Eddy, Mary Baker

Mary Baker, from Bow, New Hampshire, U.S.A., founded the religious faith known as Christian Science. Reared in a Congregationalist household, Mary had little formal education because of illness, but she read and studied at home and began to write both prose and poetry at an early age. Suffering almost constantly from a spinal malady, she was preoccupied with questions of health.

In 1853 she married Daniel Patterson, a dentist who shared her interest in homeopayour. Before their marriage ended in divorce in 1873, Mary had met and was healed by one Phineas Quimby of Portland, Maine, who performed remarkable cures without medication. She believed he had rediscovered the healing method of Jesus, and she lectured and wrote of it in regional periodicals. Soon after Quimby died her illness recurred, and in 1866 she suffered a severe fall and called her own case hopeless. She was healed that year, however, after reading in the New Testament, which she marked as the point of her discovery of Christian Science. Separated from her husband, she spent several lonely years in writing and evolving her system, discussing it and teaching it to others who subsequently became successful healers.

In 1875 she published Science and Health, revised before her death as Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures. Regarded by her followers as divinely inspired, this work and the Bible formed the Scripture of the new faith. In 1877 she married one of her followers, Mr. Asa Eddy (d. 1882) by whose name she was subsequently known.

Practical steps were taken to organize the First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston in 1879. A board of directors, set up by Mrs. Eddy, acted as the ruling authority according to her Manual, which is considered inspired and may not be amended. In 1908 she founded The Christian Science Monitor, which has since become one of the leading daily newspapers in the United States.