Phineas Quimby, magnetic healer, homoeopath, spiritualist, and…

Phineas Quimby, magnetic healer, homoeopath, spiritualist, and founder of the New Thought movement and teacher of Mary Baker Eddy, dies on January 16, 1866.

New Thought, sometimes known as Higher Thought, promotes the ideas that Infinite Intelligence, or God, is everywhere, spirit is the totality of real things, true human selfhood is divine, divine thought is a force for good, sickness originates in the mind, and "right thinking" has a healing effect.

Eddy, who from 1862 had been a student of Quimby after he helped her with a spinal problem, will go on to become the founder of Christian Science in 1872.

She is often cited as having used Quimby as inspiration for theology.

Most scholars agree that Christian Science does reflect Quimby's teachings.

For a time, Eddy had been a patient of Quimby’s and shared his view that disease is rooted in a mental cause.

But as her understanding of Christ Jesus’ approach to healing develops over the years, her concept of life and healing will grow further and further away from Quimby’s.

Because of its theism, Christian Science differs from the teachings of Quimby.