And in one of the editions of her book Mrs. Eddy went so far as to expressly accuse Kennedy of the crime of murder in the following extraordinary language:
“The husband of a lady who was the patient of this malpractitioner poured out his grief to us and said: ‘Dr. K—— has destroyed the happiness of my home, ruined my wife,’ etc.; and, after that, he finished with a double crime by destroying the health of that wronged husband so that he died. We say that he did these things because we have as much evidence of it as ever we had of the existence of any sin. The symptoms and circumstances of the cases, and the diagnosis of their diseases proved the unmistakable fact. His career of crime surpasses anything that minds in general can accept at this period. We advised him to marry a young lady whose affection he had won, but he refused; subsequently she was wedded to a nice young man, and then he alienated her affections from her husband.”
All of this, of course, by absent mental treatment!
It is a matter of record in the Superior Court of the State of New Hampshire, by sworn testimony, that Mrs. Eddy sought to relieve herself of the imagined malicious mental treatment of Mr. Kennedy by instructing her friends to sit together at stated times daily and, holding his lungs in a diseased condition in their minds, hurl consumption at him with all the power of concentrated malevolent thought.
Kennedy, who is living today, and with whom I am well acquainted, is as gentle and kindly a person as can be imagined; and, while Mrs. Eddy was working herself into a frenzy over his supposed malignity, and having consumption mentally hurled at him, was pursuing the even tenor of his way without thought of her except as an occasional memory of a bitter experience. Mrs. Eddy hated Kennedy as she hated Spofford, and she wanted Kennedy killed as she wanted Spofford killed; and, as in the case of Spofford, she solicited her friends and students to undertake by mental coöperation to terminate his mundane career.
It may relieve the minds of some to know that Mrs. Eddy’s kindly purpose did not succeed with any of the persons whose illness was sought, as I have related. Spofford, Kennedy and Mrs. Choate did not succumb to the malicious absent treatment, but are still present with us in the flesh. Arens died, I am told, but some time after Mrs. Eddy had given him up as hopelessly tenacious of life.
But one more incident and I have done—I have kept the worst until the last.
A sad and tragic episode in connection with the litigation instituted by her sons in reference to Mrs. Eddy’s mental condition, was the suicide at the Parker House, in Boston, on April 20, 1907, of Miss Mary C. Tomlinson, sister of Irving C. Tomlinson, a former Universalist minister, but then and now a Christian Science healer, and of Rev. Vincent Tomlinson, a Universalist minister of Worcester, Mass. Miss Tomlinson had lived with her brother Irving at Concord, N.H., and had been a Reader in the Christian Science Church there and an ardent disciple of Christian Science and of Mrs. Eddy, being much in company with her and absolutely devoted to her service. After the law suit by Mrs. Eddy’s sons began, all the closest friends of Mrs. Eddy in Concord (as well as elsewhere) were called upon to defend her from the attack, and, by the peculiar method of absent and silent mental treatment, both Mr. Glover and his senior counsel, Mr. Chandler, were pressed by the so-called “workers” to the utmost of the powers they supposed themselves to possess.
Miss Mary C. Tomlinson was not in the least degree unwilling to exercise her powers of absent treating of persons in order to repel the Stetson argument; nor even unwilling to treat Glover and Chandler in the ordinary way, trying to make them abandon the lawsuit; but when the decision was made at Concord, to treat Mrs. Eddy’s own son and his lawyer in hostile fashion—by sending arsenical poison into their veins, or otherwise putting them to death, Miss Tomlinson’s whole nature revolted. She had implicit faith in Christian Science, she worshiped Mrs. Eddy, she believed in the existence of malicious animal magnetism and its devilish power and in the methods of counter-working to prevent its evil work; but she had never before seen an attempt made to use absent treatment diabolically—by putting to death the enemies of the Church of Christ, Scientist. When she opened her eyes to the enormity to be practised in the name of a revengeful church, her mind revolted. She determined to leave Concord, to renounce Mrs. Eddy and all her works and to denounce the system to which she had been so earnest a servant. Indeed the intense revulsion of feeling seems to have upset her mental balance. Following up her determination, she went to Boston on April 19 and wandered about, uncertain what to do with herself, at last finding her way to the Parker House in the hands of a Christian Scientist, where her two brothers, being telegraphed for, came to take charge of her.
Here the tragedy begins. The Parker House manager wished her to be seen by Dr. Payne, the hotel physician; but did not succeed in getting him admission to her rooms. He did, however, send to her a nurse from Boothby Hospital, a Miss Telfair, who arrived about nine p.m. Later, Mr. Vincent Tomlinson, the Universalist minister, came and with the nurse took charge of his sister.