Mental Healers: Mary Baker Eddy, And Sigmund Freud

Mental Healers Report Throughout time, alternative methods have been incorporated into medicine. These methods arose in times when no other medicine worked and physicians were mistrusted. Along with alternative methods came the mental healers. Some of these men and women honestly believed in their work, while others were quacks. Mental Healers: Franz Anton Mesmer, Mary Baker Eddy, and Sigmund Freud, by Stefan Zweig, analyzes the lives of three major figures in mental healing and their contributions to the medical world, whether or not they believed in their ideas. Franz Anton Mesmer was a physician who become widely known for his controversial ideas. During the early 1770s, he proposed a theory called “animal magnetism”. This was based upon

This performance became widespread as a method for curing diseases or for blocking pain. Many people followed his ideas because most medicine in that time did not work, and people were desperate. However, his success did not last. He was accused of being a fraud, and because he could not prove his scientific claims, his movement declined rapidly. Mary Baker Eddy was the seventh child born into the simplistic farming family of the Bakers. She was a nervous, oversensitive girl who did not go to school regularly because she could not handle the noisiness of the other children. This personality, along with her illnesses, caused her to have many problems in the first half of her life. By age 40, Eddy’s future seemed grim. After the “water cure” did not heal her and all hope seemed lost, she finally reached the assistance of Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. Quimby’s “mind cure” was uprising in popularity during this time and Eddy thought it was her last hope. Quimby agreed to meet her, but she had to travel to him. Though she was extremely ill, she made her way to Portland. Under the treatment of Quimby, her health was restored within two weeks, and her life was changed

She believed that Quimby was like Jesus and could heal the sick and restore anyone’s health. Many opposed her ideas when she tried to spread the word of Quimby’s powers so she had nowhere to go. After many years, and many different attempts to pass on her revolutionary idea, Eddy decided to try and start her own healing using the knowledge she learned from Quimby. However, she did not see herself fit to practice mental healing, so she enlisted help. After some time, she found Richard Kennedy, who was willing to be taught her “science” and in return he would take care of her finically and she would get half of the profits from his practice. This is where Christian Science officially began. She wrote of her ideas, mainly of Christian Science, in her book, Science and Health. Christian Science holds the concept that illness is an illusion and the only cure is prayer. This set of beliefs was taken in by many because they wanted something else to believe in other than the physicians. Physicians at this time mainly used bloodletting and calomel, which hurt the patient more than helped. Her success led to the foundation of the Church of Christ