Mary Baker Eddy was the founder of Christian Science, an American Protestant denomination. She was born on July 16, 1821, in Bow, New Hampshire. Her early years were marked by poor health. She became a patient of Phineas Quimby in 1862 and gained some benefits from his "magnetic healing." Later, she declared hypnotism to be ineffective and abandoned Quimby. After a fall in 1866 that injured her spine, she "turned to God," and spent the next three years reading and thinking about spirituality and healing.
In 1875, she published her most famous book, Science and Health. It became the textbook of the Christian Science movement. She opened the Church of Christ, Scientist in Boston in 1879. She died in Newton, Massachusetts, on December 3, 1910.