Phineas Parkhurst Quimby (February 16, 1802 – January 16, 1866) was an American clockmaker, mentalist and mesmerist. His work is widely recognized as foundational to the New Thought spiritual movement. Early life Born in the small town of Lebanon, New Hampshire, Quimby was one of seven children and the son of a blacksmith and his wife. As was customary for his social and economic class at that time, Quimby received little formal education. He later wrote that he suffered from consumption (now called tuberculosis or TB) in his youth, a disease that then had no cure, and was prescribed calomel by his doctor. The calomel was no cure, and began to rot his teeth. Quimby began experimenting with his own ideas for a cure. He found that intense excitement (such as galloping on his horse) alleviated his pain for brief periods of time, and he became interested in the mind's ability to affect the body. He claimed to have cured himself of TB by his methods. Mesmerism About 1836 Charles Poyen came to Maine from France on an extended lecture tour in New England about mesmerism, also widely known as hypnotism. He was a French mesmerist who followed in the tradition of Armand-Marie-Jacques de Chastenet, Marquis of Puységur. The McClure’s magazine 1907 biographical serial of Mary Baker Eddy written by Willa Cather & Georgine Milmine started the misunderstanding that Quimby was a follower of Poyen and followed him around—which is not supported by the Quimby family or Quimby's writings. In fact, Quimby wrote about seven years later about hearing Poyen lecture: "Mesmerism was introduced into the U[nited] State[s] by M. Charles Poyen, a French gentleman, who did not appear to be highly blest with the powers of magnetising to the satisfaction of his audience in his public lectures. I had the pleasure of listening to one of his lectures, & pronounced it a humbug as a matter of course. And that his remarkable experiments, which were related, were, in my belief, equally true with witch craft—I had never been a convert to witch craft, nor had even had any personal interviews[?] with ghosts or hobgoblins & therefore considered all stories bordering on the marvelous as delusive—". Instead it appears that it was Robert H. Collyer, another practitioner of animal magnetism, who visited Belfast in 1841, who attracted Quimby's interest: "Next came Dr Collyer, who perhaps did more to excite a