I was out on a bike ride today, and I saw a lot of monuments in Lynn (MA) that I’d never noticed before, including this one at the spot where Mark Baker Eddy slipped and hurt her back in 1866:
http://www.itemlive.com/news/monument-saluting-mary-baker-eddy-rededicated/article_2c759c0e-bb3c-5d3f-ae81-e7e0351f4f93.html
The injury was supposed to be a crystallizing moment in Ms. Eddy’s development of Chistian Science. To quote Wikipedia:
In February 1866, after a fall in Lynn, Massachusetts caused a spinal injury, Eddy said she experienced a healing. She is quoted saying:[42]
She later filed a claim for money from the city of Lynn for her injury on the grounds that she was “still suffering from the effects of that fall” (though she afterwards withdrew the lawsuit).[43] Gillian Gill writes that Eddy’s claim was probably made under financial pressure from her husband at the time. Her neighbors believed her sudden recovery to be a near-miracle.[44] Mary’s attending physician Alvin M. Cushing, a homeopath, testified under oath that he “did not at any time declare, or believe, that there was no hope for Mrs. Patterson’s recovery, or that she was in critical condition.”[45]
Mary Baker Eddy (nee Baker; July 16, 1821 – December 3, 1910) was an American religious leader, Christian healer, and author, who in 1879 founded The Church of Christ, Scientist, the Mother Church of the Christian Science movement. She also founded The Christian Science Monitor in 1908, and three religious magazines: the Christian Science Sentinel, The Christian Science Journal, and The Herald of Christian Science.
Eddy wrote numerous books and articles, most notably the 1875 book Science and...
Ironically, the injury happened the month after the death of Phineas Quimby, of whom Ms. Eddy had been a patient.