A Teacher
Julius Dresser
A direct Quimby disciple who publicly launched the New Thought movement and defended its true origins.
The transmission
Julius Alphonso Dresser (1838–1893) was an early leader of the New Thought movement who, with his wife Annetta Seabury Dresser, had been a patient and student of the mental-healing pioneer Phineas Parkhurst Quimby. After decades of relative quiet, Dresser was provoked by Mary Baker Eddy’s claims to respond, and in 1887 he delivered and printed the lecture The True History of Mental Science, which made Quimby’s writings public and credited him as the source of mental healing.
The Dressers taught classes based on Quimby’s methods, helping to organise the movement that became New Thought.
What they gave
Public launch of New Thought: His 1887 lecture ‘The True History of Mental Science’ publicly inaugurated the movement that became New Thought.
- Defending Quimby’s priority: Provoked by Mary Baker Eddy’s claims, he made Quimby’s writings public and asserted him as the source of mental healing.
- Direct Quimby transmission: As a patient and student of Quimby, he and his wife Annetta taught classes based directly on Quimby’s methods.
- Organizing the movement: Helped give the scattered mental-healing current its early organisational and historical footing.
In their words
The foundation principles of what we now term Mental Science are shown by history to have been largely understood by the philosophers of all ages.
But the first person in this age who penetrated the depths of truth so far as to discover and bring forth a true science of life, and openly apply it to the healing of the sick, was Phineas Parkhurst Quimby, of Belfast, Me.
The line they stand in
Taught by / Influenced by: the mental-healing pioneer Phineas Quimby; his wife and collaborator Annetta Seabury Dresser.
- Taught / Influenced: his son Horatio W. Dresser, who later published the Quimby manuscripts; Warren Felt Evans.
Revelations they taught
Essential Works
- The True History of Mental Science1887