As I said in another thread, my book The Religion That Kills presents an overview of Mrs. Eddy including her background and leadership style. (Disclaimer for those rejecting anything I'm about to say because of my book's title: I wrote the book; my publisher chose the "in-your-face" title over my strong objections.)

Chapter 4 of the book, which you can read using the "search inside this book" feature on amazon.com, lays it out better than I can here, but I'll hit a few highlights:

-- Mrs. Eddy was very charismatic woman -- interesting to be around even though she could be very difficult. I think she was very intelligent, could be very charming, and believed the CS teachings she developed.

-- She exercised authoritarian leadership over her followers and claimed to never make mistakes (she could change her mind, but this never represented her having made a mistake).

-- She blamed "animal magnetism" and "mental malpractice" for the things that went wrong in her life and blamed her students for things like her health problems, her third husband's death (the doctor said it was heart failure; she publicly claimed that Asa Eddy had been "mentally murdered" by the negative thoughts of a disaffected student), her nocternal illnesses (she assigned a group of her students to mentally protect her as she slept, and if she had a bad night she blamed them for not "keeping their watch" properly), defections of students, and even her own death (if the students had protected her better, she wouldn't have gotten sick).

-- In the name of reflecting divine Mind, she expected her meals to be cooked perfectly, her house to be kept in extreme order, and her workers to know the locations of items in her house that they had never seen before.

-- She said that she fulfilled biblical prophesy and allowed several comparisons between herself and Jesus. (This was NOT an attempt to deify herself as many people claim, since she did not consider Jesus to be part of the Christian Trinity.) She allowed many of her inner circle of followers to come to the conclusion that she is "the woman" in the 12 chapter of Revelation, the last book of the Bible.

-- After several of her most promising students defected in 1881 citing her "frequent ebullitions of temper, love of money, and the appearance of hypocrisy," her remaining students drafted a set of resolutions which, among other things, declared, "we do understand her to be the chosen messenger of God to bear his truth to the nations, and unless we hear 'Her Voice,' we do not hear 'His Voice.'" Mrs. Eddy edited and approved this resolution which recognizes HER as the avenue to understanding God.

Everything I've said above is referenced in Chapter 4 of my book so I won't bother to provide the references here.

As I say in my book, Mrs. Eddy was a remarkable woman. But she exercised huge mental control over her followers.

For more information providing balance to the rosy biographies you read, see the "Materials Not Supporting Christian Science" section in the Resource List on the main Christian Way web site.

Mrs. Eddy blamed many of her own health problems on attacks of "malicious animal magnetism," and she had a group of people keeping mental "watches" over her as she slept because she frequently had physical problems during the night. She also claimed that her third husband's death was mental poisoning rather than heart problems as the autopsy said.

My point is that, while she may or may not have healed, there is evidence to make me wonder whether her record was as good as reported.

Regarding CS healing in general, I can't say whether it does or does not heal. But from what I've seen, heard, and read in authorized CS publications, a great deal of what is labeled "CS healing" falls under the categoires of:

-- Relief of stress related symptoms

-- The body finally getting better naturally

-- Wishful thinking

-- Spiritual origin (yes, God can heal if He chooses to)

Any healing that occurs while a person is using CS treatment is assumed to be the result of CS, even if that healing would have occurred without CS treatment. CSists are generally so ignorant about how the body works that they don't understand the signs of naturall healing. I suspect this was true in Mrs. Eddy's day as well as now.

I made this comment as part of Post #13284 on 3/3/07. In a private conversation, someone pointed out to me that the published quotes leading me to this conclusion may have just referred to her leadership of the CS Movement, but not to her life in general. I don't want to give incorrect information so will say that I can't be sure whether her claim to be mistake-free extended into her day-to-day life. The person with whom I was conversing said that MBE did use phrases like "my mistake" in some of her correspondance.

Here are some quotes that I have found regarding MBE and mistakes:

". . . it seems that the changing of her mind was a privilege that our Leader reserved for herself, and she exercised it without any regard whatever for what had gone before. . . . Then she said to me, 'Mr. Dickey, people say that I am changeable,—that I change my mind frequently, but when I do, it is always God that changes me. . . . I would not condemn myself, therefore, for what seemed a mistake, but would include it as part of the working out of the problem'” (Adam Dickey, "Memoirs of Mary Baker Eddy, p. 32, emphasis added).

"Often the reasons for which our Leader took action in certain directions were not clear to the workers about her. It would seem as if the reason advanced by her was a poor one. . . . This, of course, was mortal mind’s analysis of her work. . . . It always turned out, however, that her action was right, regardless of the reason assigned, which convinced those who were familiar with her work that her judgment was unerring in every detail, and that in following the direction of divine Wisdom, she never made a mistake. Often I heard her say with great impressiveness that in over forty years of church leadership, she had not made a mistake, a record that is most truly remarkable (Dickey, p. 43, emphasis added).

Nenneman comments that Mrs. Eddy “did not make a habit of saying she had made mistakes. That she took many risks, she would admit.” (Richard Nenneman, "Persistent Pilgim," p. 203)

Hopefully this will clarify things a bit.

So sorry to hear about your mother, Ruggedtoast. You've described what I've seen or heard about over and over. Healing headaches is different than healing cancer or heart disease, but many CSists who feel they have "demonstrated over the belief" in their headaches think they can do so with cancer -- and they end up dying when timely treatment could have taken care of the problem. I find it very sad and downright annoying.