Mrs. Mary A. Morse Baker Glover Patterson Eddy (1821-1910) was born at Bow, New Hampshire. After a precocious and neurotic childhood, she united with the Congregational Church when seventeen years of age. At the age of twenty-two she married George Washington Glover, probably the best of her husbands. His death, six months later, was followed by the birth of her only child and a ten years' widowhood. During this time she stayed with her relatives and had long periods of illness, principally of an hysterical character. She then experimented to some extent with mesmerism and clairvoyance. In 1853 she married Dr. Daniel Patterson, an itinerant dentist, from whom she got a divorce, and as Mrs. Patterson she went first to "Dr." Quimby in 1862. She visited Quimby again in 1864, at which time, with some others, she studied with him. After Quimby's death she began teaching what she then called his science. For the next few years she wandered from town to town about Boston in straitened circumstances, healing, teaching, and endeavoring to found an organized society. It was not, however, until 1875 that the organization was formed in Lynn, and later in the same year appeared her _Science and Health_. The years since then have been filled with controversies in the law courts and newspapers, caresses and blows from the ruling hand of Mother Eddy, and numerous developments from small beginnings, until now over one hundred thousand are identified with the organization. These are almost without exception proselytes from other churches. [Illustration: MARY BAKER EDDY] Mrs. Eddy's doctrines are founded on a metaphysical theory known as subjective idealism, and advanced centuries before her birth. It posits the all-comprehensiveness of mind and the non-existence of matter. If bodies do not exist, diseases cannot exist, and must be only mental delusions. If the mind is freed of these delusions the disease is gone. This was Quimby's method of procedure already quoted. In _Science and Health_ she says that the object of treatment is "to destroy the patient's belief in his physical condition." She also advises: "Mentally contradict every complaint of the body." She continues: "All disease is the result of education, and can carry its ill effects no further than mortal mind maps out the way. Destroy fear," she says, "and you end the fever." However, as with other healers, practice and theory are two different things. Listen further: "It would be foolish to venture beyond our present understanding, foolish to stop eating, until we gain more goodness and a clearer comprehension of the living God." Again: "Until the advancing age admits the efficacy and the supremacy of Mind, it is better to leave the adjustment of broken bones and dislocations to the fingers of the surgeon, while you confine yourself chiefly to mental reconstruction, and the prevention of inflammation and protracted confinement."[205]