This method is just what the word implies. It stems from
the procedure of Dr. Phineas Parkhurst Quimby of Maine.
Dr. Quimby, a pioneer in mental and spiritual healing, lived
and practiced in Belfast, Maine, about one hundred years ago.
A book called The Quimby Manuscripts, published in 1921 by
Thomas Y Crowell Company, New York City, and edited by
Horatio Dresser, is available in your library. This book gives
newspaper accounts of this man’s remarkable results in
treatment of the sick.
Quimby duplicated many of the healing miracles recorded
in the Bible. In brief, the argumentative method employed
according to Quimby consists of spiritual reasoning where you
convince the patient and yourself that his sickness is due to his
false belief, groundless fears, and negative patterns lodged in
his subconscious mind. You reason it out clearly in your mind
and convince your patient that the disease or ailment is due
only to a distorted, twisted pattern of thought, which has taken
form in his body. This wrong belief in some external power
and external causes has now externalized itself as sickness, and
can be changed by changing the thought patterns. You explain
to the sick person that the basis of all healing is a change of
belief. You also point out that the subconscious mind created
the body and all its organs; therefore, it knows how to heal it,
can heal it, and is doing so now as you speak. You argue in the
courtroom of your mind that the disease is a shadow of the
mind based on disease-soaked, morbid thought imagery.
You continue to build up all the evidence you can muster
on behalf of the healing power within, which created all the
organs in the first place, and which has a perfect pattern of
every cell, nerve, and tissue within it. Then, you render a verdict in the courthouse of your mind in favor of yourself
or your patient. You liberate the sick one by faith and
spiritual understanding, Your mental and spiritual evidence
is overwhelming; there being but one mind, what you
true will be resurrected in the experience of the patient. This
procedure is essentially the argumentative method used by Dr.
Quimby of Maine from 1849 to 1869.