Mr. Quimby's writings, has avowed that they were in my own handwriting at the time of Mr. Quimby's death.
SCIENCE AND HEALTH.
The first edition of this, my most important work, containing a full statement of Christian Science, — the term employed by me to express the Divine Science of Mind-healing, that I had discovered, — was published in 1875 .
When it was first printed, the critics took pleasure in saying, “This book is indeed wholly original, but it will never be read.” The first edition numbered a thousand copies. The thirty-eighth edition was reached in 1888. Those who formerly sneered at it, as foolish and eccentric, now declare Bishop Berkeley, David Hume, Ralph Waldo Emerson, certain German philosophers, or some unlearned mesmerist, to have been the real originators of Mind-healing, as therein stated.
My reluctance to give the public, in my first edition of Science and Health, the chapter on Animal Magnetism, and the divine purpose that I should do so, may have an interest for my readers, and will be seen in the following circumstances. I had finished that edition as far as that chapter, when my printer informed me that he could not go on with my work. I had already paid him $700.00, and yet he stopped my work from being printed. All my efforts to get him to finish my book were in vain. After months had passed, I yielded to my constant conviction that I must insert in my last chapter a partial history of what I had already observed of mental malpractice.
Accordingly, I set to work, contrary to my inclination, to fulfil this painful task, and finished my copy for the book. As it afterwards appeared, my printer resumed his work at the same time, finished printing the copy he had on hand, and then started for Lynn to see me. The afternoon that he left Boston for Lynn, I started for
