The Quimby Manuscripts

The Quimby Manuscripts, Showing the Discovery of Spiritual Healing and the Origin of Christian Science is a book by Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, first published in 1921. The volume collects Quimby’s notes, case histories, and essays on mental and spiritual healing written during the mid-19th century and presents his practical theory that sickness and suffering are rooted in false beliefs of the mind. This work sits at the intersection of New Thought, mind-body healing, and 19th-century metaphysical writing, and it lays out Quimby’s methodical approach to curing patients by addressing thought, perception and belief rather than relying on conventional medicine.

Quimby emerges in these manuscripts as a careful, experimental practitioner: part mesmerist, part philosopher, who tested techniques and recorded outcomes. The collection — presented and edited by Horatio W. Dresser — became an important source for later thinkers in the New Thought movement and is frequently cited in discussions about the intellectual origins of Christian Science and other mental-healing traditions. For readers today the book offers historical insight into early mental-healing practice and the enduring conversation about the mind’s role in health and spiritual life, useful for researchers, students of religious history, and anyone exploring alternative healing, spiritual healing, or the roots of New Thought.