● ● ● bodily presence. While most people would take this as an illustration of the power of suggestion, Quimby related it to his theory of the Christ:
I cannot tell how much I can condense my identity to the sick [who are absent], but I know I can touch them so they can feel the sensation. . . . When you read this I will show you myself and also the number of persons in the room where I am writing this. Let me know the impression you may have of the number. This is the Christ that Jesus spoke of.53
When he sat down beside a patient for a private treatment, the first thing he did was to enter into the clairvoyant state in which he felt the patient’s pains and woes. “As it is necessary that he [the patient] should feel that I know more than he does,” he wrote in the Portland Daily Advertiser, “I tell his feelings.”54 Having thus astonished the patient and won his confidence, he proceeded to “explain” the disease as the result of mental causes—usually false medical beliefs implanted by the doctors or false theological beliefs implanted by the clergy.
The patient might understand little of what he said but would feel his energy and confidence. As Quimby wrote in another connection: “The [medical] doctor can produce a chemical change by his talk. It makes no difference what he says. A phenomenon will follow to which he can give a name to suit his convenience.”55 The name which suited his convenience for the clairvoyant faculty and its attendant phenomena was the Christ.
The term was not used in the circular which Mrs. Patterson had seen. There it simply mentioned that Quimby felt the patient’s pain, described it, “and in his explanation lies the cure.”56 Of the hundreds of patients who streamed through his office every year only a small proportion received any explanation of his theory. Most of them remembered ● ● ●
53 Horatio W. Dresser, Quimby Manuscripts, p. 172 [bracketed text Peel’s].
54 P. P. Quimby, letter to the editor, Portland Daily Advertiser, 17 February 1862, p. 1 [bracketed text Peel’s]. Cf. William James’ statement in 1864: “A doctor does more by the moral effect of his presence on the patient and family than anything else.” Quoted in Gardner Murphy and Robert O. Ballou, eds., William James on Psychical Research (New York: Viking Press, 1960), p. 7.
55 Horatio W. Dresser, Quimby Manuscripts, p. 263 [bracketed text Peel’s].
56 [Horatio W. Dresser, Quimby Manuscripts, p. 151.]