Mercy Quimby & the Clairvoyant Physician

It happened one night about 35 years ago at an ephemera show in Boston, Massachusetts – a few minutes of my life that I haven’t forgotten. It’s one of those unremarkable yet unexplainably vivid memories that stays with you until you, too, become a memory.

I was searching for something at the show that was searching for me. I didn’t know what it was; I just knew that when I found it, I would know. The words would reach out and touch me in a way that told me they were from a life that was reaching out through decades or centuries, waiting for me to recognize them for the precious treasure they were – the only remaining words of a life that was at the brink of being forgotten forever.

In a quietly dark album stored behind the brilliant flashes of colorful advertising trade cards and shouting broadsides, was a small, old letter written in fading sepia ink, to the point that you instinctively blinked and squinted to have any chance of reading the faint writing. Despite the difficulties, the story shared itself – a century and a half past the life that had lived it.

It was the letter of a sick woman, desperate for health but with wavering faith that it would ever return to her. Lots of research later gave form to the correspondent: Her name was Mercy Quimby, age 54 and apparently too sick to write the letter herself; her 17-year-old daughter, Eliza, scribed for her mother. The well-intentioned teenager struggled with spelling and punctuation but at least had good penmanship.

“I have been to see a Clairvoyant Physician and Spiritual Medium Mrs Morrill(.)  I will send you her card.” And there it was – a porcelain card, still escorting the letter after all those years, foxed with the deterioration and imperfections that come to paper with age – its own form of liver spots:

MRS. J. H. MORRILL,

Clairvoyant Physician, and Spiritual Medium,

will examine and prescribe for the sick, at the following

PRICES:

First examination and prescription when the person to

be examined is present, $1.00, when absent, $2.00.

Each subsequent examination and prescription, half price.

Eliza noted that she was writing her mother’s letter from Thetford, Vermont, on July 29th, 1855. Thetford was one of those quiet, remote, boon-dock towns in a rural state full of boonies. It’s population of under 2,000 in 1855 had been on a two-decade slide and would continue to fall for 90 years more. And it was in this isolated area that Mercy Quimby feared she might not be long for the world. A year earlier she could walk a few miles and easily get in and out of a wagon. But “now I am so dizzy and weak I can scarsly perform the task and I am seldom able to walk to our nearest neighbour,” a distance of about a third of a mile.

She diagnosed herself as suffering from what Eliza wrote down as “apoplex shock.” Back then, the term was used to describe a variety of conditions, including an actual stroke, but much more often it was used to refer to seizures, or a quick onset of physical or mental exhaustion, and a flagging desire to do anything requiring energy. The apoplex shocks “follow me so closely,” Mercy dictated to Eliza, that she avoided sitting still for more than a few minutes at a time, for fear that the attacks would continue. “Last Thursday I had an unusual drowsy time for an hour and a severe shock succeeded it; [for a while] I thought my days wer finished.”

But the clairvoyant physician and spiritual medium had given her some hope.

“I went about three miles to see this lady We went into a retired room [a back room](.) she sat down shut her eyes and in a moment or two she says you have suffered a great deal(.) she acted and told me my complaints as to appearance as plain as you could disern anything with your naked eye(.) Then She began to direct me how to precede with my self and then precribe the medicine which I find makes me more comfortable while I live. I don’t know as it will lengthen it any …”

Eight years later, a mention of Mrs. J. H. Morrill in a spiritualist newspaper praised the clairvoyant physician as low-key and successful: “She does not advertise, or put out a sign, but has as many patients as any physician … and has effected more cures with her eyes closed than most M.D.s have after years of study and practice.”

Since Mercy had been told that Asa Risley’s wife (the friends to whom she was having her daughter write) had suffered apoplectic shocks after sitting and sewing for a while, her letter shared the directions the clairvoyant had given, thinking her friends might benefit too. While Mercy was only about three miles away from the clairvoyant, the Risleys lived about thirty miles away, across the Connecticut River in Piermont, New Hampshire, so figuring that they were too far away to visit the mysterious physician, sharing her remedial instructions was just something a friend should do:

“First when you rise in the morning before dressing have a pan with a little warm suds made of Castile soap(.) set your feet in it(.) taik a large cloth Squeeze it out in the suds rub your head and neck get some one to rub your back thoroughly keep the cloth warm with the suds then rub the whole system till the skin looks red(,) feet and all(.) for a change ocationaly take a damp cloth & sprinkle on mustard or Cayene(.) rub the whole system thoroughly with that(.) Drink no s(t)ale coffee(.) drink domestic coffee(;) if you wish drink allittle tea to keep your spirits good(.) let your food be vegatable much as you can eat(.) no warm bread of any kind(;) shun all pastry and biscuit(;) eat a little Brown bread verry light(;) wheat bread crackers suit me best(.) make no use of salt vituals nor any thing sour nor pepper(.) drink no cold water(.)

I know much of your trouble is humor in the blood and so is mine … I think you will be benefitted by following these directions(.) I think you will be able to take a little spirit which will warm and stimelate you and make your blood to circulate(.)”

Mercy told the Risleys that the clairvoyant physician’s instructions had helped: “Saturday I had quite a comfortable day”; but even with her endorsement of Mrs. Morrill, her letter suggested the relief was more shallow than deep, more temporary than permanent: “if you are able to make us a visit do not fail to come(.) it may be the last interview.”

Several more days passed before the letter was sent, almost as if her somber prophecy was being fulfilled. On July 30th she found herself dizzy and weak, deprived of energy and stamina. On the 31st she wrote, “Today rather more feeble … how tiresome are the passing hours especially toward night. ….” The next day, August 1st, bore the last and most ominous entry, “I am aware That my strength Daily decays(.)”

Mercy Quimby did, indeed, die of apoplexy … but she had cheated death by living for 28 more years, dying at 82 years old on 4 July 1883. Perhaps she hadn’t been as sick as she had thought, or maybe nature and her constitution were stronger than she had given them credit. But in Mercy's time of fear and need, a clairvoyant healer had closed her eyes and read her like a book, telling her what to do and giving her enough hope to get her through the rough times.

The older I get and the more my skin foxes, I feel privileged to be the steward of Mercy Quimby’s fearful moments and her gesture of kindness shared with friends. It is a treasure and a sacred trust; I hope I have honored her memory since she was so kind to reach out to me that night, long ago.

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine

Curing the 'King's Evil' with and without a King

It could be ugly, painful, and embarrassing. The lymphnodes around the neck would become infected, causing swollen lumps that sometimes festered, weeping puss, pain, and foul odor. It was called scrofula or the 'King's Evil' - not because kings caused it, but because certain kings were claimed to have the power to heal it. They didn't, of course, but sometimes the disease went into remission or altogether healed naturally, which went to the credit of the king. A king who was believed to have the power to heal was a magical, miraculous, powerful king indeed, seemingly deserving honor, glory, respect, and fear.

By the 17th century, the royal touch of British nobility had already been happening for hundreds of years. It had become part of the ceremony for the king to touch the infected patient after which the recipient of the touching would be given a coin or token as a parting gift, sort of the royal equivalent of a sacred relic blessed by clergy. The touch-piece usually had a hole in it for a ribbon to be strung through so it could be worn around the sick person's infected neck. The touch-pieces were made of gold, silver, copper, brass, or base metal, but what was supposed to be most important were the miraculous healing properties conveyed to it by the king.

A royal touch-coin for the King's Evil, featuring St. Michael the Archangel defeating the dragon. (Courtesy of The Royal Mint)

"The Royal Gift of Healing," frontispiece of "Adenochoiradelogia, or An anatomick-chirurgical treatise of glandules & strumaes, or Kings-Evil-swellings : Together with the royal gift of healing, or cure thereof by contact or imposition of hands, performed for above 640 years by our Kings of England, continued with their admirable effects, and miraculous events; and concluded with many wonderful examples of cures by their sacred touch," by John Browne, 1684

In the dramatic scene above, the sufferer submissively kneels before the king who lays hands on the afflicted. The royal pomposity of the scene is completed by the clergy gathered on one side to observe the miracles performed by their king. His doting court hovered nearby on his other side, better dressed for a ball than the sickroom scene playing out before them; and his armed guards stood vigilantly in two rows in front of him, keeping control over the throngs of his sick subjects, young and old, who awaited their turn for his royal curing touch. Note also the king's dark-clothed assistant, immediately to his right, holding a touch-piece with its ribbon hanging down from it, ready to give it to the afflicted man once he had received the king's touch.

Scrofula came to the American colonies, but the king did not. So what did colonists stricken with scrofula do in his absence? The best they could.

Ann Edmonds helped her husband run their tavern (called an ordinary) in Lynn, Massachusetts. It was a full-scale business of its type, providing lodging, food, and alcoholic drinks to travelers. Goodwife Edmonds also had developed the reputation of being "a doctor woman" and the ordinary was therefore also a destination for the thirsty, hungry, tired, and sick.

In February 1657 she was doctoring a young girl named Mary Greene, who was suffering from what Goodwife Edmonds diagnosed as the King's Evil in one of the girl's shins. Even if the girl was back in England, she had become sick at a time that England didn't have a king, so the Greene's sought a cure from Ann Edmonds.

The Greene’s daughter first stayed with a doctor named Thomas Starr in Charlestown, but despite his healing efforts, the open wound continued to fester, so the Greenes brought her to the Edmonds ordinary to see if the woman doctor in Lynn could be any more successful. Other women who assisted Goodwife Edmonds reported the girl's leg was “in a verry bad condition, both running and raw with corruption, swelling and looking eager and red” and that the flesh was “all rotten about the sore and stinked.” The Edmonds’ seventeen-year-old son Joseph agreed that the wound looked “rotten and it Stunke.” The squeamish teenager also recalled that while he “did daily see a great care and diligence and paines” taken by his stepmother “about dressing the sore with much tenderness,” the stench was so bad “that he was not able to indure it.”

Mary stayed at the tavern as Ann Edmonds’ patient for about eleven months, during which time the doctress removed a five-inch piece of decaying bone from Mary’s shin, applied healing agents to the wound, and administered a special diet to the girl. Ann made sure her young patient had the benefits of fresh meat and greens, even during times of the year when they were “difficult to ataine.” Family and neighbors testified to the girl’s steady improvement, but when Thomas Starr was told about the child’s gradual recovery, the jealous doctor harrumphed that “he would eat a firebrand if she cured it.” The crestfallen Starr was not pleased or satisfied with reports that under the care of a competitor (and a woman at that) the leg of his former patient had come to have “very little soreness or pain” and that the girl “could leap about very lively.”

Twenty-one years later, a grown up Mary Greene got married and went on to have four children. Maybe it was Starr who needed the King's touch after swallowing that firebrand.

For more on Ann Edmonds and the King's Evil, see:

PROMISING CURES, Vol.1, Prologue: Poking and Prodding

Lynn Massachusetts history - History of medicine - 19th-Century Health Remedies - Vintage Medical Ephemera - 19th-century medicine