1875 - Religion

Religion

Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by New England healer Mary Baker Eddy, 54, claims that biblical teachings helped her recover from the effects of a bad fall. Sickly since childhood, she found a "science" in the healings of Jesus as related in the New Testament and began a Christian Science movement in 1866 (see 1879).

The Theosophical Society is founded by charismatic Ukraine-born U.S. mystic Helena Blavatsky (née Helena Petrovna Hahn), 44, who at age 17 married a Russian military officer and provincial vice governor, separated from him a few years later, arrived at New York in steerage 2 years ago, claims to have received knowledge from "masters" on a trip to Tibet, and has charmed millionaire Colonel Henry Steel Olcott into abandoning his family to devote all his time (and money) to his spiritualist studies with her. Chaired by Olcott, the Society has as its avowed purpose the encouragement of the "universal Brotherhood of Humanity" and the revelation of "unexplained laws of Nature and the psychical powers latent in man" (see 1884).