Doctor P. P. Quimby and His World

Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was born in New Hampshire, February 16, 1802.  His labor ended on January 16, 1866.  Quimby intended to put his wisdom into a book, but did not have the time.  His wisdom lives on.

The reader may wish to recall that in 1860 formal medical practice was mostly useless and often harmful.  Doctor Quimby's opinion of the "medical faculty" was harsh but realistic.  Compare his words with those of one of the most eminent medical men of his day, a professor of medicine at Harvard:

In 1844, Ignace Semmelweis entered an obstetric ward to begin his campaign to save women from this hospital holocaust.  It was not until 1864 that Pasteur announced the proof of "germs" in the air carrying infection.

Doctor Quimby's last notes are dated July 15, 1865.

On August 17, 1865, Doctor Semmelweis, frustrated by more than fifteen years of futile effort to get obstetricians and surgeons to wash their hands, stabbed himself in the hand with a contaminated scalpel.  His death of infection was his final offer of proof of his wisdom. Lister applied this knowledge to surgery in 1865 but said, "Without Semmelweis my achievements would be nothing."

Medication in 1865 could best be described as "grotesque" (I went to the Stanford medical archives and read some of it.).  Surgeons washed after surgery, not before.  But the medical faculty was not the only source of disease and death.

Not only did the medical faculty do physical harm with abominable medications and filthy surgery, they also did mental harm. The medical men commonly aggravated their patients' problems by evil suggestions.  Frightening diagnoses without real merit often caused the disease.  As Doctor Quimby tells us: "You tell me I look sick .  .  .  at last I die .  .  .  this is disease.  And you made it."

Calvinistic religion was strong in New England.  Doctor Quimby refers to "Calvinist Baptists." From the pulpit, patients were told they were being rightly punished by a vengeful God who invented these tortures for the sinful humans He had created. Unable to recall how they had sinned and imagining sins never committed, or inventing sins to fit the disease, they suffered helplessly.

Unlike small-pox, this disease of the religious mind has not been vanquished. In 2006, an American religious leader said that Israel Prime Minister Sharon's brain hemorrhage was God's divine retribution for Sharon's giving up a part of the God's promised land in an effort to achieve peace.  A vengeful God indeed.

Puritan theology "was more likely to cause a fever than to mention one," said Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1836.  The following year, P. P. Quimby began his research.  In seven years - near the end of his notes - he treated more than twelve thousand different persons. People came, riding in buggies and wagons for hundreds of miles, to stay in the International Hotel near Quimby's office and be helped by the man they called "Doctor."

Doctor Quimby blamed the medical faculty for the invention of fad diseases, including "falling of the womb, internal ulcers, ovarian tumors, weak spine, heart disease, neuralgia, and spine disease." There is no doubt that many of these diagnoses given to Quimby's patients long before the invention of X-rays were false and frightening.

In all fairness to the medical men of 1865, the incidence of false treatment was not so greatly higher than it is today.  In modern times we know of unjustified tonsillectomies, hysterectomies, sleep drugs, tranquilizers, stimulants, drugging of "hyperactive" children, and other fads of the profession.  But there is growing awareness among enlightened medical men and women that P. P. Quimby, whom they do not know, was right more often than not.

The medical establishment now acknowledges a continuously growing list of complaints under the influence or control of the mind, including peptic ulcer, colitis, bronchial asthma, dermatitis, hay fever, urticaria, angio-neurotic edema, arthritis, Raynaud's disease, hypertension, hyperthyroidism, amenorrhea, enuresis, paroxysmal tachycardia, migraine headache, impotence, alcoholism, hysteria, neurasthenia, and respiratory diseases including tuberculosis (consumption), cerebral infarction, warts, diabetes, Parkinsonism, angina pectoris, allergies, skin diseases, insomnia, multiple sclerosis, menopausal disturbances, and a wide variety of neuroses.  Medical journals add to the list every month.

A recent poll of physicians elicited opinions that from fifty percent to eighty percent of persons first arriving at a doctor's office come with a psychosomatic complaint.  Certainly, many of Quimby's patients suffered from hysteria, that strange affliction named after the womb.  His most famous patient was an outstanding example, who with strong will lived to nearly ninety.

As Quimby started his notes after years of healing, in 1859 in France, Paul Briquet published his Treatise on Hysteria.  This thorough study stands scrutiny against the best modern standards of research.  Briquet found one- quarter of the female patients in a hospital to have hysteria and another quarter to be "very impressionable." There were twenty times more women than men hysterics in another group he studied.

Briquet quoted from the standard medical text, written in 1694, still in use in 1859, by Sydenham:

Briquet observed, "These characteristics were in keeping with the social and biological needs of women and were the reason why hysteria was so much more prevalent in women than in men." In Briquet's words:

There is now a move to rename "hysteria" by calling it "Briquet's syndrome." But his superb study had not been translated into English.  The all-male medical faculty had not cared enough about this affliction they associated with the womb.

Doctor Quimby cared. Phineas Parkhuurst Quimby, called "Doctor" by his grateful patients, a clock-maker and inventor of mechanical devices became America's greatest healer.  He learned the wisdom of the ages by sitting with sorely afflicted people, listening to their false beliefs, and instructing them so they would heal themselves. Park Quimby entered his career as a healer through the study and demonstration of mesmerism.  A true scientist, he experimented and observed.  He rejected mesmerism for healing as a deception, but these experiments and his later studies taught him the true nature of disease and the true method of healing.

Doctor Quimby's main concern throughout is with the problem of false beliefs.  All that he writes has to do with this problem.  He expresses his own beliefs mainly to show that change is possible and to compel his patients and you, the readers, to analyze their beliefs.  This, he says, is the greatest study of all.

He found that beliefs create disease.  He healed by showing the errors.  His cures were in his belief or wisdom.  He tells us that truth is the cure. He found medical cures to be, not in the medicine but in the confidence of the doctor.  Great medical men have said the same.  Many successful drugs, prescribed in great quantity, have been later found to be no more than placebos "given to please" but without material effect, yet effective in curing.

Doctor Quimby had clairvoyant ability, which he explains. He had the ability to "clearly see" -- to clearly sense -- the feelings of his patients; and to such a degree as to become two persons at once: himself and a person with the feelings of his patient. The feelings were so real as to be sometimes frightening. It was this great power of empathy, coupled with his analysis of false beliefs, that made him a miraculous healer.

Doctor Quimby did not claim to heal every affliction.  Sweeping claims of perfect solutions to all ills are the province of charlatans and religious cults.  In a circular sent to those people who wrote for information, he advised:

Treatment by Doctor Quimby varied in length, from one visit to many visits, and was often followed up by correspondence.  Quimby wrote to reply to patients' questions and remind them of what he had taught them.  He wrote with encouragement and with the offer of "absent treatment":

He did not accept payment if he could not help. As a craftsman and inventor, he could earn his living without healing, but chose the hard course of healing against the resistance of the medical faculty and the religious faculty.  He felt called to do this work.  No one ever accused Doctor Quimby of profiteering.  No one ever doubted his sincerity.  And there is no doubt that he helped thousands of sick people.

We know how Doctor Quimby came to so much wisdom.  He tells us -- both in his Introductions and throughout his notes.  He was a scientist.  He observed people.  He learned from them.  He was not burdened by dogmas of medical schools or theologies, by the empty words of politicians or by the rules of the aristocrats.

Doctor Quimby mentions sympathy as something he supplied his patients, but it is obvious that he often made it clear that he was not in sympathy with their beliefs.  He never used the word "empathy" -- a new word not appearing until 1904 -- but "empathy" describes his method.

Quimby so strongly sensed the feelings of his patients that these sometimes frightened him.  It was only by the exercise of will and wisdom that he was able to avoid taking on the diseases of his patients.  This is a problem reported by all empathic healers.  From time to time he found it necessary to leave Portland for a few day's rest. After consultation, and sometimes during such a session, he would go to his office and add to his notes.  Two sisters, Emma and Sarah Ware -- daughters of a United States Supreme Court Justice -- or his son, George Quimby, would make copies of his notes and suggest minor corrections.

Some of Doctor Quimby's patients were also his students and confidants.  Although he never organized a clinic or church and his book was not completed, there are today many churches, healing groups, and self-improvement organizations that are lineal descendants of the teaching of P. P. Quimby.  Some of those are now loosely affiliated by the International New Thought Alliance, but others are unaware of their debt to Phineas Parkhurst Quimby.

The wisdom of Quimby is universal, but few have fully learned its lessons.  Doctor Quimby was the first to teach what is now popularly called "positive thinking." But he discovered much more while sitting with thousands of sorely troubled people.  He discovered a philosophy of life, an enlightened religion, and the existence of clairvoyant relations among persons.

After twenty years of healing practice in Portland and Belfast, Maine, he began to write notes recording his observations and his knowledge for an intended book.  His notes are a daily journal: repetitive and disorganized.  He did not have time to edit the notes and the book never was published.  We have his notes preserved in the Library of Congress.  Three compilations have been published.

Because his notes were not published until sixty years after his death -- and then disorganized, incomplete, and difficult to read -- Quimby is little known even to those who acknowledge him as the origin of their beliefs. It is the purpose of this book to make the wisdom of Park Quimby more available.

We follow this advice of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer in seeking out the wisdom of Park Quimby in his own words.  But the words of one teacher, however great, are only selected fruits from the tree of Wisdom.  We will all know the tree better if we learn also from many teachers.  But how to distinguish fruits of the tree of Wisdom from the fruits of the tree of false beliefs which is so much more prolific? The missionary doctor, Albert Schweitzer tells us:

We see the validity of Doctor Quimby's opinions by the fact that they have been discovered and rediscovered by great thinkers in all nations and cultures and from all ages. Quimby expresses them in simple words written in his office while sitting with patients.

Doctor Quimby wrote: