Phineas Parkhurst Quimby was an American folk healer, mentalist and mesmerist. His work is widely recognized as foundational to the New Thought spiritual movement.
Mary Baker Eddy was an American religious leader and author who founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, in New England in 1879. She also founded The Christian Science Monitor in 1908, and three religious magazines: the Christian Science Sentinel, The Christian Science Journal, and The Herald of Christian Science. She wrote numerous books and articles, the notable of which were Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures and Manual of The Mother Church. Other works were edited posthumously into the Prose Works Other than Science and Health.
Christian Science is a set of beliefs and practices which are associated with members of the Church of Christ, Scientist. Adherents are commonly known as Christian Scientists or students of Christian Science, and the church is sometimes informally known as the Christian Science church. It was founded in 1879 in New England by Mary Baker Eddy, who wrote the 1875 book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, which outlined the theology of Christian Science. The book became Christian Science's central text, along with the Bible, and by 2001 had sold over nine million copies.
The history of alternative medicine covers the history of a group of diverse medical practices that were collectively promoted as "alternative medicine" beginning in the 1970s, to the collection of individual histories of members of that group, or to the history of western medical practices that were labeled "irregular practices" by the western medical establishment. It includes the histories of complementary medicine and of integrative medicine. "Alternative medicine" is a loosely defined and very diverse set of products, practices, and theories that are perceived by its users to have the healing effects of medicine, but do not originate from evidence gathered using the scientific method, are not part of biomedicine, or are contradicted by scientific evidence or established science. "Biomedicine" is that part of medical science that applies principles of anatomy, physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, and other natural sciences to clinical practice, using scientific methods to establish the effectiveness of that practice.
James Esdaile, M.D., E.I.C.S., Bengal (1808–1859), an Edinburgh trained Scottish surgeon, who served for twenty years with the East India Company, is a notable figure in the history of “animal magnetism" and, in particular, in the history of general anaesthesia.
John Elliotson, M.D., M.D.(Oxford, 1821), F.R.C.P.(London, 1822), F.R.S. (1829), professor of the principles and practice of medicine at University College London (1832), senior physician to University College Hospital (1834) — and, in concert with William Collins Engledue M.D., the co-editor of The Zoist.
Charles Léonard Lafontaine was a French "public magnetic demonstrator", who also "had an interest in animal magnetism as an agent for curing or alleviating illnesses".
Amand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis de PuységurFrench:[amɑ̃maʁiʒakdəʃastənɛmaʁkidpɥizegyʁ] (1751–1825) was a French magnetizer aristocrat from one of the most illustrious families of the French nobility. He is now remembered as one of the pre-scientific founders of hypnotism.
Horatio Willis Dresser was a New Thought religious leader and author in the United States. In 1919 he became a minister of General Convention of the Church of the New Jerusalem, and served briefly at a Swedenborgian church in Portland, Maine.
John Bovee Dods was a philosopher, spiritualist, mesmerist, and early psychologist.
Warren Felt Evans was an American author of the New Thought movement.
The history of New Thought started in the 1830s, with roots in the United States and England. As a spiritual movement with roots in metaphysical beliefs, New Thought has helped guide a variety of social changes throughout the 19th, 20th, and into the 21st centuries. Psychologist and philosopher William James labelled New Thought "the religion of healthy-mindedness" in his study on religion and science, The Varieties of Religious Experience.
The Life of Mary Baker G. Eddy and the History of Christian Science (1909) is a highly critical account of the life of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and the early history of the Christian Science church in 19th-century New England. It was published as a book in November 1909 in New York by Doubleday, Page & Company. The original byline was that of a journalist, Georgine Milmine, but a 1993 printing of the book declared that novelist Willa Cather was the principal author; however, this assessment has been questioned by more recent scholarship which again identifies Milmine as the primary author, although Cather and others did significant editing. Cather herself usually wrote that she did nothing more than standard copy-editing, but sometimes that she was the primary author.
Georgine Milmine Welles Adams best known as Georgine Milmine, was a Canadian-American journalist most known for writing about Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science. Milmine, along with Willa Cather and others, worked on 14 investigative articles about Eddy that were published by McClure's in 1907–1908. One of the only major investigative works on Eddy to be published in her lifetime, besides Sibyl Wilbur's Human Life articles, the articles were instigated by Milmine: S. S. McClure purchased her freelance research before assigning a group of reporters to verify, expand and write it up.
Animal magnetism, also known as mesmerism, is a theory invented by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century. It posits the existence of an invisible natural force (Lebensmagnetismus) possessed by all living things, including humans, animals, and vegetables. He claimed that the force could have physical effects, including healing.
Mark Sullivan was an American journalist and syndicated political columnist. Author of the six-volume, 3,740-page Our Times: The United States, 1900–1925 (1926–1935), he was described as a "giant of American journalism" and the "Jeremiah of the United States Press".
The Royal Commission on Animal Magnetism involved two entirely separate and independent French Royal Commissions, each appointed by Louis XVI in 1784, that were conducted simultaneously by a committee composed of four physicians from the Paris Faculty of Medicine and five scientists from the Royal Academy of Sciences , and a second committee composed of five physicians from the Royal Society of Medicine .
Numerous new religious movements have formed in the United States. A new religious movement (NRM) is a religious or spiritual group that has modern origins and is peripheral to its society's dominant religious culture. There is no single, agreed-upon criterion for defining a "new religious movement".
The Christian Science movement is a religious movement within Christianity founded by Mary Baker Eddy that arose in the mid to late 19th century and that led to the founding of The First Church of Christ, Scientist.
Robert Hanham Collyer was a British physician, phrenologist, mesmerist, lecturer, author, and inventor mostly active on the east coast of America and Canada during the 19th-century.
