Elizabeth J. French (b. Poorman) (1821-1900) was born in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, and died in Boston, Massachusetts. She married Joseph French, a civil engineer, in the 1840s, but by 1852 had relocated to New York with her daughters, Joseph remaining behind. In New York and elsewhere, French offered her services as a clairvoyant and healer, attracting both acclaim and controversy. In the late 1850s, French began to mentor Emma Harding (later known as Emma Hardinge Britten), an English actress affiliated with the New York Spiritualist community, as a medium. They opened free clinics in New York City and Philadelphia where poor women could receive electrical treatment for illness. Over time, French became well-known for a technique she developed termed electro-therapeutics or galvanic therapy. In 1873, she published A New Path in Electrical Therapeutics, which described how "electrical cranial diagnosis" could be used to cure a variety of diseases. Alongside her healing work, French was involved in the Temperance movement, becoming president of a Temperance Union Home for alcoholics in 1874, president of the Woman's Crusade of Philadelphia in 1875, and later was the secretary of the Ladies Loyal Relief Organization in 1891. French became a student of Mary Baker Eddy, completing the Primary Class in August 1886 and the Normal Class in October of that year. She immediately took up the cause of Christian Science, giving a lecture titled "What is Christian Science?" in Rochester, New York, that October and becoming a member of the Christian Scientist Association. French was the first Christian Scientist in Philadelphia to place her card in The Christian Science Journal, starting in October 1886 until 1888. In late 1886, rumors circulated that French had turned her back on Eddy. Although French assured Eddy that she was devoted to Christian Science and loved and admired Eddy and her teachings, Eddy responded that she had received evidence of French's perfidy. She accused French of slander and threatened to have her arrested if she ever came to Boston. It seems as though the pair reconciled however, as Eddy wrote to French without malice less than two weeks later and French continued to advertise in the Journal for another two years. French attempted to visit Eddy in 1887, but there is no record that the visit took place. By 1894, French had moved to Boston and appears to have drifted away from Christian Science. In 1897, she was giving talks on health and electricity with one of her daughters, Belle French Patterson, in their shared home and office on Huntington Avenue, where French continued to reside until her passing.

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