Mary Baker Eddy, after several years of…

Mary Baker Eddy, after several years of testing the effectiveness of her healing method, publishes her discovery in a book entitled Science and Health (years later retitled Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures), which she calls the textbook of Christian Science.

The first publication run is one thousand copies, which she self-publishes in 1875.

Mary Eddy Baker had turned to God in February 1866, after a fall in Lynn, Massachusetts caused a spinal injury,

However, she later filed a claim for money from the city of Lynn for her injury on the grounds that she was "still suffering from the effects of that fall" (though she afterwards withdrew the lawsuit). (Richard A. Nenneman (1997), Persistent Pilgrim: The Life of Mary Baker Eddy, Nebbadoon Press)

Mary's attending physician Alvin M. Cushing, a homeopath, testified under oath that he "did not at any time declare, or believe, that there was no hope for Mrs. Patterson's recovery, or that she was in critical condition." (Martin Gardner (1993), The Healing Revelations of Mary Baker Eddy, Prometheus Books)

She had devoted the next three years of her life to Biblical study and what she considered the discovery of Christian Science.

In her autobiography, Retrospection and Introspection, Eddy will write, "I then withdrew from society about three years,--to ponder my mission, to search the Scriptures, to find the Science of Mind that should take the things of God and show them to the creature, and reveal the great curative Principle, --Deity." (NOTES: Peel (1977, p. 483, n. 104) REFERENCES: Peel, Robert (1977), Mary Baker Eddy, The Years of Authority, Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society)

Convinced by her own study of the Bible, especially Genesis 1, and through experimentation, Mary claims to have found healing power through a higher sense of God as Spirit and man as God's spiritual "image and likeness."

She has become convinced that illness can be healed through an awakened thought brought about by a clearer perception of God and the explicit rejection of drugs, hygiene and medicine based upon the observation that Jesus did not use these methods for healing.

She eventually called this spiritual perception the operation of the Christ Truth on human consciousness.

Claiming to have first healed herself and then others, and having learned from these experiences, Eddy feels anyone could perceive what she called "the Kingdom of Heaven" or spiritual reality on earth.

For her, this healing method is based on scientific principles and could be taught to others.

This positive rule of healing, she teaches, results from a new understanding of God as infinite Spirit beyond the limitations of the material senses.

Mary has become well known as a healer, and firsthand accounts survive claiming that miracles occurred similar to miracles performed by Jesus, who calmed a storm and raised people from the dead. (von Fettweis, Yvonne Caché; Warneck, Robert Townsend (1998). Mary Baker Eddy: Christian healer. Twentieth-century biographers series. Christian Science Pub. Society.)

In 1873, Mary had divorced Daniel Patterson for adultery to which he readily admitted.