Phineas Quimby

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (February 16, 1802 – January 16, 1866) was an American spiritual teacher. Quimby was a philosopher, magnetizer, mesmerist, healer, and inventor, who resided in Belfast, Maine, and had an office in Portland, Maine. Quimby's work is widely recognized as leading to the New Thought movement. He was almost certainly named after a noted Revolutionary War veteran of Lebanon, New Hampshire, Phinehas Parkhurst.

Born in the small town of Lebanon, New Hampshire, Quimby was one of seven children and the son of a blacksmith. As was customary for his social and monetary status at that time, Quimby received little formal education. He reportedly suffered from tuberculosis at about age 30 and was prescribed calomel by his doctor. Instead of curing his sickness, the calomel began to rot his teeth, and Quimby began experimenting with his own ideas for a cure. He found that intense excitement (such as galloping on his horse) alleviated his pain for brief periods of time, and became interested in the mind's ability to affect the body. It is unclear how he found his ultimate cure, but it was through his own devices, and not from the doctor's medicine.

Phineas Quimby and Lucius Burkmar

When Charles Poyen, a French mesmerist following in the tradition of Puységur, came to Bangor, Maine (no trip by him to Belfast is reported), on a lecture circuit about mesmerism around 1836, Quimby was intensely curious. While it is commonly stated that Quimby attended one of Poyen's lectures in 1838, and immediately began plying the mesmerist with questions about the nature of animal magnetism and its powers, that seems very doubtful based on available evidence. About 1842 or perhaps a bit earlier Quimby encountered Lucius E. Burkmar, a youth who was particularly susceptible to hypnosis. Quimby and Lucius began a tour of their own, practicing mesmeric demonstrations in front of large crowds.

Quimby about 1845 planned to publish a book on mesmerism but he never succeeded in having his writings published then or any other time in his lifetime.

About mid-1845, Quimby and Lucius stopped touring and Quimby began healing people of ailments which doctors could not cure. Quimby explained to his patients that disease was caused by false beliefs, and that the cure was in the explanation of this. Many letters and documents of Quimby were released in 1921 only after his son's death (in 1915). The texts were heavily edited by Horatio Dresser, with silent changes made by Dresser to alter the meaning on many occasions.

The last record of Quimby touring with Burkmar was in April 1845, but Burkmar in 1847 returned to work with Quimby in Belfast as a clairvoyant. Burkmar earlier in the year of 1847 toured with well-known mesmerist, John Bovee Dods. Quimby and Burkmar parted ways later in 1847, and Quimby became his own healer. (Burkmar, who by this time was known as L.E. Burkmar, would later try to go to California during the Gold Rush in 1849, and later succeeded in getting to California early in the 1850s. He spent several years in the mid-1850s working for the Sacramento Fire Department before travelling to San Francisco in 1859 to act as a clairvoyant with William Bovee Dods, the son of his former employer. The San Francisco press attacked both of them heavily, claiming that they were frauds; nothing was heard of Burkmar again until in 1868 when he travelled to Honduras in Central America. As late as 1883 he was believed to still live there by George Quimby, the son of Phineas Quimby.)

After parting with Burkmar, Quimby made the local press in the late 1840s for some healing work that was labelled mesmerism (as late as 1847 he labeled his work mesmerism). His work at this time may have been his real passion, but his actual occupation was a daguerreotypist, which he continued until the mid-1850s.

In the first half of 1857 he put forth his vocation as a public healer. It was likely about this time that he issued a circular “To the Sick” that included the statement, which shows the importance of his apparently clairvoyant diagnosis of the disease in order to be able to explain it to the patient. If he could not make that clairvoyant explanation, no healing was possible:

“it is necessary to say that he gives no medicines and makes no outward applications, but simply sits down by the patients, tells them their feelings and what they think is their disease. If the patients admit that he tells them their feelings, &c., then his explanation is the cure; and, if he succeeds in correcting their error, he changes the fluids of the system and establishes the truth, or health. The Truth is the Cure. This mode of practise applies to all cases. If no explanation is given, no charge is made, for no effect is produced. His opinion without an explanation is useless, for it contains no knowledge, and would be like other medical opinions, worse than none.”

Quimby appeared to begin his public practice with his various business trips to Hatch House in Bangor, Maine, in the years 1857-1858. In December 1858 he began trial efforts to open up shop in Portland, Maine, but it was not until later in 1859 that he began a more permanent status there as a healer. He would live most of the time in Portland in the years 1859-1865, with occasional trips home to Belfast, where his wife still lived. He returned permanently to Belfast in 1865 and in January of the following year he died.

Quimby was a watch and clockmaker by trade and held several patents for mechanical devices.

Julius and Annetta Dresser were both cured by Quimby, from what sickness it is unclear. Their son, Horatio, wrote extensively on Quimby's theories, collecting many of Quimby's papers in his book Health and the Inner Life: An Analytical and Historical Study of Spiritual Healing and Theories, and also in the book, The Quimby Manuscripts."

The scholar of faith healing, Barry Morton, has argued that Quimby's constant tinkering with the mind cure method led him to make important discoveries towards the cure of psychosomatic illnesses. Although Quimby did not publish his findings himself, he did train many others in his methods and hence started a "gnostic" healing tradition. Some of his methods were adopted by John Alexander Dowie--who revolutionized Christian faith healing in the 1880s.

Warren Felt Evans met Quimby twice, about 1863 or 1864, by which time he was already deeply interested in animal magnetism for healing. While others claimed that he was a student of Quimby, his writings (public and private) and other evidence show that not to be the case.

Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, has sometimes been cited as having used Quimby as inspiration for theology. Eddy was a patient of Quimby’s and shared his view that disease is rooted in a mental cause. Because of its theism, Christian Science differs from the teachings of Quimby.

For a detailed, exhaustive look at the subject of Quimby and Eddy, see A Story Untold (2016).

The name Phineas Quimby appears in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita in a list of names that Humbert Humbert reads in hotel registries during his frantic search for Lolita after she is lost. The listing appears as "Phineas Quimby, Lebanon, New Hampshire". The name Phineas Quimby also appears in the book The Disappearance of the Universe, by Gary Renard. Originally published: 2003.

• Albanese, C.L., "Physic and Metaphysic in Nineteenth-Century America: Medical Sectarians and Religious Healing", Church History, Vol. 55, No. 4. (Dec., 1986), pp. 489–502.
• Anon, "The Strange Life of Mary Baker Eddy; Her Ability to Gain and Hold the Loyalty of Thousands a Notable Attribute. How She Founded Her Cult; That She Rewrote the Ideas of Phineas Quimby Always Vigorously Denied -- Many Times Attacked" [Obituary], New York Times, (5 December 1910), p. 3.[1]
• Holmes, S.W., "Phineas Parkhurst Quimby: Scientist of Transcendentalism", The New England Quarterly, Vol.17, No.3, (September 1944), pp. 356–380.
• Morton, B. "John Alexander Dowie and the Invention of Modern Faith Healing, 1882-1889," paper presented at UNISA, June 2015. https://www.academia.edu/12444505/John_Alexander_Dowie_and_the_Invention_of_Modern_Faith_Healing_1882-89
• Teahan, John F., "Warren Felt Evans and Mental Healing: Romantic Idealism and Practical Mysticism in Nineteenth-Century America", Church History, Vol.48, No.1, (March 1979), pp. 63–80.
• Albanese, Catherine., "The Spiritual Journals of Warren Felt Evans: From Methodism to Mind Cure" (2016).