The Quimby Manuscripts

PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTIONS OF MANUSCRIPTS

LIST OF PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRODUCTIONS OF MANUSCRIPT

I. Facsimile of Mrs. Eddy's Sonnet to Dr. Quimby.

II-IX. These eight pages contain facsimiles of four pages from one of the copy-books into which the articles constituting "Volume I" were copied after the Misses Ware had consulted Dr. Quimby concerning revisions and changes. The articles from which these facsimiles are taken are printed in full. (See Chapter 14.) The dates show the time when the articles were first written and copied. The changes made in the text in the handwriting of Miss Emma Ware, were made at a later time, probably in 1865, with a view to revising these articles for publication in a volume of Dr. Quimby's writings. Similar emendations for the sake of clearness were made in several volumes of the copy-books prior to Dr. Quimby's death. These changes indicate the kind of revision approved of by Dr. Quimby.

X. Facsimile of George Quimby's note on a wrapper covering a package of original manuscripts by P. P. Quimby, preserved in the Bank in Belfast, Maine. Mr. Quimby calls attention to the fact that not even the spelling has been changed in these writings.

XI. This page contains a facsimile of a letter and the beginning of another, written during the period when Dr. Quimby was developing his ideas and methods of healing in Belfast. This facsimile is included with the others to show Quimby's handwriting, his signature, and the dates.

XII-XIV. These three pages reproduce the original notes of one of the earliest articles, written prior to those included in the list of the Quimby Manuscripts. The date is 1856. Here Dr. Quimby, writing impersonally about his "new theory," states his opinion that it "could be reduced to a science as correcting the error of any other science." He declares that "all knowledge of disease is in the mind," that is, in the "feeling," not in the body. Using the general term "fluids" to cover not only the bodily fluids but the nervous activities, he speaks of the mind as "spiritual matter" using this term interchangeably as if it stood for mind or the matter which is nearest mind. The disease is due to a "combination of this matter," and the cure is accomplished by establishing a different combination. In the last of these three pages Quimby says that "truth restores the mind and changes the fluids."

These pages are without revisions save by the author himself. No corrections have been made in the spelling. Dr Quimby's statements show that even in this crude early formulation of his theory he already possessed the elements of his "Science."

XV-XVI. Facsimiles of first notes for other articles, characteristic of many of the originals of later writings.

(Click on any facsimile below for a larger view.)