● ● ● mercury below zero and a slow horse and business pung.” He arrived back “so near finished with cold I could not speak for some time.”7
The “broken spine” to which he referred was probably Mrs. Millett’s version of Cushing’s diagnosis of the injury as concussion and possible spinal dislocation.8 Although Cushing later stated that he was called on the case by Mrs. Patterson’s friends as a surgeon rather than as a homeopathist, the remedy he prescribed for her was a homeopathic one.9 In 1907 he recalled it as having been “the third decimal attenuation of arnica . . . diluted in a glass of water,” though in 1894 when telling a patient in Springfield, Massachusetts, about the incident he remarked, “I have never been able to remember just the medicine I used, for I never have been able to heal any one else with what I tho[ugh]t I gave her.”10 Mrs. Eddy’s own accounts of the episode all state that after the move home she did not take any of the medicine which the doctor left for her, since she had no faith in it.11
On Saturday there was no improvement and Cushing felt there was nothing further he could do for her.12 Friends hovered round her ● ● ●
7 George Newhall, statement, 29 August 1920, 1920.029.0001, LMC. Quoted in Clifford P. Smith, Historical Sketches from the Life of Mary Baker Eddy and the History of Christian Science (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1941), pp. 55–56. Also Florence M. Lampard to Lucia C. Warren, 16 July 1931, Reminiscence, MBEL.
8 This, at least, was how he described the diagnosis to Sibyl Wilbur in 1907. See Sibyl Wilbur, The Life of Mary Baker Eddy (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1929), p. 124.
9 Alvin M. Cushing to Lyman P. Powell, 14 June 1907, Subject File, Lyman P. Powell - Papers - Correspondence - 1907 to 1908, MBEL.
10 Wilbur, Life of Mary Baker Eddy, p. 124. Adah E. Cook to George Wendell Adams, 4 September 1936, Reminiscence, MBEL. Cushing told Miss Wilbur that he “afterwards prescribed a more highly attenuated remedy” (Wilbur, Life of Mary Baker Eddy, p. 124). In his affidavit he did not indicate what remedy or remedies he prescribed. Cushing’s difficulty in remembering is understandable in view of the following passage from Powell: “It was in the summer of 1907 that the author had a long talk as well as correspondence with Dr. Cushing, who was spending his last years in Springfield, near the author’s Northampton home. Across the twoscore years he recalled with pride the days when he was a popular doctor and a man of social consequence in Lynn. His eyes brightened in describing the ‘spanking’ team which he often drove on sunny afternoons along the Lynn speedway. He observed that one day he had prescribed for as many a[s] fifty-nine patients.” Lyman P. Powell, Mary Baker Eddy: A Life Size Portrait (Boston: Christian Science Publishing Society, 1950), p. 110.
11 A typical statement is that in Mary Baker Eddy, manuscript, 1 February 1903, A11056, MBEL: “When I met with an accident in 1866 I at first took Dr. Cushing’s medicine and it did me no good then I quit taking it.”
12 Henry Robinson, “Memorandum of Interview with Mrs. Doctor Eddy,” 1903, 1925.032.0002, pp. 2–3, LMC. Cushing affidavit states he did not even call on the Sunday but did return on the Monday when, according to Mrs. Eddy’s account, she sent for him to show him she was well [see Milmine, Life, pp. 84–85].
Cushing also stated that he was called again to treat Mrs. Patterson for a cold on August 10, 1866, and for several days thereafter, and that these visits were recorded in his medical day book [“How a Springfield Physician Treated Rev. Mary Baker G. Eddy,” Springfield (MA) Union, 24 December 1899, p. 7]. After this statement was published, Alfred Farlow visited Cushing and was shown the entries in the day book but found that the charges were made against Patterson without indication as to whether Patterson himself or his wife had been treated (Alfred Farlow, note, c. 1907, Subject File, P. P. Quimby - Farlow Material VII, p. 128, MBEL).
When Cushing later repeated the same statement in an article in the Homœopathic Envoy Farlow wrote that journal: “Dr. Cushing declares that he allowed me to read his records of these matters. What he showed me was not a record of any proceedings whatever; simply a few entries on his book against a man by the name of Patterson. There was nothing to show what his charges were for” (Alfred Farlow, “A Reply to Dr. Cushing,” Homœopathic Envoy, April 1902, p. 11). Among the Farlow papers in MBEL is a list of three items from Cushing’s logbook:
May 13 Dr. Samuel Patterson [sic] $1.00
Aug. 13 Patterson 1.00
Aug. 12 Patterson 1.00
These items all occur under the date of 1866.
(Alfred Farlow, note, c. 1907, Subject File, P. P. Quimby - Farlow Material VII, p. 128, MBEL.)
This would seem to be somewhat less than conclusive evidence for August visits to Mrs. Patterson. That Cushing himself was not entirely objective is suggested by his statement in a letter to Miss Milmine: “You are [certainly] showing the old lady up all right. . . . My sons and others are very much stirred up that my name should appear in such a sacreligious [sic] affair as Christian Science” (A. M. Cushing to S. S. McClure, 14 February 1907, LSC004, MBEL [bracketed text Peel’s]).