Mind-Cure and Science of Life, The.
A Scientific, Progressive Monthly Magazine, of Special Interest to the Reformer and the Afflicted / Devoted to Mental and Spiritual Science of Healing / Devoted to Mind Healing. Spirit Rules. "Matter" Obeys, if it Exists / We Cure through Truth, Justice, and Love / Behold, I will bring it Health and Cure, and I will cure them, and will reveal unto them the abundance of Peace and Truth / In hoc signo vinces
Other titles: Mind-Cure Journal
1884--1885 Monthly
Chicago, IL. Publisher: Mind Cure Publishing Association. Editor: A.J. Swarts, Chief Editor; then Rev. Andrew J. Swarts, editor and publisher; then Andrew J. Swarts, Jean Hazzard, Kathie L. Swarts; Charles M'Lean (McLean). Succeeded by: Mental Science Magazine and Mind-Cure Journal
1/1, October 1884-September 1885. $1.00 (then $2.00) a year, 16-24 pp.

The journal was called Mind-Cure Journal from 2/1 to 2/3, October-December 1885. This journal was the pivot on which those concerned with spiritualism, spiritual healing and magnetism turned toward the amalgam that came to be known as New Thought. Most of those prominent in these movements at the time contributed to or advertised in the journal: Prentice Mulford, Freeman B. Dowd, George Dutton, Abby Morton Diaz, "J.V. Beneficio" (Bryan J. Butts), Alice B. Stockham, E.J. Ahrens, Ella Wheeler Wilcox,John Harvey Kellogg (co-inventor of corn flakes, proponent of enemas and save-the-semen), Charles W. Close, George Chainey (whose the Gnostic, published with W.J. Colville and Anna Kimball, republished Dowd's articles from this journal), John Hamlin Dewey, Helen Wilmans, W.F. Evans, Joseph Rodes Buchanan, Cyrus R. Teed, Henry Kiddle, Mattie Hull, Jay Chaapel, Charles Dawbarn, Warren Chase, Captain H.H. Brown, Cora L.V. Richmond, Joel Tiffany, Lyman C. Howe, et al. Emma Hardinge Brittan is listed among the "editorial contributors" of the journal (though no article by her appears); Emma Curtis Hopkins (who had originally attacked Swarts for plagiarism when she edited Mary Baker Eddy's Christian Science Journal) managed the journal for Swarts for a few months in 1886 after she was separated from Eddy; and the cover of the journal originally was one of the charts (the "Tree of Life") from the discoveries of the millennialist eccentric Alesha Sivartha (or Dr. Merton Sivartha, or Arthur E. (or W.) Merton) -- Aleisha Holmes Dodge, 1834-1915 -- who strove to establish a feminist, socialist paradise in Jerusalem and counted Swarts and his wife among his disciples.

Swarts was a Methodist Episcopal minister (later turned Unitarian) and old spiritualist and was introduced to New Thought through his wife, Katie, a medium. He claimed to have practiced healing since the 1860s and in May 1884 took part of Eddy's Christian Science course and sent an article of his own to her Christian Science Journal, only to turn away from her over her attempt to control mental healing financially and her rejection of spiritualism and mesmerism, and increasingly followed the independent path taught by W.F. Evans. In late 1885 he and Katie, together with George B. Charles (later to publish the Christian Metaphysician), Alice B. Stockham, and Mary Plunkett (who was to publish Truth and the International Magazine of Christian Science) and others started the Mental Science University in Chicago ($100 for a Master's Degree), whose organ the journal was, and then organized the first Mental Science National Association convention, in 1886, of which Cyrus R. Teed ("Koresh," the founder of "Koreshanity") was president. In 1888, incensed by Eddy's attacks on him and the journal, he sought out Julius A. Dresser, one of P.P. Quimby's original students, and laid out in the pages of the journal the story of Eddy's indebtedness to Quimby (and hinted at her past as a medium)--exposures which, he later said, cost him 1,600 subscribers.

The journal was the first national journal devoted to mental science and, other than its repudiation of Eddy's Christian Science, strove to treat all the flavors of mental science equally, without judging among them, and advertisement for the offerings of all the independent teachers of the new healing science appeared in its pages. Swarts was a firm adherent of the belief in the illusory nature of "matter" (which he put in quotation marks in the journal's first motto: Spirit Rules; "Matter Obeys, if it Exists"). He and his wife were not only teachers of the new science, but practitioners, with an emphasis on "absent treatment"--the care of patients at a distance. Although the journal bragged in February 1888 that it probably had "the largest circulation of any journal in the Science," its success was precarious. Rowe's American Newspaper Directory in 1884 credited the journal with more than 1,500 subscribers in its first year, and that number rose to 2,500 by 1888, but after 1886 it faced serious competition from the Guiding Star, the Christian Metaphysician, Christian Science (Chicago), the Chicago Christian Scientist, the International Magazine of Christian Science, and other journals. In July 1888 Swarts announced that he was looking for someone to purchase the journal, and in November his name was replaced on the masthead by Katie's and the journal (published as Mental Science Magazine after January 1886) ceased with the issue for February-March 1889. Swarts later published Light of Ages in Tennessee and Mind-Healing Condensed, a handbook of the new methods of healing, and continued (in Carrier Dove, December 12, 1891) to defend mental science and Quimby's role in originating it. He died October 17, 1898, at the home of his sister in Washington, as reported in Progressive Thinker on November 17, 1898. No mention was made of Katie. The first issue of the journal notes the appearance of "Dr." Charles M'Lean / McLean, then claiming a Glasgow medical degree and practicing "Divine Science" in Chicago. He has a long and sordid history. In 1885 he worked with Lewis H. Anderson in various schemes to develop mediumship and enlarge the bust, and was then arrested and vanished, to appear in London in August 1888 where he was trying to establish a mind-cure institute and was jailed again for molesting a 13-year old girl. Inexplicably, the journal seems to have been published (or at least distributed) in Melbourne, Australia. The Harbinger of Life, December 1885 notes it as "A new monthly journal intended to instruct the public in thhe Application of the Soul Forces to the Cure of Disease, Physical and Mental. It contains forty columns of first-class matter by the highest living authorities." 7/ a year; 8/ posted. LOC; Boston Athenaeum; Harvard University; National Library of Medicine; New York Academy of Medicine.

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