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| Periodical: | The Metaphysician (Brown) |
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| Summary: |
From Pat Deveney's database:
Metaphysician, The. The surviving pages of the journal specify on the title page: "Cover and Contents of the Greatest Magazine of the Age," which may indicate that those pages were all that were ever printed, as the title page of a predecessor journal is marked "specimen" and may have been the only page of that journal. See the note under the Angel Drummer. $1.00 a year (plus 8 cents a year postage), which included for free a $1.00 set of "Metaphysical Discovery" (to prevent Catarrh, failing vision, baldness and deafness) and a copy of the Ten Commandments with a plate of a "Roaring Lion to Frame." The Roaring Lion (satan), seeking whom it might devour, graced the cover of the journal. The journal was an advertising brochure for Brown's Discovery and medicines, replete with patient testimonials, and was almost certainly not issued regularly. It is mentioned as early as 1871 as to appear in a few months but seems to have appeared only in 1874, perhaps the only issue or partial issue. Brown mentions that she had initially intended it as the continuation of The Angel Drummer, On the Marriage Institution, a journal she had published in 1861 to show the evils of lust and sexual congress, but the discovery and the realization of its importance along the same lines caused her to publish this new journal instead. The journal boasts that it would "not sow mingled seed. It will show Science and Religion in perfect harmony, the Natural Sciences, as schoolmasters, leading to the unfolding of the Physical, Moral and Spiritual scientists," all with a detailed commentary on the Bible, showing that the Devil is the Prince of this World and cause of disease, and expounding the Law by which he would be dethroned. Mrs. M.G. Brown was Martha G. Billsland (1809-1881), a Scotswoman who, with her daughter, Elizabeth, had carried on a china, glass and earthenware business in New York in the 1850s and then by 1863 under the name Mrs. M.G. Brown began to advertise her great Metaphysical Discovery and her services as a Metaphysical Physician. She was, she said, a "metaphysical physician, from Philadelphia, discoverer and proprietor of the celebrated 'Metaphysical Discovery' for deafness and every disease which flesh is heir to, is now at her office, No. 51 Bond-st., and would be glad to see all who are using her Metaphysical Discovery; also those afflicted in any way. She positively assures the world that there is no other antidote that will reach the cause of disease. Her discovery treats the cause, and not the effect." According to a researcher, the actual healer and promoter was not Martha but her daughter, Elizabeth (d. 1903), who seems to have been a real businesswoman. By 1864 she was selling retail and offering at wholesale under her mother's name her eye and baldness tonics, first from Philadelphia (in a wooden box with her claims in English and French) and then from New York, and by 1871 she had published her Metaphysical Pamphlet: A Synopsis of Metaphysics; Cause, Cure and Prevention of Disease, Life Lengthened, Disease Kept at Bay, touting her discoveries. By 1873 she had transformed the storefront on Bond Street into the Metaphysical University, at which she expounded on the Discovery. She also lectured and advertised widely, and when she died in 1903 her estate was valued at $3,000,000. Brown credited her Metaphysical Discovery to unspecified "revelations," which, from the heavily Biblical framework of her work, was probably of divine rather than spiritualist. The specifics of the Discovery are hard to unravel. There were vague hints that it involved sexuality and the three salt fountains of life (the Dew, the Rain, and the Frost and Snow) in the body that could be properly activated and aligned by proper understanding — Metaphysics. Humans, Brown taught, are a "Mine of Wealth" with 36 "Talents" or mental faculties that can be revealed by a proper Metaphysical Education, which she offered for a fee. She also provided for $6.00 18-ounce bottles of the primary products of the Discovery: Poor Richard's Eye Water, the Ear Preparation, and the Unequaled Scalp Renovator, which, she guaranteed, would cure the indicated diseases. For the masses smaller bottles of the same cures were available for $1.00. The journal and the Discovery are precursors of New Thought and Christian Science (Brown's pamphlet is among Mary Baker Eddy's papers) and of many of the tricks of advertising and promotion that were then coming into prominence. American Antiquarian Society
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| Issues: | Metaphysician V1 N1 Oct 1874 |
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