In addition there were baths, rest, a simple diet, fresh air, and plenty of water inside and out. Yet none of these was able to counter the decline in Mrs. Patterson’s health which had started again with her husband’s capture. More and more she felt that she should have tried the alternative mode of treatment which she had weighed against hydropathy. This was the system of a Dr. Phineas P. Quimby, who was reputed to be performing marvelous cures in Portland, Maine.

Patterson had written to Quimby in October of the preceding year, just four days after his wife had first heard from her son. He explained that she was an invalid and “we wish to have the benefit of your wonderful power in her case,” if it were possible for them to get to him.¹⁰⁷

Evidently the obstacles seemed too great and the idea was dropped at the time, but shortly before leaving Rumney for Dr. Vail’s, Mrs. Patterson herself wrote Quimby. She explained that she had “been sick 6 years with spinal inflamation, and its train of sufferings—gastric and bilious.” Although she had been getting better, a relapse had been brought on by the shock of her husband’s imprisonment. “I want to see you above all others,” she wrote. “I have entire confidence in your philosophy as read in the circular sent my husband (Dr. Patterson) Can you, will you visit me at once?”¹⁰⁸

Quimby could not or would not, and once again the idea was dropped. But when a former patient at Dr. Vail’s, who had gone off to Quimby and been wonderfully helped by him, returned to the institute singing the Portland doctor’s praises, Mrs. Patterson wrote him once more. She had made a mistake in coming here, she declared, and was considerably worse than when she arrived. In her state of discouragement she felt she would have to choose between going to Portland to be healed and going home to Sanbornton Bridge to die among her friends.¹⁰⁹