In June, 1870, Mrs. Eddy persuaded a former student of hers in the Quimby philosophy to remove with her to Lynn. Richard Kennedy was not quite twenty-one, Mrs. Eddy was in her fiftieth year-he was to practice mental healing, she was to confine herself to instructing pupils in the same. They prospered beyond their expectations, largely through Kennedy's popularity and ability to secure patients. Mrs. Eddy concentrated her energies upon teaching and writing.
In less than two years Kennedy's patience was worn out by Mrs. Eddy's jealous and exacting nature. He determined to leave her. With the business acumen that always characterized her, Mrs. Eddy was left with about $6000, Kennedy having paid all living expenses when together, and handing over half of whatever money was left from his practice, whilst she retained all her teaching fees. Not a bad bargain, surely.
Kennedy changed his office, refused to talk about Mrs. Glover, and went on practicing. This so angered Mrs. Glover that she charged him with being a Mesmerist and his treatment Mesmerism. "Her hatred of Kennedy was one of the strongest emotions she had ever felt, really a tragic passion in its way, and since the cheerful energetic boy who had inspired it was in no way an adequate object, she fell to and made a Kennedy of her own. She fashioned this hypothetical Kennedy bit by bit, believing in him more and more as she put him together. She gave him one grisly attribute after another, and the more terrible she made her image, the more she believed in it and hated and feared it; and the more she hated and feared it, the more furiously she wrought, upon it, until finally her creation, a definite shape of fear and hatred, stood by her day and night to harry and torment her. Without Malicious Mesmerism as his cardinal attribute, the new and terrible Kennedy could never have been made" (M., p. 221).
In 1877 a rupture occurred between Mrs. Eddy and another of her practicing students, Daniel H. Spofford. She pursued him with the same wild charges of "Malicious Mesmerism." Later, Edward J. Arens was added to her list. To such a pass did her obsession become that, "Certain ones of the students were delegated to attend her from Lynn to Boston and to occupy front seats in the Hawthorne rooms for the purpose of treating her as she spoke. On the way back to Lynn the party frequently discussed the particular kind of evil influence which had been brought to bear upon Mrs. Eddy during the service. Already Mrs. Eddy thought she could tell which was Kennedy's influence and which was Spofford's, and she could even liken their effect upon her to the operation of certain drugs. Later, Arens' malevolence, too, came to have an aroma of its own, so that when Mrs. Eddy rose in the morning she could tell by the kind of depression she experienced which of the three was to be her tormentor for the day" (M., p. 272).
The Rev. J. H. Wiggin, a retired Unitarian minister, who was Mrs. Eddy's literary adviser for four years, said that Mesmerism was her Devil, and that no Church could get on long without a devil.
On June 3, 1882, Mrs. Eddy's third husband died. She telegraphed to Dr. Noyes, of Lynn, to come and perform an autopsy. He found death had resulted from an organic disease of the heart, the aortic valve being destroyed. But Mrs. Eddy believed her husband had died from mental arsenic, caused by "Malicious Mesmerism."
Dr, Noyes actually showed Mrs. Eddy her husband's heart, but so great was her obsession, that, two days after, she gave an interview, which appeared in the Boston Post, June 5, 1882. The following are extracts from it: "My husband's death was caused by malicious mesmerism....I know it was poison that killed him, not material poison, but mesmeric poison,- Oh! isn't it terrible, that this fiend of malpractice is in the land."
In 1887, when Mrs. Eddy was 65 years old, "Malicious Animal Magnetism" had a special department allotted to it in the Christian Science Journal, and continued to be so treated for some years. One pities the hysterical, over-strung nervous system which afflicted Mrs. Eddy so sadly as a child, and continued to be such a bane in her life till extreme old age.