“Doctor, she can not walk, she has not put her foot on the floor for over a year.” Mr. Quimby again said, and in a more commanding tone than before: “I said get out of that cart. Put your feet on the floor and walk, walk out of this room, and do it quick.” The young lady did not take her eyes from Mr. Quimby, nor did she speak a word. Slowly, and trembling like a leaf, she put first one foot then the other on the floor. Then Mr. Quimby again said: “Now walk, you can and must walk, walk out of this room.” Slowly and tottering she moved towards the door. Again he commanded: “Walk.” She then passed out of the room and walked slowly to her own [room] near the end of the long hall. When she reached her door she gave a low, startled moan and dropped to the floor. She was laid on her bed and soon developed a strong fit of wild hysteria. . . . The next day she declined to see Mr. Quimby, and that day left the hotel.28
Quimby lacked completely the modern understanding that systematic suggestion even without throwing the patient into the sleep or trance state of deep hypnosis is still hypnoidal in character. In his own estimate he had left mesmerism behind him. But an instance such as the one just cited shows how close he remained, in practice if not in theory, to the animal magnetism described by Charles Poyen in his 1837 book. Poyen had written:
So thoroughly am I convinced in regard to the effects of will upon my patients, that if the science were called the power of will, instead of Animal Magnetism, it would convey to my mind a much clearer idea of what it really is. . . .
We cannot better define it, than by calling it the influence which the will of one human being exerts, through the nervous system, upon the will and all the bodily functions of another . . . who, for the time, is to a greater or less extent the mere creature of our will.29
28 [Charles A. Quincy Norton, “Recollections of P. P. Quimby. The Man and his Methods,” n.d., Reminiscence, p. 7, MBEL (bracketed text Peel’s).]
29 [Charles Poyen, Progress of Animal Magnetism in New England (Boston: Weeks, Jordan, 1837), pp. 112, 197.]