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S. A. Weltmer

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S. A. Weltmer
Born 7 July 1858(1858-07-07)
Wooster, Wayne Co., Ohio
Died 6 December 1930 (72)
Nevada, Vernon Co., Missouri
Workplace(s) American School of Magnetic Healing; Weltmer School of Healing; Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics
Affiliations Freemasonry (32°); Knights Templar; Elks; Odd Fellows; Knights of Pythias; Atlantian Mystics
"FROM B.C. 292 TO A.D. 1899" - Weltmer and Aesculapius advert.

Sidney Abram Weltmer (July 7, 1858 - December 6, 1930) was an American Baptist minister and magnetic healer who devised Suggestotherapy (Weltmerism), the practice of which was taught and used at his American School of Magnetic Healing and Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics of Nevada, Missouri.

Selected Bibliography

Press Coverage

1890s

vs. Christian Advocate (1899)

A libel suit filed was by Weltmer and J. H. Kelly, business manager of the Weltmer Insitute, against Rev. Dr. C. M. Bishop and Rev. Dr. Palmore over an article by Bishop in the 16 Aug. 1899 issue of Palmore's Christian Advocate. The trial took place at Butler, Missouri for six days and over two hundred witnesses were reportedly called to testify, concluding with Bishop being ordered to pay $750 and Palmore being exonerated. The verdict against Bishop was eventually overturned on appeal.

1900s-10s

vs. U.S. Post Office (1900-1903)

Fraud Order Issued (1900)
Supreme Court Verdict (1902)
Case Dismissed by Complainants (1903)

As Weltmer and Kelly had dissolved the American School and reformed as the Weltmer School, this new organisation not being under a fraud order, even in light of the Supreme Court victory, the case against the Postmaster was dropped.

1920s-30s

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Authorised Biographies

  • Brown, Grace M. (1906), Seven Steps in the Life of Prof. S. A. Weltmer, Hudson Press, https://archive.org/details/sevenstepsinlif00browgoog 
  • Stevens, Walter Barlow (1915), "Professor Sidney Abram Weltmer", Missouri the Center State: 1821-1915, 4, Chicago & St. Louis: S. J. Clarke Pub. Co., p. 674-676 

    Professor Sidney Abram Weltmer is the founder and president of the Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics at Nevada, Missouri. His deep research and wide study along many scientific lines have led to his clear understanding of truths which largely affect man in his physical, mental and moral condition, and the value of the work which Professor Weltmer is doing is attested by thousands who have benefited by his teaching and curative methods. He was born in Wooster, Ohio, July 7, 1858. The genealogy of the Weltmer family is traced back to Amsterdam, Holland, where they were known as the Waldemir family. His father was Abram Weltmer and his mother, Mrs. Catherine (Hull) Weltmer, who was the first woman to take an A.B. degree from Denison University at Granville, Ohio.

    Professor Weltmer was largely self-educated, pursuing his studies, however, under the systematic tutorage of his mother, He decided to make the practice of medicine his life work and for four years studied under Dr. J. W. Brent of Tipton, Missouri, but his health failed him and he was forced to abandon the idea of practicing medicine at that time. In fact, it was thought he would be a victim of consumption within six months or at the most within a year. Fate, however, had something else in reserve for him. He began teaching in the country schools and was ordained as a Baptist minister. Within a year he recovered his health and resumed teaching, which profession he followed in various public schools and colleges. He was always a tireless student and voracious reader and early in life became interested in philosophy, logic and psychology. He conducted many experiments in applied psychology and improved every opportunity for investigation and study, even while pursuing his regular vocation for the support of himself and family. In 1885 he founded and was president of the Akinsville (Mo.) Normal School and successfully conducted one four year course, the school disbanding in 1889. In the meantime he organized the Sedalia Public Library and was librarian from 1893 until 1895. During that period, while acting as librarian, he began systematic experimentation in applied psychology, hypnotism, suggestion, etc., and made extended experimentation in psychological methods in the cure of disease.

    Back of his entrance upon his present life work there lies story of failure to understand a Biblical text. It was while he was preaching as a minister of the Baptist church that he attempted to deliver a sermon upon that chapter of the Bible which names as proof of faith the curing of disease by the “laying on of hands.” Overwhelmed in the middle of his sermon with a deluge of doubt, he cut it short with this announcement to the congregation: “I don’t understand that text, or else it isn’t true, and I will never preach again until I do understand it and know whether it is true or not.” Thirty-two years afterward, to a congregation in which there were forty who had heard that announcement, he preached another sermon, his first in all that time, in which he declared that now he knew the text to be true. In all the intervening years, as previously stated, he was carrying on his study, investigation and research along the various lines indicated, each year bringing to him a clearer understanding of things that were before mystical to him.

    It was on the 19th of February, 1897, that he founded the Weltmer Institute of Suggestive Therapeutics at Nevada, Missouri. Seventeen years have since come and gone and the Weltmer Institute has today the addresses of two hundred and sixty-two thousand satisfied patrons from all parts of the world where the English language is spoken. There is not so much of the mystical about the Weltmer system as the idea of curing by the “laying on of hands” would imply to the average everyday sort of man. He has simply utilized the truths which psychology has enunciated and facts gleaned from other sciences. He does not claim that there is no healing property in drugs or osteopathy or Christian Science, or in any other scheme of healing, but confines his treatments to thought suggestion direct, his mode being based upon what he regards as a scientific psychological analysis, attributing for the sake of analysis only, three departments of mind to every human personality; the conscious mind, or that which “takes thought” about the morrow; the second, the sub-conscious mind, which may perhaps be termed a receptacle for the memory; and the third, the unconscious mind, which he believes controls the involuntary functions of the physical body and which he regards as the indwelling spirit of God, theologically speaking, “the kingdom of heaven within you.” To enable him to utilize that analysis for healing purposes the patient and the student are first taught a process of investigation, bringing about acceptance, belief and actual knowledge. This process of investigation is applied by the Weltmer Institute to the healing of bodily diseases primarily, yet that is not the sole aim of the school, for the same three stages of acquiring knowledge are applied to all phases of life, physical and spiritual.

    Professor Weltmer has naturally written much. He is the author of books and courses of instruction which have had very wide distribution, one book having gone through the twenty-sixth edition and one hundred and thirty-seventh thousand. He is the author of Regeneration, Self-Protection, Real Man, Telepathy, Suggestion Simplified, Therapeutic Suggestion, New Voice of Christianity, Intuition, Hypnotism, Who Is A Christian, Mystery Revealed, Self-Reliance, and a complete correspondence course in psychology, general philosophy, suggestive therapeutics and right living.

    Professor Weltmer was married October 8, 1879, to Mary Genoa (Adair) Stone. The ancestry of the Stone and Adair families is traced back to the Adairs of England and the Fishers of Holland. Her father served with Price in the Confederate army and drove government transports through to California on the Santa Fe trail with the forty-niners. He was a Baptist minister, who was given praise for securing an unusually large per cent of converts. To Professor and Mrs, Weltmer have been born the following named: Cyrus Ernest, who married Dorothea Hoffman, of Ghent, Belgium; Silas Woodson, who wedded Eula L. Rooke, of Steubenville, Ohio; Stella Truman, the wife of Curd W. Mitchell, of Tularosa, New Mexico; Tracy Carleton, at home; and Beulah Ethel, the wife of Hugh L. Glenn, of Nevada, Missouri.

    Professor Weltmer is a Knight Templar and Thirty-second Degree Mason, an Elk, an Odd Fellow and a Knight of Pythias and an unoath-bound initiate in the fourth degree of Atlantian Mystics. Deeply interested in the welfare of his city, he is now active as chairman of the clean-up civic improvement committee of the Nevada Business Club. He is keenly alive to existing conditions, whether affecting the individual or community, and stands for progress and advancement at all times. It is often believed that when an individual becomes a student along a special line to which the majority of mankind do not give their attention he becomes somewhat of a recluse, withdrawing from the everyday affairs of life; not so with Professor Weltmer. He is in every sense a factor in the community in which he lives and his influence is a potent element for good along all those lines which affect the general interests of society.