generated considerable controversy soon after his death.[43] The Quimby manuscripts reveal a highly original, albeit undisciplined, thinker. They trace the evolution
of Quimby's thinking from his initial forays into mesmerism to his eventual formulation of a nonmaterial theory of mental healing.
Writing more than twenty years before Koch's 1882 discovery of the tuberculosis bacillus, Quimby argued that "[diseases] are like fashions, and people are as apt to take a new disease as they are to fall in with any new fashion. ... The doctor can produce a chemical change by his talk. It makes no difference what he says."[44] This view, it is worth noting, is strikingly similar to that of the American railway surgeon Warren Bell Outten, who suggested that "a physician, by virtue of mental superiority, prejudice, and suggestion could create an essentially serious condition."[45] Quimby's quasi-psychogenic conception of disease—that is, his belief that diseases were mentally induced—did not compel him to deny their somatic impact. "All effects produced on the human frame." he insisted, "are the result of a chemical change of the fluids with or without our knowledge, and all the varieties and changes are accompanied by a peculiar state of mind."[46]
Quimby's theories were not the product of wishful thinking. They were inspired by many years of practical experience.[47] Describing Quimby's method, the Bangor Jeffersonian reported, "His first course in the treatment of a patient is to sit down beside him, and put himself en rapport with him, which he does without producing the Mesmeric sleep."[48] A former patient offered a more detailed explanation. "Instead of telling me that I was not sick," Annetta Dresser recounted, "he sat beside me, and explained to me what my sickness was, how I got into the condition. ... The general effect of these quiet sittings with him was to lighten up the mind, so that one came in time to understand the troublesome experiences and problems of the past in the light of his clear and convincing explanations."[49] Quimby himself described his treatment in the following manner:
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 speak the same words, and the sound should fall on the natural ear precisely as mine, they are only empty sounds, and the sick derive no nourishment.[50]
"To me it is perfectly plain," Quimby continued, "that if the people could see for themselves they would discard all the priests' and doctors' opinions and become law unto themselves."[51]
The Early Disciples: Warren Felt Evans and Mary Baker Eddy
The impact of Quimby's mature doctrines was soon felt throughout United States. Beginning in the 1860s, a number of mental healing schools began to spring up throughout New England. Within three decades these schools blossomed into what many contemporaries referred to as a national craze. "The mind cure," proclaimed Julia Anderson Root, "is frequently spoken of as that 'new method,' 'the newfangled theory,' and 'the modern craze.'"[52] The movement enlisted the support of tens of thousands of American women and men. Literally hundreds of books and pamphlets in addition to scores of periodicals proclaimed the dawning of a New Age in which mind and spirit would achieve dominion over matter and crude materialism. "No intelligent observer of the signs of the times," declared a leading proponent of metaphysical healing, "can fail to notice among philosophical minds a marked reaction against the dominant scientific materialism of the past century, and a tendency to return to a more spiritual view of human nature and the world at large."[53]
The two most prominent figures in the early days of the American mind cure movement were Warren Felt Evans and Mary Baker Eddy. Evans had visited Quimby on two separate occasions during the early 1860s. Eddy had paid him several visits throughout the 1860s and maintained a vigorous correspondence with him. Quimby's impact on Evans and Eddy was both profound and long-lasting. Indeed, it was largely through their experiences with the former clock maker that both discovered their callings.
Evans's biographer, William J. Leonard, notes that "during the twenty-five years of Dr. Evans' service as an advocate of the mental-cure system, he saw its development from the small beginnings, when Dr. Quimby and he were the only persons engaged in its practice, into almost a world-wide movement."[54] Admitted to Middlebury College in 1837, Evans remained until the following spring and then transferred to Dartmouth College, where he completed two more years of formal education before departing without his degree. Evans was married in the summer of 1840 and shortly thereafter was appointed minister of the Methodist Episcopal church at Peacham, Vermont. He remained a faithful servant to his church for the next twenty-four years.
Two events caused Evans to question his Methodist calling. The first was his exposure to the writings of Swedenborg during the mid-1850s.[55] The second was his visit to Quimby in 1863. Evans's reason for visiting Quimby remains unknown. No evidence exists suggesting that Evans had been suffering from ill health or nervousness. Indeed, the most likely explanation for Evans's trip to Portland seems to be his hope that Quimby might have something worthwhile to teach him. His hopes were more than fulfilled. "The impression I got from my father," Horatio Dresser later told Leonard, "was that Dr. Evans' Swedenborgian belief and philosophical knowledge admirably fitted him to understand Dr. Quimby's theories and methods. It was evidently a case where a word to the wise was sufficient. Hence Dr. Evans very soon concluded that he could heal in the same way."[56] Shortly thereafter Evans severed his ties with the Methodist church and embarked on a vigorous and hitherto unprecedented campaign to promote mental healing in the United States.
Evans returned to his home in Claremont, New Hampshire, and began composing what would be the first of six volumes devoted to mental healing, or what he sometimes referred to as phrenopathy.[57] During the same year that George Beard first articulated his conception of neurasthenia Evans argued that "what are called nervous diseases are among the most real ills to which man is subject."[58] But in contrast to Beard's somatic interpretation of nervous distress, Evans offered a resolutely idealistic assessment not only of nervous suffering but of all disease.
A more learned man than Quimby, Evans supplemented his personal investigations with references to Swedenborg, George Berkeley, and a host of other eminent European and American thinkers. Like Quimby, Evans rejected Cartesian dualism. "The mind being the interior of man is not," he declared, "confined to the brain, nor, as Descartes supposed, included in the Pineal gland. But it pervades and is interfused through the whole body."[59] In many respects this view bore a striking resemblance to one that had recently been articulated by a number of prominent nineteenth-century neuroscientific investigators, particularly those from Germany and Austria.[60] But in contrast to the European neuroscientists, who argued that psychological functions resulted from certain underlying organic processes, Evans claimed that organic functions resulted from underlying psychological processes. "All psychological movements," he wrote, "effect a change in the organic functions."[61]
Matter, he later wrote, "is a state of mind. And every change of the mind modifies the appearance that we call matter."[62] Echoing Quimby, Evans asserted that "thoughts or ideas are the most real things in the universe."[63] To substantiate this claim Evans cited the existence of "phantom limbs": "An amputated limb is not missed from the consciousness; the person who has suffered the mutilation feels it as much as he ever did, and it has the same apparent externality. He has even the sensation of pain in it. But is it external?"[64]
Evans's idealism derived in large measure from the writings of Berkeley.[65] Central to the early-eighteenth-century British philosopher's epistemology was the notion that to be consists in being perceived .[66] Berkeley espoused this idealistic doctrine in two separate works: New Theory of Vision (1709) and A Treatise Concerning the Principle of Human Knowledge (1710). Expanding on an argument that John Locke had previously proposed in the fourth edition of his famous Essay Concerning Human Understanding , which espoused "the importance of custom as establishing" the link between ideas and experience, Berkeley argued that "it is evident that when the mind perceives any idea, not immediately and of itself, it must be by means of some other idea."[67] Here then were the roots of what Berkeley's philosophical successors, David Hartley and David Hume, soon termed the "law of association"—a principle that held that ideas become so connected together in thought that to think of one suggests or calls up the other.[68]
That this "law" held great appeal to late-nineteenth-century American proponents of mental healing is not at all surprising. Believing that mind was solely responsible for all bodily functions, they regarded the "law of association" as not only psychologically but also physiologically significant. This law, said Evans, "is the key that unlocks many of the more mysterious phenomena of the mind, but it is one of the least familiar of the mental laws, being generally overlooked by the great majority of psychologists."[69] Anticipating Pierre Janet's conception of "fixed ideas," Evans maintained that "fixed morbid thinking both generated and maintained disease."[70] What was needed then was a method to overcome these so-called morbid thoughts. Deleterious, disease-causing thoughts needed to be supplanted by more healthful ideas and beliefs. "If all disease originates in some disturbed or inharmonious mental states, which ultimate themselves in corresponding bodily conditions," Evans asserted, "it becomes a question of primal importance how to induce upon a patient, as a permanent possession, the state of
mind which is the opposite of that causing the disease."[71] "In all those cases," he later wrote, "the best remedy and the only specific is the opposite truth."[72]
A zealot of sorts, Evans believed "we must induce upon the patient a new mental state, and supplant the old mode of feeling and thought. We must give him in the proper sense, a new spiritual birth, or at least impregnate him with a better interior life. We must convert him."[73] Advocating not so much a "talking cure" as a "word cure," Evans insisted that "words, either spoken or written are absolutely necessary to the communication of thoughts from one mind to another."[74] But before this could be accomplished the patient needed to assume an impressionable and receptive state that made possible the transmission of thoughts required to "change the character and direction of his thinking."[75]
Evans attributed the agency responsible for this process to the "doctrine of sympathy," which held that "it is as natural for one mind to communicate its thoughts and feelings to another as for a flower to emit fragrance."[76] "It is well known," Evans wrote, "that, by the law of sympathy, certain diseased states both of mind and body become contagious. The convulsions of hysteria are often propagated by young women in this way. The same is true of chorea and of stammering. We insensibly imbibe the tastes, manners, habits, and even the bodily conditions of others."[77] But just as the doctrine of sympathy might give rise to certain diseases, Evans reasoned, so too might it cure them. "The doctrine of sympathy," he insisted, "is of practical value in the treatment of the sick, and can be turned to a useful account."[78] To illustrate how the doctrine functioned, he employed a technological analogy.
When a message is telegraphed from New York to London no imponderable fluid shoots along the wire but there is only the transmission of force, a vibratory wave in an elastic medium called ether. So when one mind acts upon another mind, and influences its thoughts and feelings, when the bodies they animate are separated by hundreds of leagues, the effect is produced in a similar way. There is only transmission of mental force, and the action and reaction of one spirit upon another.[79]
Evans's work was notable not for its originality but for its impact on others. Like Quimby, he put his theories into practice. Beginning with some early experiments in mental healing in New Hampshire, Evans soon established a sanitarium, the Evans Home, in Salisbury, Massachusetts. In addition to his successful healing practice Evans published several volumes and was a frequent contributor to various periodicals
dedicated to the study and discussion of mental healing. His ideas spread quickly, and he soon became one of the most widely read authors on the subject.
Although Evans was the first of Quimby's followers to achieve literary prominence, he was by no means the most successful. That honor fell to Mary Baker Eddy.[80] In contrast to Evans and others proponents of what came to be known as the New Thought, Mrs. Eddy attached her mental healing doctrines to a novel religious dogma and thus extended the scope of her teachings vastly beyond the domain of mental healing. Moreover, she made considerable efforts to differentiate her doctrines from those of other mental healers. In so doing she earned the wrath of several potential allies.[81]
A chronic invalid for much of her early adult life, Mary Baker Eddy experimented with virtually every therapy available to the chronically ill of the nineteenth century. During the mid-1830s she briefly adopted the vegetarian regimen advocated by Sylvester Graham. Failing to benefit from Graham's program, she spent the better of the next two decades dabbling with mesmerism, hydropathy, and homeopathy.[82] Finding little relief from these alternatives to mainstream medicine, she consulted with Quimby in October 1862.[83] The meeting proved to be a turning point in her life. Within three weeks of her visit she published a letter in the Portland Courier in which she proclaimed that Dr. Quimby "speaks as never man spoke and heals as never man healed since Christ."[84] She soon returned to her home and declared herself to be on the road to perfect health.[85]
Eddy's encounters with Quimby prompted a dramatic change in her health and, perhaps more significant, contributed to a fundamental transformation of her outlook on life.
But now I can see, dimly at first and only as trees walking, the great principle which underlies Dr. Quimby's faith and works; and just in proportion to my right perception of truth is my recovery. This truth which he opposes to the error of giving intelligence to matter and placing pain where it never placed itself, is received understandingly, changes the currents of the system to their normal action, and the mechanism of the body goes undisturbed. That this is a science capable of demonstration becomes clear to the mind of those patients who reason upon the process of their cure.[86]
She continued her correspondence with Quimby until his death in 1866 and shortly thereafter began to advertise herself as a mental healer. Her first such notice appeared in an 1868 edition of the Spiritualist paper,
the Banner of Light .[87] In addition to her healing practice, she began teaching—for a fee—Quimby's doctrines. And she commenced the arduous task of preparing a book-length treatise on the subject.
Although she sought to portray herself as an original thinker, indeed as a prophet, Eddy's writings reveal a striking resemblance to the works of both Quimby and Evans.[88] Eddy accepted Quimby's fundamental conception concerning the nature of science and health. While Evans's influence is less direct, twice in the original edition of Science and Health Eddy took the liberty of seizing one of his most poignant metaphors. "The electric telegraph," she proclaimed without attribution, "is a symbol of mind speaking to mind, that in progress of time will not require wires, for Spirit destroys matter, electricity, etc." "Mind, like a telegraph office," she repeated, "holds the message conveyed to the body, and to prevent any bad results we must be careful the telegram is from science instead of sense."[89]
Despite its stylistic lapses, logical flaws, and organizational shortcomings, few books have exerted a greater impact on American cultural life than Science and Health , first published in 1875.[90] The original edition was limited to only one thousand copies, the cost of which had been paid in advance by two of the author's students.[91] Today the Church of Christian Science boasts that more than 9 million copies are in print. Although Eddy revised her book on numerous occasions, her primary focus remained fundamentally intact. Like Quimby before her, she proclaimed that "disease is caused by mind alone."[92]
Science and Health , more than any single work, served as the first major text of the American mental healing movement. Eddy began with the proclamation that "sickness and sin have ever had their doctors, but the question is, have they become less because of them."[93] She answered her own question with a resounding no! To the contrary, she argued, physicians aggravated rather than mitigated human suffering. "Putting on the full armor of physiology, obeying to the letter, the so-called laws of health, statistics show, has not diminished sickness, nor increased longevity; diseases have multiplied and become more obstinate; their chronic forms more frequent, the acute more fatal and death more sudden, since man-made theories have taken the place of primitive Christianity."[94]
The conception of human beings as material entities, Eddy declared, had led to untold suffering: "Explaining man as a physical being evolved from matter is a Pandora's box opened on mankind, whereby hope escapes, and despair alone remains."[95] Such false opinions needed to be
countered with a vengeance. "The less thought or said of physical structure, laws of health, etc., the higher will become manhood and womanhood, the fewer diseases appear, and less harm be derived from changes of climate, unwholesome diet, laying aside flannels, severe mental labors, sedentary habits, heated rooms, and all the et cetera of physiological based on man as a structural thing, whose life is at the mercy of circumstance."[96]
Eddy's metaphysical healing doctrines rested on the premise that disease "is caused and cured by mind alone." She rejected the prevailing medical distinction between organic diseases and diseases of the imagination. "Mind produces what is termed organic disease, as directly as it does hysteria, and cures it as readily." Belief in disease is what inspired bodily symptoms. "When the unconscious mental conception of disease takes place, its symptoms and locality appear on the body the same as in optics when the image is forced on the retina that becomes viable to personal sense."[97]
As provocative as her theories were, Eddy's notoriety was derived primarily from her teachings and her actual healing practices. Aware of the opposition that her doctrines would in all likelihood elicit, she remained optimistic that her views would in time triumph. "The resistance to metaphysical science will yield slowly but surely," she declared.[98] In large part her positive outlook owed itself to her faith in her organizational skills and her decision to situate her healing methods within the confines of a novel religious dogma.
In 1879, while residing in Lynn, Massachusetts, she and her small band of followers sought and received a charter as "The Church of Christ, Scientist." Two years later she moved to Boston and founded the Metaphysical College—a training school for practitioners of her methods—where she was the president and sole professor.[99] Tuition at the Metaphysical College was set at $300, an extraordinary sum for the period and one that generated considerable controversy. It also virtually guaranteed the competition of like-minded thinkers.[100] The fee covered the cost of twelve lessons, six of which took place in the first week.[101] Despite the cost, Eddy had little difficulty finding students, particularly from the ranks of her own sex.[102] In 1890 Eddy's church consisted of 8,724 members. By 1906 it had almost 50,000 adherents, approximately 75 percent of whom were women.[103]
That a considerably larger number of women than men were attracted to Christian Science is not surprising. Women had traditionally been responsible for the health and care of the sick. Moreover, more
than merely filling a spiritual void in the life of Eddy's followers, Christian Science offered many American women a hitherto absent opportunity to pursue meaningful work and earn a satisfactory income. Indeed, the actions of many of these women "scientists" can plausibly be compared to the growing number of American women who were beginning to challenge the doctrine of separate spheres.[104] Women, who were excluded from virtually every meaningful career path, doubtless flocked to Eddy's church in large measure because her healing movement offered them a sense of dignity and status that many had long been denied.
The rapid growth of Christian Science had two distinct effects. On the one hand, it elicited the opposition of those who had previously chosen to overlook what they deemed to be little more than a marginal cult. On the other hand, Eddy's success inspired others who shared her antimaterialistic sentiments to follow her lead and, in effect, to compete with her.[105] By the mid-1880s Eddy's Metaphysical College was just one of four such schools in the Boston area.[106] Warren Felt Evans, Julius Dresser, and Edward J. Arens had all established competing institutions—each of which held as its fundamental idea that "disease does not come from God, that he has nothing to do with its perpetuation, but that it is one of the errors of man which can be cured by truth; the application of this truth is not by faith, but by an intelligent understanding."[107] In addition to these four major schools, a local newspaper reported that "'there are about a dozen others who practice the mind cure as a profession, and who teach classes of young and old the methods of curing.'"[108]
Midwestern Mind Cure
Interest in mental healing was not confined to New England. The mind cure movement had been spreading across the nation at a phenomenal rate.[109] In 1884 A.J. Swarts, a resident of Chicago who had earlier studied in Boston, established the Mind Cure Publishing Association and began publishing the nation's first monthly periodical dedicated exclusively to the mental healing movement, the Mind Cure and Science of Life Magazine .[110] Two years later Swarts followed the lead of the Bostonians and received an Illinois state charter to found the Mental Science University in Chicago. For a fee of $100 stu-
dents would be instructed in the science of mental healing and receive an M.S. (mental scientist) degree. During the school's first year some thirty-seven diplomas were awarded.[111]
Unlike other proponents of mental healing who sought little more than to promote their own reputations as healers, Swarts endeavored to establish a singular, albeit eclectic, national movement. "It is not for us to discriminate between these various schools in Boston, or to give an opinion as to which one may be more correct than the others, or most successful in healing," Swarts said. "As to the one item or process of curing an afflicted person," he continued, "we endorse them all."[112] Swarts did, however, take issue with the exclusionary practices of Eddy and her followers and "strongly [disowned] the term, 'Christian Science,'" which he asserted was "pretentious and misleading."[113] Moreover, he objected to Eddy's "excessive" tuition and to her legal efforts to stifle rival healers.
Swarts's journal chronicled the early growth of mental healing in considerable detail and provided an open forum for interested men and women to articulate their concerns. Unlike Eddy's journal, which sought to promote her metaphysical doctrines to the exclusion of all others, Swarts's remained a bastion of toleration and diversity throughout its four years of existence.[114] Ultimately, however, his efforts to reconcile opposing points of view proved unsuccessful. Swarts's toleration for different schools of thought infuriated Eddy, and she repeatedly attacked him in her own journal: "A pretentious little publication called THE MIND CURE, has appeared in Chicago, and copies of the same are freely circulating in other cities. Its editor, while yet not disclaiming Spiritualism, mediumship, Mesmerism, etc., etc., still quotes enough from the pages of Science and Health to mislead the uniformed into the belief that he is in accord with its teaching; or, as pompously implied—the author of them ."[115] Eddy accused Swarts of plagiarism and threatened him by referring to her legal victory in what she claimed was a similar case involving Arens, a former disciple and recent rival. Unperturbed, Swarts calmly responded to this warning in his journal and subsequently proclaimed that Evans, not Eddy, was the preeminent American mental healer.
Despite this brief foray into polemics, Swarts did not lose sight of his central aim—namely, to promote a unified and tolerant vision of mental healing on a national scale. For four years Swarts's journal was the only national forum in which proponents of mind cure, regardless of their affiliations, could express their views. Moreover, Swarts's publish-
ing association acted as a clearinghouse for a large number of works dealing with the nascent movement. Each issue of the Mind Cure and Science of Life Magazine contained an extensive list of books and pamphlets published by the nation's leading exemplars of mental healing—including those of Eddy and her followers—which could be purchased through the mail. Swarts's efforts were short-lived, however. After losing money for four consecutive years, Swarts could no longer afford to publish his journal. Despite his financial failure, Swarts had accomplished a remarkable feat. He not only revealed that mental healing had a widespread, national appeal but also provided like-minded men and women with a host of previously unrecognized possibilities. His eclectic vision of mental healing served as the first essential step in establishing what over the course of the next two decades became a viable national movement wholly distinct from Christian Science.
New Thought and the Challenge to Christian Science
Prior to Swarts's efforts Christian Scientists were the only group of mental healers to command any serious scrutiny, most of which came from ministers and the press and much of which was highly critical.[116] Among the earliest such commentators was James Monroe Buckley, who in 1887 published a scathing indictment not just of Christian Science but of all schools of metaphysical healing.[117] A Methodist minister and editor of the Christian Advocate, Buckley maintained that the "arrogant and exclusive pretensions" of these so-called metaphysical healers were "of the nature of a 'craze.'"[118] Mental healers, he insisted, were not merely misguided and unscrupulous, they were a public menace. Moreover, Eddy and her disciples were the worst of the lot. Duped by her specious claims, thousands of credulous men, women, and children had needlessly placed themselves at risk.
The first efforts to stem the tide of Christian Science took place in the court system. Between 1887 and 1899 hundreds, if not thousands, of Christian Science healers were accused of medical malpractice. More than twenty such cases actually went to trial. Frequently acquitted on the ground that their metaphysical healing techniques, which used neither drugs nor surgery, did not constitute the practice of medicine, Christian Scientists nonetheless elicited a torrent of criticism from jour-
nalists, physicians, and ministers.[119] In 1900 William A. Purrington, an attorney, offered one of the most vituperative critiques of Christian Science to date. In a book that opened with a ghastly photograph of a child's gangrened foot that had been mistreated by a Christian Science healer, Purrington explained, "[It] has seemed worth while to collect these papers expounding the dangerous teachings of our Latter-day delusion, Christian Science, and the theory and limitations of medical legislation, if only for the sake of children and helpless adults."[120]
Such negative portrayals of Christian Science provided rival mental healers with a great opportunity. The New Thought, inspired by Julius Dresser's efforts to deny Eddy's claims of originality, acquired its cultural significance in part because of the controversy that surrounded Christian Science.[121] While sharing the same idealistic foundation as Eddy and her disciples, proponents of the New Thought were less doctrinaire in their thinking and more tolerant of both prevailing religious institutions and mainstream medical practices. Advocates of this rival mental healing movement had little desire to draw people away from either their ministers or their doctors. "New Thought is not a church, a cult, or a sect," declared one of the movement's leading exemplars, Charles Brodie Patterson. "It recognizes no limitations of any kind, creates no barriers between man and man: it asks no allegiance to creed, form, or personality, and is as much for one race as for another."[122]
Proponents of the New Thought readily conceded that their system of healing was predicated on the same set of underlying idealistic assumptions as Christian Science.[123] Their explanations for diseases virtually mimicked those of Quimby and Eddy. "From the metaphysical standpoint," a proponent of New Thought explained, "physical diseases are physical effects proceeding from mental states of unrest and discord. It is not strictly true that diseases have mental causes; but rather, diseases are mental, and they produce physical effects."[124] "Adequate study of all forms of sickness," insisted the editor of Metaphysical Magazine , Leander Edmund Whipple, "proves the existence of a mental origin for each case; therefore all maladies are mental rather than physical in their nature, being simply different degrees of mental distress registered in the physical system."[125] Still, the presence of these fundamental agreements did not prevent Henry Wood, among the foremost advocates of mind cure, from asserting, "[The] New Thought is no feeble imitation of its more observed neighbor, nor is its light borrowed."[126]
Wood lamented the fact that outside observers typically neglected to
consider the substantial differences that distinguished these rival mental healing movements and often regarded all mental healers as "unreasonable, and sometimes fanatical."[127] To combat these perceptions he made a considerable effort to spell out in concise terms what he regarded as the critical differences between the two movements. Whereas the New Thought was "eclectic," "democratic," "open-minded," and "tolerant," Christian Science "[lodged] supreme authority in a person instead of the 'Spirit of Truth,' [proclaimed] the unreality of matter and the body, [was] an exclusive rather than a democratic and open-minded spirit, and [inculcated] the fear of 'malicious animal magnetism' instead of ignoring and overcoming it."[128] Moreover, he continued, Christian Science was "too emotional, too sentimental." Civilization was not yet ready to embrace the extreme idealism of Christian Science and its blanket rejection of materialism and all somatic therapy.[129] Men and women first needed to be weaned off their materialistic proclivities. "So long as men regard themselves primarily as material beings," Wood added, "they will rely upon material means for the healing of disease."[130]
In rejecting the agency of matter in all its forms, Eddy and her most zealous followers had needlessly put themselves and others at risk. "Many absurd and foolish things have been claimed and done," charged one critic.[131] "Some are so anxious to 'demonstrate,' that they are willing to soak themselves in a rain, unnecessarily as a testimony. Better leave that to the ducks."[132] Other critics were significantly more harsh. "What she [Mary Baker Eddy] has really 'discovered,'" charged Josephine Curtis Woodbury, "are ways and means of perceiving and prostituting the science of healing to her own ecclesiastical aggrandizement, and to the moral and physical depravity of her dupes."[133]
The greatest distinction between Christian Science and the New Thought concerned the role accorded to the patient. Eddy argued that the efficacy of mental healing depended in large part on the willingness of the patient to accept her doctrines. "A strongly material, bigoted, or opinionated man," she declared, "yields more slowly to metaphysical treatment than does a more spiritually inclined one."[134] Such faith, she implied, was a prerequisite for successful treatment. Indeed, the absence of a cure was frequently explained on this ground alone. Advocates of the New Thought rejected this argument. The mental cure, said Joseph L. Hasbroucke, "may be performed on a man who believes it to be the veriest humbug."[135]
Proponents of the New Thought adopted the theories of French hypnotist and advocate of suggestive therapeutics, Hippolyte Bernheim. Like American railroad surgeons, who had recently begun employing
Bernheim's doctrines to explain traumatic neuroses, advocates of the New Thought argued that the so-called law of suggestion provided a legitimate scientific basis not only for understanding but also for treating disease. "The metaphysical method of treating the sick person," declared W.J. Coleville, "is through mental suggestion of the right kind."[136] Coleville was just one of several exemplars of the New Thought to cite Bernheim's Suggestive Therapeutics , the English translation of which first appeared in 1895.[137] J. Elizabeth Hotchkiss, B.J. Fowler, Shelby Mamaugh, and several others wrote in glowing terms of the power of suggestion.[138]
Distinguishing their idealism from that of the past, proponents of the New Thought declared "the idealism of today is far more practical than the idealism of antiquity because something like a scientific basis has been prepared for it."[139] Unlike physicians, mental healers did not regard science as a means of establishing rational explanations about the natural world. To the contrary, they held a far more results-centered conception of science. Content to let their cures speak for themselves, they proclaimed that "theories, to be good and to be true must be practical."[140] Results, not their rational explanation, were what mattered most. "Any plan or system of things that will destroy or prevent disease," Julia Anderson Root said, "is so far an engine of progress. These powers we claim for metaphysical science."[141] Such a thoroughly pragmatic outlook stood at the core of the mental healing movement.
In 1893 Henry Wood published what soon became a staple in the New Thought diet, Ideal Suggestion Through Mental Photography . It was one of the first efforts by a proponent of the New Thought to spell out in precise terms the force by which mental healing operated. In employing the metaphor of the photograph, Wood added a novel element to the mind cure discourse. Almost a quarter of century earlier, Evans had argued that the mechanism that underlay mental healing was similar to that which might explain the telegraph. In so doing Evans had implicitly emphasized the role of the healer, not that of the patient. This emphasis on the projection of positive images, rather than on their reception, had been a central element in the systems of Quimby, Evans, and Eddy. Wood reversed this scenario. Moreover, he argued that neither the healer's personality nor his will played any significant role in mental healing. "No healer, no matter how eminent," Wood maintained, "has any inherent power to restore the health-consciousness, but he can point out the road, and, arm in arm, lovingly conduct his willing brother along its gradual ascent."[142]
Wood's 1893 work represents a midway point between the idealistic
proclivities of those who came before him and the psychological orientation of those who soon followed. In Ideal Suggestion Wood did not explain the efficacy of mental healing by appealing to the modern science of psychology. Rather he insisted that it was "entirely based upon law, which, though belonging to the higher domain, is orderly and exact."[143] In this respect his analysis had much in common with those of other indigenous mental healers.
Wood was not the only American lay psychologist to appreciate the significance of suggestion. Thomas Jay Hudson, the former chief examiner at the U.S. Patent Office, likewise played a prominent role in popularizing the idea of psychic suggestion. Hudson's first book, The Laws of Psychic Phenomena (1893), sold more than one hundred thousand copies and was largely responsible for making the concepts of subjective self and suggestion household words in the United States.[144] Hudson argued that there were "six different systems of psycho-therapeutics based upon many different theories, differing widely as the poles, and each presenting indubitable evidence of being able to perform cures which in any age but the modern would have been called miraculous."[145] These included prayer and religious faith, mind cure, Christian Science, Spiritism, mesmerism, and suggestive hypnotism. These and other psychic phenomena, Hudson claimed, "could be explained as the effects of the objective mind (the ordinary mortal mind) operating by the power of suggestion upon the subjective mind, which is incapable of inductive reasoning, but which is immortal and which immediately controls the non-cerebral organs of the body."[146] Hudson hoped that his "novel" theory would supplant the doctrines of animal magnetism, Christian Science, and other fallacious explanations of hypnotism, faith healing, and kindred phenomena. He argued that although "the science of psycho-therapeutics [was] yet in its infancy ... enough [had] been learned to simulate research."[147]
Hudson returned to the subject of suggestive therapeutics and developed his original argument in a later work, The Law of Mental Medicine (1904). "The aim of this book," Hudson maintained, "is primarily to assist in placing mental therapeutics on a firmly scientific basis, and incidentally to place within the reach of the humblest intellect the most effective method of healing the sick by mental processes."[148] Aware that his efforts were likely to incur the wrath of the medical profession, the former patent clerk made considerable efforts to mollify his potential critics by citing the important contributions that physicians had made to the science of mental medicine. In an effort to distance
himself from Christian Scientists, faith healers, and other opponents of medical materialism, he asserted, "I have no quarrel with the medical profession, nor can I join in the indiscriminate clamor against material remedies for the cure of disease. I cannot forget that doctors of medicine were the first to discover the fundamental facts which lie at the basis of the science of mental medicine." "It is true," he added, "that the attitude of the medical profession toward all forms and theories of mental therapeutics has always been one of extreme conservatism, often savoring of unreasoning prejudice; but on the whole its influence has been salutary. If its denunciations have been bitter, it was because they have been directed chiefly against charlatanism and unscientific theories of causation."[149]
The writings of both Wood and Hudson inspired other proponents of the New Thought to emphasize the significance of suggestive therapeutics. Two recently minted journals dedicated to mental healing, the Arena and the Metaphysical Magazine , published scores of articles that focused on the power of suggestion. Mamaugh proclaimed that the "susceptibility of human beings to moral suasion and mental suggestion is an established verity."[150] He emphasized not only the psychological but also the somatic aspects of suggestive therapeutics: "By suggestion alone, despondency may be turned to hopefulness and nervous irritation largely abolished, the appetite increased and constipation very often relieved, and perverted mental impressions improved and symptoms of organic disease lessened to a considerable degree."[151] Even Wood, who had said nothing of the science of psychology in his original work, soon acknowledged the scientific foundation of suggestion. "The general psychological principles and suggestions which are active in all mental therapeutic systems, although not definitely admitted or recognized by name in Christian Science," he wrote, "are present and active in its operations."[152]
Physicians Respond
In appealing to a psychological principle rather than a divine law, proponents of the New Thought had carried their ideas and methods one step closer toward mainstream medical acceptance. More significantly, they inspired certain segments within a previously reluctant medical profession to consider the merits of their methods accord-
ing to the definition of science to which physicians themselves subscribed.[153] During the early 1880s only a small number of physicians either cared about or concerned themselves with the practices of what many considered to be both a socially and a professionally insignificant practice.[154] "Mental science," wrote Horatio Dresser in his history of the New Thought movement, "had little influence on medical practice."[155] "Metaphysical disease and mind independent of form and motion," charged the homeopathic physician T.L. Brown, "is no part of science. Diseases without physical changes are but myths, metaphysical dreams, very large nothings never found."[156]
By the mid-1890s this situation had begun to change. A growing number of physicians were no longer so cavalier in their dismissal of what they now regarded as a legitimate threat not only to the public welfare but also to their professional livelihood. The movement, Laura Mackie declared, "is more than a passing fad; it is a great and actual danger."[157] Eliza Calvert Hall, a leading proponent of the New Thought, declared that such consideration among American physicians "shows plainly that mental healing has nearly passed the state of ridicule from people of education and culture."[158] The success of the mind cure movement, she added, was evidenced by the substantial opposition that it had evoked: "The crowning accomplishment of the ascendancy of mental healing is the strenuous efforts of the doctors to suppress such healing by law. ... [T]he legal fight against metaphysical healing is the highest tribute that the medical profession could render it."[159]
Beginning in the late 1880s and continuing for the remainder of the century American physicians appealed to their state legislatures for restrictive licensure laws that would, among other things, put an end to lay mental healing.[160] Such behavior was nothing new. From the dawn of medicine "regular" physicians had sought to suppress alternative healing practices. Historians have explained the late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century efforts to revive licensure laws by offering two vastly different explanations. The first places the revival of licensure laws in the context of the nascent germ theory of disease and regards it as yet another example of both medical and scientific progress. The second claims that such laws were not driven by scientific advances but were instead an attempt by regular physicians to promote their economic and professional interests.[161] Whatever the inspiration one fact remains beyond dispute: these laws elicited a torrent of criticism from proponents of mental healing.
American advocates of mental healing appealed to the long-standing American tradition of attacking what they deemed to be a vested interest unworthy of its authoritative stature. Employing the strident rhetoric of Jacksonian democracy, B.J. Fowler, editor of the Spiritualist paper, the Arena , declared, "A medical hierarchy is growing up in the republic, in some respects as intolerant and despotic in its instincts as the religious hierarchy of the Dark Ages, which crushed free thought, strangled science, and rendered progress well-nigh impossible."[162] "Medical legalized monopoly," Wood added, "ruthlessly tramples upon the most sacred private domain. It is moral robbery, masquerading as humane legalism."[163]
The controversy over restrictive licensure laws reached its climax in Massachusetts. In 1898 the State Board of Registration in Medicine drafted a proposed bill that "sought to put an end to medical frauds and to require an examination of all those claiming to practice medicine."[164] The first hearing on the bill took place on February 18. On March 2 the public had a chance to respond. "Men and women," the Boston Evening Transcript reported, "stood several hours in a room none too well ventilated, and, until warned thrice, applauded vigorously the utterances of the speakers against the bill under consideration. ... [N]o hearing at the State House this session has aroused such tremendous interest to those who believe themselves concerned."[165] William Lloyd Garrison was among the first to speak out against the bill. "Ostensibly an act to protect the community from malpractice," he charged, "this is really meant to secure the monopoly of treating disease to those who bear the credentials of a recognized school."[166] The most elegant critique of the proposed bill came from William James. Articulating ideas that he had previously discussed in his 1896 essay, "The Will to Believe," James declared,
Were medicine a finished science, with all practitioners in agreement about methods of treatment, a bill to make it penal to treat a patient without having passed an examination would be unobjectionable. But the present condition of medical knowledge is widely different from such a state. Both as to principles and as to practice our knowledge is deplorably imperfect. The whole face of medicine changes unexpectedly from one generation to another in consequence of widening experience.[167]
Unlike other critics of the proposed law, James questioned not the motives but the wisdom of the law's sponsors. He urged them to consider
the history of their profession, which, he asserted, "is really a hideous history, comparable only to that of priest craft. Ignorance clad in authority and riding over men's bodies and souls. Let modern medicine dispel all those inherited prejudices by living the historic memories down."[168]
James's critique was not based solely on his understanding of medical history. On the contrary, it derived in large measure from his abiding faith in science itself. Rather than suppress mental healing by a legislative enactment, he encouraged his colleagues to study such practices and learn what they could from them. "How many of my learned medical friends who today are so freely denouncing mind-cure methods as an abominable superstition," James asked, "have taken the trouble to follow up the cases of some mind cure, one by one, so as to acquaint themselves with the results? I doubt there is a single individual."[169] Earlier in the decade James had spoken out against a similar piece of legislation.[170] Both then and now his position infuriated many of his close friends in the Boston medical community, who regarded his views on the subject as being not only irresponsible but also heretical. James, of course, could not have disagreed more strongly.
In a letter to his good friend and fellow physician, James Jackson Putnam, James explained his motives for testifying against the proposed bill.
If you think that I enjoy that sort of thing you are mistaken. I never did anything that required so much moral effort in my life. My vocation is to treat of things in an allround manner and not to make ex parte pleas to influence (or to seek) a peculiar jury. Aussi why do the medical brethren force an offending citizen like me into such a position? Legislative license is sheer humbug—mere abstract paper thunder under which every ignorance and abuse can still go on. ... Bah! I am sick of the whole business, and I well know how all my colleagues at the medical school view me and my efforts. But if Zola and Col. Piquart can face the whole French army, can't I face their disapproval?—Much more easily than that of my own conscience![171]
While perhaps misplaced, James's allusion to the Dreyfus affair made clear his disdain for his medical opponents. Two days later James clarified his position.
It seems to me it is not a question of fondness or non-fondness for the mind curers [heaven knows I am not, and can't understand a word of their jargon except their precept of assuming yourself to be well and claiming health rather than sickness which I am sure is magnificent] but of the neces-
sity of legislative interference with the natural play of things. There surely can be not such necessity. From the general sea of medical insecurity, a law can hardly remove an appreciable quantity. ... The profession claims a law simply on the grounds of personal dislike. It is antisemitism again. It is the justification of Armenian massacres, which we have heard of late, on the ground that the Armenians are so "disagreeable." The one use of our institutions is to force on us toleration of much that is disagreeable.[172]
Putnam responded that while he did not share all of James's views, he did, in fact, agree with many of his sentiments. "Sincere fanatics," Putnam told James, "are almost always, and in this case I think, certainly, of real value."[173]
Rather than suppress the mental healers by legal means, Putnam and other like-minded physicians called for an "impartial scientific" investigation of mental healing. Edes urged his fellow physicians "to look the fact squarely in the face that some persons do receive great benefit from some of these forms of treatment who have failed to do so at the hands of regular and skilled practitioners." "These cases," he continued, "should be studied and not contemptuously waved aside."[174] With respect to mind cure, Edes declared, "It is better to study it and profit by it."[175]
Inspired by Putnam and Edes's challenge, Henry H. Goddard, a doctoral student in psychology at Clark University, embarked on an extensive investigation of such practices. In 1899 Goddard published the results of his study in an article entitled "The Effects of Mind on Body as Evidenced by Faith Cures."[176] "Suggestion," he wrote, "is the bond of union between all the different methods, Divine Healing, Christian Science, Mental Science, etc. ... [The] fundamental principle of all mental therapeutics is the law of suggestion—the law that any idea possessing the mind tends to materialize itself in the body."[177] Although certain segments within the American mental healing community were disturbed by Goddard's findings, proponents of the New Thought welcomed his conclusions. Physicians likewise gave his findings a respectable hearing. Of particular interest was Goddard's conclusion.
While we find nothing to warrant the overthrow of the science of medicine, and no power that is able adequately to take the place of a thorough knowledge of anatomy and pathology or the skill of the surgeon, we do find sufficient evidence to convince us that the proper reform in mental attitude would relieve many a sufferer of ills that the ordinary physicians cannot touch; would even delay the approach of death to many a victim beyond
the power of absolute cure, and the faithful adherence to a truer philosophy of life, will keep many a man well and give the doctor time to study his science, and devote himself to alleviating ills that are unpreventable.[178]
Such a holding could not help but inspire more open-minded physicians to reconsider their views on the subject. Rather than call for the suppression of the mental healers, more progressive members of the medical establishment sought instead to consider their methods and, if they proved effective, to use them to supplement their various somatic therapies.