The Church of St. Bunco (Volume 68); A Drastic Treatment of a Copyrighted Religionun-Christian Non-Science (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTE II. THE ORIGIN OF THE NEW THOUGHT. " Christian Science," " Mental Healing," " Metaphysical Treatment of Disease,"?where did these thingk come from, and how did they get here? The facts are peculiar; they are partly unpleasant; they are sometimes amusing; but they are not far to seek. In 1836, Charles Poyan, a Frenchman, introduced into the United States the practise of Mesmerism. In 1840 it was taken up, with great earnestness, by a Maine Yankee, named Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. He was a watch and clock maker, an inventor, and a natural reformer. In making his mesmeric experiments, he soon found an extraordinary subject of them in the person of a young man, Lucius Burkmar, with whom he traveled several years, giving, it is said, some of the most astonishing exhibitions of mesmerism and clairvoyance that had ever been known. As the substance of mesmerism, though under the newer name of hypnotism, has now been fully substantiated by the French Academy of Medicine, the highest authority in the world on such subjects, there seems to be no longer any reasonable question of its general claims. Our historical sources of information are referred to as we go along, but a good deal of it has come from access to original documents, and from living persons of the highest character who were long and intimately acquainted with the subject of our chapter. The names of some of these friends are given by permission. On taking up mesmerism in New England, Mr. Quimby had been very ill and given up by his physicians to die. By inquiring into his own condition through his clairvoyant subject, Lucius, and by the young man's laying-on of hands, Mr. Quimby, as he tells the story, recovered immediately from a long-standing and dangerous malady. Partly as a result of this cure, but mu...