Introduction To John Wesley'S Practice

Introduction To John Wesley'S Practice

INTRODUCTION TO JOHN WESLEY'S

PRACTICE AND PUBLICATIONS OFFERING

MEDICAL AND HEALTH ADVICE

We had rather to sit at the feet of the venerable Wesley as a divine, than as a teacher of physicJ

So opined John Stamp in 1845 in the Wesleyan Methodist Magazine, after mentioning in a memoir of Charles Atmore some medical advice that Atmore had received from John Wesley. Stamp was a leading minister in the largest branch of the British church, eventually serving as President of Conference. As such, a few might be surprised by his reservation about Wesley's authority on any topic. But twenty-first-century readers are more likely to be mystified by his comment—on several levels. To begin with, they may not know that 'divine' was the common term at the time for a clergyman; while a teacher of 'physic' was someone who offered advice on medical matters. Learning this, many may wonder why anyone would have considered sitting at the feet of Wesley, a clergyman and leader in the Methodist renewal movement, as a teacher of physic. By contrast, those who notice the prominence of medical advice in Wesley's writings may wonder how this interest came to be considered so eccentric by his followers within a few decades of his death. Since the present volume is devoted to Wesley's publications of medical and health advice, a key task of this introduction will be to trace Wesley's practice of offering this advice, placing it in historical context.

We will also explore general characteristics of the advice that Wesley offered, and consider the reaction of his contemporaries and later scholars to this dimension of Wesley's ministry and publications.

The Historical Precedent for John Wesley's Practice of Offering Medical and Health Advice A helpful place to begin considering Wesley's practice of offering medical and health advice is the term 'physic' in the title of his

1 John S. Stamp, footnote to 'Memoir of the Rev. Charles Atmore', Wesleyan Methodist Magazine 68 (1845): 10.

Medical and Health Writings Primitive Physic} A central assumption of early Western medicine was that human health is dependent upon maintaining balance in the various constituents of our nature, reflecting the balance of nature more broadly. This assumption was first articulated in Greek, where a key term for 'nature' was equate; (phusis). Moving through Latin into English, a plural form of this term—'physics'—came to name study of the natural world in general. In the eighteenth century the singular form 'physic' was also in common use, focussed on study of human nature. Specifically, the term designated study of and resulting advice about maintaining or restoring health in humans. It could denote medicinal substances, but it also referred to health-promoting practices or habits.^ Similarly, a physician (or 'teacher of physic') was a person knowledgeable of human nature

(ideally gained through a university degree), who gave advice on how to cure disorders, and was particularly concerned to commend regimens of diet and exercise that promoted well-being. The adoption of this regimen was left largely to the patient; while the administration of specific cures was often left in the hands of surgeons and apothecaries (vocations based more on apprenticeship than university education).2 3 4 The eighteenth-century ideal in England of persons receiving medical advice from university-trained physicians was just that— an ideal. The effort to put it in place had been long underway, and it would be well into the nineteenth century before physicians with such training were available across the whole of the country. A large percentage of people in Wesley's time had little access to professional physicians, particularly those in the villages scattered across the island and the poor in larger cities. They relied for medical care mainly upon family and friends, guided by whatever communal traditions were most influential. These traditions were a mixed bag, containing effective treatments gained by hard-won experience, intermingled with both ineffective but innocuous treatments and 2JW initially used 'physick', at a time when preference for this spelling was beginning to decline in British culture. Recognizing this fact by 1773, he changed to the spelling 'physic' when including Primitive Physic in his collected Works. We will use the shorter spelling.

3 See the first two main definitions of'physic' in OED( 1989).

4 See Harold J. Cook, 'Physick and Natural History in Seventeenth-Century England', in Peter Barker & Roger Ariew (eds.), Revolution and Continuity: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Early Modern Science (Washington, DC: Catholic

University of America Press, 1991), 63-80; and Mary Lindemann, Medicine and Society in Early Modern Europe, 2nd edn. (New York: Cambridge University Press,

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice

harmful—even deadly—options. As such, sufferers were also a ready market for anyone hawking a newly discovered 'cure'. While a few of these powders and elixirs proved beneficial, many were concoctions of unscrupulous quacks.5

Worry that reliance upon unqualified practitioners was causing harm to English citizens helped create the eighteenth-century ideal of university-trained physicians. The earliest surviving expression of this worry is a petition by a small cadre of London physicians in 1421, asking Parliament that no one be allowed to practice medicine who lacked proper (i.e., university) qualifications.6 While members of Parliament were likely sympathetic, they surely realized that this was impractical at a time when there were so few persons with such qualifications. There is no record that the petition was even considered. The first formal action by Parliament on the topic was a 1511 statute that placed regulation of the providers of medical care in the hands of bishops of the Church of England—each in his own diocese.7 As John Raach has commented, the Church was apparently considered 'the one institution whose influence was extensive and potent enough to be effective in suppressing quacks and licensing the members of the medical profession'.8 To be sure, the Royal

College of Physicians was soon established (in 1518) and took over authority for licensing physicians in London. But its influence remained restricted to London well into the eighteenth century, with the task of insuring proper medical care across the rest of England remaining in the hands of the Church.9

How did the Church of England attempt to fulfil this task, particularly in the multitude of villages where there were few with any university training? Simply issuing licenses to those qualified did

5 See Roy Porter, Disease, Medicine, and Society in England 1550—1860 (London: The Economic History Society, 1987); Roy Porter, 'The Patient in England, c. 1660-1800', in Andrew Wear (ed.), Medicine in Society (New York: Cambridge

University Press, 1992), 91-118; and Anne Digby, Making a Medical Living: Doctors and Patients in the English Market for Medicine, 1720-1911 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

6 See Justin Colson & Robert Ralley, 'Medical Practice, Urban Politics, and Patronage; The London "Commonality" of Physicians and Surgeons of the 1420s',

English Historical Review 130 (2015): 1102—31.

7 Statute 3 Hen. 8, c. 11: An Act concerning Physicians and Surgeons.

8John H. Raach, 'English Medical Licensing in the early Seventeenth Century', Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 16 (1944): 267-288; here, 277-78.

9 Note how 3 Hen. 8, c. 11 is reproduced in the standard text of church law in the early eighteenth century: Edmund Gibson, Codex Juris Ecclesiastici Anglican!; or the Statutes, Constitutions, Canons, Rubrics, and Articles of the Church of England

(London: J. Baskett, 1713), vol. II, ch. 1.

Medical and Health Writings not seem enough. A broader possible response is evident in George

Herbert's influential treatise on the pastoral role, A Priest to the Temple; or the Country Parson (1652). Herbert contended that a faithful country parson should desire to 'be all to his parish; and not only a pastor but a lawyer also, and a physician'.10 After a brief exhortation for pastors to provide free legal advice to parishioners when they had no other access, Herbert dwelt at length on the importance of offering care for those in the flock who were sick. He insisted that parsons should see their role (and/or perhaps that of their wife) as including the provision of medical advice and care in their parish, whenever a physician was not available. To prepare for this role of priest/physician, Herbert charged pastors to study at least one book on anatomy, one on physic (he suggested that by Jean

Fernel), and a volume describing the health benefits of local herbs."

An important assumption undergirded Herbert's recommendation. The near illiteracy of some village priests was one of the complaints used to justify the break of the Church of England from Rome in the sixteenth century. The initial turmoil following that split (which left many parishes without clergy for a time) did little to resolve the situation. But things improved over time. By 1600 nearly a quarter of clergy serving churches held at least a BA degree from Cambridge or Oxford (with the percentage highest in areas near the universities). By mid-century, when Herbert was writing, the average had risen to about two-thirds.12 At this point the resident in the scattered villages of England most likely to have a university education was the priest. Moreover, the priest's BA curriculum covered the range of the liberal arts—from classical languages and literature, through history and law, to mathematics and natural philosophy (study of the physical and biological world).13 Thus,

Herbert could assume that most country parsons were prepared to study works on anatomy and physic on their own.

Herbert ended his exhortation for country parsons to provide physic with a significant limitation. Just as a parson should be chari10 George Herbert, A Priest to the Temple; or the Country Parson (London: T.

Garthwaite, 1652), 94. This is the focus of chapter 23 in Herbert, titled 'The Parson's Completeness'.

11 Ibid., 96-101.

12 See Rosemary O'Day, The English Clergy: The Emergence and Consolidation of a Profession, 1558-1642 (Leicester University Press, 1979), 1-23.

13 See Mordechai Feingold, 'The Humanities', in Nicholas Tyacke (ed.), The History of the University of Oxford: Vol. IK Seventeenth-Century Oxford (Oxford:

Clarendon Press, 1997), 211-357.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice

table, he should also be just; he ought 'not to encroach on others' professions, but to live on his own'. Thus a country parson ought not offer medical advice beyond his own parish, unless the recipient is too poor to pay a physician.14 By this limitation Herbert, a moderate

Calvinist, may have hoped to allay resistance to his emphasis from other Calvinist clergy. The Calvinist stance dominant in the Church of England through the second half of the sixteenth century came under challenge in the early decades of the 1600s. One focus of debate became the model of the priest/physician.15 The strongest advocates of clergy offering medical advice tended to be radical Lutherans or reactionary anti-Calvinists. These writers suggested that clergy had significant time available after fulfilling their priestly duties and encouraged them to fill this time with charitable work, including offering medical and health advice. Some Calvinists countered that care for the souls of parishioners—through preaching and counselling—should be the constant concern of clergy; those with time for other duties were guilty of negligence. These Calvinists did not dismiss the importance of medical care. But they saw it as a distinct vocation, equally deserving the full attention of the practitioner.

There should be priests and physicians, but not priest/physicians.

With the foundation laid by their BA studies, and opportunities for voluntary study of physic during their BA (or while pursuing the MA, which was increasingly expected for ordination as an elder), by the mid-1600s a number of university graduates were prepared for and inclined to adopt the role of priest/physician that Herbert commended.16 But they were equally prepared to pursue one or the other role as their sole vocation, if personal conviction or broader pressures pushed in this direction. And this was a time of significant pressures! The number of students taking medical degrees at Oxford more than doubled in the 1630s, reflecting in part reduced opportunity for Calvinist-leaning clerics to obtain a living during William Laud's tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury. The outbreak of civil war and triumph of the parliamentary party produced another wave of potential priests studying medicine instead (this time those more inclined to Arminian theology and the BCP liturgy).

14 Herbert, Priest to the Temple, 100-101.

15 See particularly David Harley, 'John Hart of Northampton and the Calvinist Critique of Priest-Physicians', Medical History 42 (1998): 362-86.

16 See the example of John Ward, a student at Christ Church, Oxford in the 1650s, detailed in Robert G. Frank, 'Medicine', Tyacke (ed.), Seventeenth-Century

Oxford, 505-58 (p. 511); and the broader generalization in A. W. Sloan, English Medicine in the Seventeenth Century (Durham: Academic Press, 1996), 138-40.

Medical and Health Writings When the Puritan parliament proved unable to bring stability, the monarchy and episcopacy were restored. 'Phis was enforced in 1662 by ejection from their living of nearly 2,000 clergy (mainly staunch

Calvinists) who refused to embrace the Act of Conformity. Several of those ejected turned to offering physic to support themselves.

And current students in the universities with dissenting convictions, who may have been previously inclined to ministry, now went into medicine.17

The impact of the division spawned by the 1662 ejection between dissenting churches and the universities (which required students to affirm allegiance to the Church of England) grew larger over time. The predominance of dissenters going into medicine was such that by the middle of the eighteenth century a majority of leading physicians were within their ranks.18 This made it harder to attract faculty in medicine at the universities, contributing to a notable decline on this front through the 1700s.19 This decline also reflected a growing shift toward training physicians through a combination of academic study and clinical work, which found a warmer reception at the time in settings outside of Oxford and Cambridge.20

Meanwhile, dissenting churches set up their own academies for training clergy. These were small, lacking the range of faculty to support voluntary study in physic, even if this had been desired.

And by the later 1600s most dissenters took for granted the separate vocations of pastor and physician. As a result, echoes of Herbert's ideal of the priest/physician were scattered and weak in their ranks. One of these faint echoes can be heard in Richard Baxter's

Christian Directory. Baxter was an influential moderate among the dissenters. At the end of this volume he offered a list of books that one desiring to prepare for ministry should own. His core list, for those with limited funds, was restricted to books on scripture, theology, and church history. But for those who could afford it, Baxter included among books of the next rank of importance a couple of texts on physic, including Herbert's favourite: Jean Fernel.21

17 See Frank, 'Medicine', 511-13.

18 William Birken, 'The Dissenting Tradition in English Medicine of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries', Medical History 39 (1995): 197-218.

I') Detailed in Charles Webster, 'The Medical Faculty and the Physic Garden', L. S. Sutherland & L. G. Mitchell (eds.), The History of the University of Oxford:

Vol. K The Eighteenth Century (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), 683-723.

"Jonathan Reinarz, 'The Transformation of Medical Education in EighteenthCentury EnglandJournal of the History of Education Society 37 (2008): 549-66.

21 Richard Baxter, A Christian Directory (London: Robert White, 1673) 922-23; see topic V in the second list.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 1

With the removal of the staunchest Calvinist voices, the Church of England after 1662 was decidedly Arminian and 'high-church' in commitments (a stance that defenders championed as truly 'Anglican'). 1 he ideal of the priest/physician found stronger resonance in this setting. To cite a key example, Gilbert Burnet, appointed

Bishop of Salisbury in 1689, published in 1692 A Discourse of the Pastoral Care. This became the standard handbook of Anglican pastoral care for several decades. Burnet insisted that, in addition to reverent leadership in regular worship, clergy should spend a significant portion of their time in charitable work among the needy in their parish. In particular, he suggested that The study and practice of physic, especially that which is safe and simple, puts the clergy in a capacity of doing great acts of charity, and of rendering both their persons and labours very acceptable to their people. It will procure their being soon sent for by them in sickness, and it will give them great advantages in speaking to them of their spiritual concerns when they are so careful of their persons.22

Before turning to trace John Wesley's embrace of the concern to care for both soul and body that Burnet commended, the precedent among his ancestors should be noted. The account can begin with his great-grandfather Bartholomew Westley (1596-1672). While no official record has been located, Bartholomew was almost certainly a university graduate, and may have supplemented the basic curriculum with some study of physic. Appointed a curate at Lyme

Regis, Dorsetshire in 1635, and renewed in 1641, Bartholomew was named rector of Charmouth in 1646. He was known to provide medical advice as part of his pastoral care while serving these parishes. He was also known to be a supporter of the Puritan revolt, and in 1662 suffered ejection from his living when he refused to embrace the Act of Conformity. From that point Bartholomew apparently abstained from preaching, supporting himself through the last decade of his life as a physician.23

John Westley (1636-71), son of Bartholomew and grandfather of our main focus, took both the BA and MA from Oxford. He

22 Gilbert Burnet, A Discourse of the Pastoral Care (London: Richard Chiswell, 1692), 183; see also, 194-201.

23 See Adam Clarke, Memoirs of the Wesley Family (London: J. Kershaw, 1823), 15-23; and A. G. Matthews, Calamy Revised; being a revision of Edmund Calamy's

Account of the Ministers and Others ejected and silenced, 1660-62 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1934), 521.

Medical and Health Writings was appointed rector of Winterbourne Whitchurch, Dorsetshire, in May of 1658. Among the few sources that survive about John Westley's ministry there is no mention of him offering advice in physic.

On the other hand, these sources make clear that he shared his father's loyalty to the Puritan cause and was similarly ejected from his living in 1662. Unlike his father, John chose to continue covertly as a minister. He was jailed more than once for such activity and his early demise came through an illness contracted while in prison.24

Like his paternal grandfather, John Wesley's maternal grandfather was a clergyman who sympathized with the Puritans and suffered ejection from the Church of England in 1662. But the fortunes of the two men diverged significantly from that point. Samuel

Annesley (1620-96), a moderate Calvinist, was able to carve out space to serve publicly as pastor of a Presbyterian congregation in London. The eulogy offered at his funeral stressed how widely Annesley was esteemed as a preacher and for his charity to the poor.25

But there is no mention of offering health advice as a notable aspect of Annesley's ministry. Given the tendency in dissenting circles to distinguish the vocations of priest and physician, and the watchful eye of the Royal College of Physicians in London where Annesley ministered, it may well not have been. Yet it should be noted that Annesley's substantial library contained around twenty volumes on medicine.26

This brings us to Samuel Wesley (1662-1735), John Wesley's father.27 Samuel's father and grandfather had both died by the time he reached his teens. It is unclear how much he was impacted by their precedent. Moreover, it was a mixed precedent; while Bartholomew

Westley modelled a priest/physician, there is no evidence that John Westley challenged the separation between the two vocations

24 Clarke, Memoirs, 23-49; and Matthews, Calamy Revised, 521.

25 Daniel Williams, The Excellency of a Public Spirit: Set forth in a Sermon ...at the Funeral of that late Reverend Divine Dr. Samuel Annesley (London: John Dunton, 1697), 137-40. See also Clarke, Memoirs, 233-43.

26 See Edward Millington, Bibliotheca Annesleiana; or a Catalogue of Choice Greek, Latin and English Books, both Ancient and Modern, ... being the library of the Reverend Samuel Annesley ... sold by auction on Thursday the Eighteenth of March,

1696. The medical volumes, by such authors as Boyle, Culpepper, Digby, and Helmont, can be found on pp. 7-8, 18.

2' See Clarke, Memoirs, 60-233; Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of the Rev.

Samuel Wesley (London: Simpkin, Marshall, and Co., i866); and Arthur Alan Torpy, The Prevenient Piety of Samuel Wesley Sr. (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press,

2009). Samuel dropped the 't' from the spelling of his last name when he left the dissenters to enroll at Oxford University and join the Church of England.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 9

that had become common in dissenting circles. With his marriage in 1688 to Susanna Annesley (1669-1742), Samuel gained in his father-in-law another role model who offered little overt challenge to this separation. Surviving reports of Samuel Wesley's life in ministry suggest that he followed suit. Concern for the spiritual state of his parishioners (and for their support of the monarchy!) is clear, but there is no mention of Samuel offering them medical and health advice. Similarly, the course of studies that Samuel prescribed for one serving as his curate stressed study of Scripture, early church authors, and Anglican and dissenting divines; with only the slightest mention of medical-related texts.28 The assumption underlying both Samuel's practice and his study recommendations may be indicated in 'An Essay upon all Sorts of Learning' published in 1692.29 Likely penned by Wesley, the essay sketches the range of topics that serious young students should engage. Among these is

'Physic and Surgery', a section introduced by the concession that it will be of present use only 'to such as are not well'. But the author encouraged study of these topics anyway, because there will surely come a time when the student suffers illness.30 This implied that (other than for physicians) the purpose of studying physic is to provide advice for oneself, and perhaps one's family. Accordingly, one of the fewr occasions of Samuel Wesley offering health advice that survives is John Wesley's memory of his father's exhortation when he entered Oxford University: 'Fail not, on any account whatever, to walk an hour every day.'31

To summarize, while John Wesley likely knew of his greatgrandfather's precedent for including the provision of medical advice within pastoral duties, his more immediate role models fit largely within a conception of the clerical office that focussed on the cure of souls, leaving labour for the cure of bodies (other than their own and those of their family) to the purview of other vocations,

28 Samuel Wesley, Advice to a Young Clergyman (London: Rivington & Roberts, [1735]), 22-55; here, 23. JW took the lead in publishing Samuel's manuscript, adding a preface.

29The essay stands at the front of The Young Student's Library: Containing Extracts and Abridgements of the Most Valuable Books printed in England and in the Foreign Journals, from the Year Sixty-Five to This Time (London: John Dunton, 1692), i-xviii. This project was led by Samuel's brother-in-law, John Dunton. While his name is not given, Samuel is believed to be the author of the opening essay; see

Tyerman, Samuel Wesley, 150-51.

30 Young Student's Library, ix—x.

31 JW letter to Miss Agnes Gibbes, May 1785, Methodist History 6.3 (1968): 59

(vol. 30 in this edn.).

Medical and Health Writings like physician, surgeon, and apothecary.32 If William Jacob is correct, the example of Wesley's father and grandfathers was fairly representative of English clergy across the eighteenth century— many may have helped laity obtain medical care from professionals, but few offered medical advice themselves (despite Burnet's recommendation).33

The Emergence and Growth of John Wesley's Practice of Offering Medical and Health Advice Through the first twenty years of John Wesley's life there is little to suggest that he would grow restive with confining the pastoral role to cure of souls, embracing a ministry that included care for the bodies of his flock, like that encouraged by Herbert and Burnet. During his BA study at Christ Church, Oxford (1720-24), for example, Wesley engaged the standard curriculum, including a text on natural philosophy, but nothing specific on physic.34

The first surviving evidence of Wesley reading in the area of physic is in a letter to his mother in late fall 1724, after he had completed the BA and was beginning work on the MA. He summarized for her the rigorous regimen of temperance and exercise championed by George Cheyne in his newly published Essay on Health and Long Life.35 Wesley's interest at this point appeared to be mainly for his own health, as one of those targeted by Cheyne—persons of a studious nature. A little over twenty years later, Wesley would digest much of Cheyne's advice and place it in the preface (§16) of Primitive Physic, addressed to a general audience.

In July 1725, as part of his MA studies, Wesley translated from Latin a treatise by Robert Boyle championing simple remedies and explaining their efficacy in terms of Newtonian physics.36 It was likely this assignment that led Wesley to Boyle's collection Some

,2JW's uncle Matthew Wesley (1664-1737), the younger brother of Samuel, opted for a vocation in medical care, as a prominent London apothecary; see

Clarke, Memoirs, 49-59.

33 William M. Jacob, The Clerical Profession in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1680-1840 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 226-27.

34 See John Cammel English, 'John Wesley's Studies as an Undergraduate', WHS 47 (1989): 29-37. The text on natural philosophy was Caspar Thomesen

Bartholin (1655-1738), Specimen philosophiae naturalis (Amsterdam: Henry Wetstein, 1697).

35JW to Susanna Wesley, Nov. 1, 1724, 25:151 in this edn.

36 Robert Boyle, De Specif corum Remediorum cum Corpusculari Philosophia Concordia (London: Samuel Smith, 1686); see his Oxford diary, July 9, 1725 (vol. 17 in this edn.).

/ntroduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 11 Receipts of Medicines, which he read about the same time and 'transcribed many of them for my own use'.37 A 'receipt' in this context was a summary of ingredients and procedures for making a medicinal preparation. Wesley's transcription was likely into a notebook dedicated to the topic of physic, like other notebooks he compiled at the time of extracts in poetry, prayers, and the like.38 Whatever the venue through which they were passed along, receipts drawn from Some Receipts comprised nearly a quarter of the entries in Wesley's

Collection of Receipts, published in 1745.

Through the end of 1726 Wesley read at least three more volumes on physic: Daniel Le Clerc, The History of Physic; George Cheyne,

A New Theory of Acute and Slow Continued Fevers; and Kenelm Digby, Choice and Experimental Receipts.39 His memory of the purpose of this reading twenty years later was that he made 'anatomy and physic the diversion of my leisure hours, though I never properly studied them'.40 This was in part because on March 17, 1726,

Wesley was elected a fellow of Lincoln College, and anticipated his future would unfold in this academic role.

On February 14, 1727, Wesley received his MA degree from Oxford. As he settled into his role at Lincoln College, he anticipated work on the Bachelor of Divinity, a further degree expected of college fellows. This work was put on hold in August 1727, when Wesley was persuaded to take temporary leave from Oxford to assist his ailing father, by serving as curate in Epworth and Wroote, Lincolnshire. This was John's first experience in full-time parish ministry.

He would continue in the role until November 1729, receiving ordination as elder in September 1728. Unfortunately, the portion of his manuscript diary covering most of this period has been lost, so we have little record of either his pastoral practice or his reading.

His own summary, given years later, was 'I preached much, but saw no fruit of my labour'.41

Wesley left Epworth in late 1729 because he had been recalled to his role of tutor at Lincoln College. As he prepared to return to training future priests, more deeply aware of the difficulties of this

37 See JW, 'To the Editor of Lloyd's Evening Post', c. Jan. 23, 1776 (in Appendix

D); and the bibliography for details on Some Receipts.

38 Many of these are part of the 'Colman Collection' in MARC (MA 1977/503); see particularly MS Poetry Miscellany (Vol. 1), and MS Prayer Manual (Vol. 8).

39 For further details, and citation locations in the Oxford diary, see the bibliography.

40 JW, Plain Account of... Methodists, XII.2, 9:275 in this edn.

41 JW, Principles of A Methodist Farther Explained (1746), VI.1, 9:222 in this edn.

Medical and Health Writings role, Wesley recorded in his diary on October 19, 1729 reading in Burnet's Discourse of the Pastoral Care. In mid-July of the following year he worked through Herbert's Country Parson f This is the first time in surviving records that Wesley encountered these two major voices of the previous century urging priests to include offering physic as part of their pastoral care. Since his current role was that of tutor, rather than pastor, there is no evidence of Wesley immediately appropriating the model of priest/physician. What can be found is record of him passing on to his students the advice he received from his father about walking regularly.43 Similarly, beyond expected inquiries about health and wishes for good health, there are few health advices in the letters that passed between John, his parents, and his siblings through his years at Oxford.44 Perhaps the most relevant letter is one to his mother, where John reported that Rev. Lionel Kirkham, rector of Stanton, Gloucestershire—and father of Wesley's close friend Robert Kirkham—assured him 'on the word of a priest and a physician' that walking in the open air was the best way to prevent gout.45 It is unclear whether this was a reference to Rev. Kirkham as both 'a priest and a physician', or of Rev.

Kirkham adding his voice to that of a physician. Either way, a priest was giving health advice.

When John Wesley returned to Oxford in 1729, in addition to his duties at Lincoln College, he became mentor to a small group of devout students in the larger university that had gathered around his brother Charles. "This group became known for their seriousness in personal devotions, attendance at the sacrament, and works of charity. The charitable work included offering schooling for poor children around Oxford and visiting those in the city's prisons. It also involved giving needy families 'physic', though John Wesley's defence of this action was likely using the term in the sense of supplying medicines that the families could not afford, rather than offering medical advice.46

In early April 1735, his father near death, John Wesley once again journeyed to Epworth to take charge of the parish and the fam42 For both items see vol. 17 in this edn.; the reading of Herbert is clearest on July 21-23.

43 See the letter of Richard Morgan Jr. to his father, January 12, 1734, 25:366 in this edn.

44 See Susanna Wesley's suggestion of how John should treat a bout of repeated bleeding at the nose in her letter to JW, May 14, 1727, 25:218 in this edn.

45JW to Susanna Wesley, June 11, 1731, 25:282-83 in this edn.

46 See JW to Richard Morgan Sr., Oct. 19, 1732, sec. Ill, 25:340 in this edn.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 13 ily (his older brother Samuel Jr. being unable to leave his school in Tiverton). Scholars debate how seriously John considered staying in Epworth, but the question proved moot. Samuel Sr. died

April 25, and within two months the living was assigned to Rev.

Samuel Hurst. Rather than returning directly to Oxford, John went to London, to fulfil his final obligation to his father—shepherding the elder Wesley's extensive commentary on Job through the press.4' This proved fateful, because while in London John Wesley was recruited to become a missionary priest to the colony James

Oglethorpe had helped found in Georgia.

By Wesley's later account, he spent the few months before his departure in October 1735 for Georgia in part studying 'more properly' works in anatomy and physic, because 'I imagined I might be of some service to those who had no regular physicians among them'.48 (It is hard to miss in this comment an echo of George Herbert's rationale for priests to study physic.) During his first year in Georgia (1736) Wesley read at least three further works: Thomas

Sydenham, Complete Method of Curing almost all Diseases; John Tennent, Every Man His Own Doctor, and Daniel Turner, The Art of Surgery.49 The volume by Tennent is of particular interest, because it was published in North America and emphasized medicinal herbs native to that land (as Herbert encouraged).

Accounts of his pastoral practice while in Georgia suggest that Wesley put this reading to good use, embracing the role of priest/ physician. In a journal-letter sent back to his friends in Oxford in September 1736, for example, Wesley described how a current wave of illness meant that he was spending every afternoon (from 1:00 to 5:00) visiting the sick in Savannah, where there were 'above five hundred sheep that are (almost) without a shepherd'.50 Similarly his published Journal for June 1737 mentioned that Thomas Causton

(the storekeeper and chief magistrate of Savannah) was seized with a slow fever, then adds: 'I attended him every day (as I did any of my parishioners who were in any painful or dangerous illness) and had a good hope, from the thankfulness he showed, that my labour was not in vain.'51 To be sure, neither of these accounts specifically mention giving medical advice, but the implication seems warranted by the intent that Wesley stated prior to his departure from England.

47 Samuel Wesley, Dissertationes in Librumjobi (London: William Bowyer, 1736).

48 JW, Plain Account of... Methodists, §XII.2, 9:275 in this edn.

49 For further details, and citation locations, see the bibliography.

50JW to George Whitefield, Sept. 10, 1736, 25:472 in this edn.

Journal, ]\mz 25, 1737, 18:183 in this edn.

Medical and Health Writings However thoroughly Wesley engaged the role of priest/physician while in Georgia, it was short-lived. By December 1737 he was onboard ship headed back to England, smarting from his struggles with a recalcitrant parish. There is every indication that Wesley intended to resume his academic life at Oxford. But business frequently took him to London through the spring of 1738, and while there he once again encountered a different call. Along with his brother Charles, John was caught up into the pietist/evangelical revival emerging in England. John's embrace of this revival was marked by his experience on May 24, 1738, on Aldersgate Street, of his heart being 'strangely warmed'.52 Though it was not immediately evident, his heart was also drawn to a new mission. Wesley would never be in Oxford again for more than visits. Likewise, he would never serve again as a parish priest. He was drawn instead into a leadership role in the revival.

For the first few months after that night on Aldersgate Street, Wesley tried to share his new-found emphasis on experiencing the Holy Spirit's assuring witness of God's love through the channels open to any ordained priest in the Church of England who held no parish. He served as guest preacher in churches around London and beyond, and spoke to informal societies outside of normal church hours. But resistance to the revival soon stiffened within the Church of England, shutting off use of their pulpits. This led Wesley, within a year of aligning with the revival, to follow his younger co-worker George Whitefield in adopting the 'more vile' practice of preaching to the public in fields and other settings outside of the parish church (and without the permission of the parish priest!).53

While Wesley tried to vindicate this practice by appeal to his status as a fellow of Lincoln College, it was viewed by most others—including his older brother Samuel—as a violation of his pledge to respect the authority of fellow clergy in their parishes, bordering on active schism.54

At this outset, and through the remainder of his life leading a wing of the evangelical revival, John Wesley contested the charge that actions he had taken amounted to schism from the Church of 52 JW, Journal, May 24, 1738, 18:249-50 in this edn.

53 See JW, Journal, Apr. 2, 1739, 19:46 in this edn.

54 See JW's comment to Bishop Butler on Aug. 16, 1739 (19:472 in this edn.) and Samuel Wesley Jr. to Susanna Wesley, Oct. 20, 1739, in Joseph Priestley (ed.),

Original Letters by the Rev. John Wesley and his Friends (Birmingham: Pearson 1791), 108-12.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 15 England." But he also added increasing fodder for the charge. He quickly recognized that many of the people being reached in the fields and drawn into the Methodist fold were not active in parish churches. Wesley's pastoral concern pushed him beyond simply exhorting them to start attending. He began incorporating activities usually fulfilled by parish priests and churches, like catechizing and home visitation, into Methodist life and practice. Of particular note, Wesley's strong conviction of the value of regular reception of the Lord's Supper drove him to find ways of providing it in Methodist gatherings—such as renting in 1743 a former Huguenot chapel on West Street in London, claiming for himself the waiver earlier granted Huguenots from the Church of England for holding sacramental services in the chapel.56

As Wesley exerted his full priestly role among his Methodist followers, is there evidence that he approached this as priest/physician, like he had the parish in Savannah? One of the first ministry structures that Wesley created in the Methodist society in London was 'a regular method of visiting the sick' carried on by volunteers within the society, set up in April 1741.57 It is hard to imagine that Wesley encouraged these volunteers to play a role that he had avoided. More likely, he was organizing them to carry on this ministry as his time in London was being reduced by the demands of the spreading movement. But if Wesley visited the sick in their homes during these earliest years of the revival, offering medical advice, there is little surviving record of the practice. It is possible that Wesley saw no need to mention his efforts. Or he may have hesitated to publicize a practice that could be perceived as further usurping the role of the parish priest.

With the Wesleyan branch of the evangelical revival beginning to spread across England, Wesley convened a conference of key leaders in London in late June 1744, to consider what teachings and practices ought to characterize the connexion in all of its settings.

'Visitor of the sick' was among the offices determined to be important in every society.58 The duties of this office were elaborated as:

1. To see every person within his district thrice a week. 2. To inquire into the state of their souls, and advise them as occasion may require.

55 For perhaps the final instance, see Sermon 121, 'Prophets and Priests', §§1521, 4:80-84 in this edn.

56 See JW, Journal, May 29, 1743, 19:326 in this edn.

57JW letter to CW, Apr. 21, 1741, 26:55-56 in this edn.

58Minutes, June 28, 1744, Q. 7, 10:138 in this edn.

Medical and Health Writings 3. To inquire into their disorder, and procure advice for them. 4. To inquire if they are in want, and relieve them, if it may be in kind.

5. To do anything for them which he can do. 6. To bring in his accounts weekly to the stewards.59

Visiting the sick in their homes was also specified as a key task of the 'assistants' (lay preachers upon whom Wesley was increasingly relying) as they itinerated from one society to the next.60

One question these guidelines for visitors of the sick and assistants left unaddressed was the most helpful source from which to 'procure advice'. In a few cases they might have access to physicians. Lacking this, they were dependent upon communal traditions. As pastor of the flock, Wesley took it upon himself to provide a resource that was informed by professional opinion, while targeted to the situation of his people—many of whom were poor and in rural settings. In the months following the conference in London he compiled receipts drawn from such authors as Robert

Boyle, John Allen, and Thomas Sydenham, as well as from multiple conversations. The fruit of this effort was published as A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor in early August 1745 in Bristol, as Wesley and his key associates gathered for a second conference.

One of the agreements made at this gathering was to 'keep a little stock of medicines at London, Bristol, and Newcastle, according to the Collection of Receipts'.^ With the pamphlet guide and a stock of medicines, visitors of the sick in these three main hubs of the Methodist connexion would be well provisioned.

Wesley's Collection of Receipts was equally a resource for his itinerant lay preachers in their visitation of the sick—a dimension of their role highlighted again in Bristol.62 But the record of this second conference suggests that Wesley expected more of his assistants than of local visitors of the sick. Note particularly the list of books recommended to be held in libraries at the three Methodist hubs for use by the assistants. It covers the range of topics studied at the BA level in the university by those preparing for ministry.

The one addition, beyond what Wesley studied for his own BA, is a set of texts on physic: Drake's Anatomy, Quincy's Dispensatory,

Allen's Synopsis, and Cheyne's works.63 Wesley clearly hoped that 59Minutes, June 29, 1744, Q. 9, 10:143 in this edn.

"Minutes, June 29, 1744, Q. 3, A. 12, 10:141 in this edn.

61 Minutes, Aug. 3, 1745, Q. 8, 10:160 in this edn.

"Minutes, Aug. 3, 1745, Q. 3, 10:159 in this edn.

63 Minutes, Aug. 3, 1745, 10:163-64 in this edn.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 17 the lay assistants would become equipped to go beyond mere reliance on Collection of Receipts in offering medical advice. He was prodding them to embrace the model of priest/physician in every dimension allowed someone lacking ordination (a status that excluded the dimension of presiding in sacraments). At least some of Wesley's assistants embraced this ministry of preacher/physician; as evidenced, for example, by the injunction that John and Charles

Wesley conveyed to the assistant James Wheatley, when he was accused of improper relationships with women in his circuit, of abstaining 'both from preaching and from practising physic'.64

Wesley's concern to attend to the health needs of those engaged by Methodist field-preaching and gathered into Methodist societies was clearly growing. It pushed him beyond merely offering advice as he happened to visit the sick in their homes, to experimenting with a web of lay visitors of the sick among the Methodist society in London, to standardizing this practice across the connexion, to charging and equipping his lay assistants to advise on health matters as they traversed their circuits, to publishing A Collection of Receipts as a guide for local visitors of the sick and assistants alike, to calls for providing free dispensaries of basic medical supplies in the three largest centres of Methodist activity. In early December

1746 Wesley's concern pushed him one step further—to embracing openly the role of priest/physician.65 As he described this development later (in an account that had just detailed the positive contribution of the lay visitors of the sick):

I was still in pain for many of the poor that were sick. There was so great expense, and so little profit. ... I saw the poor people pining away, and several families ruined, and that without remedy. At length I thought of a kind of desperate expedient. 'I will prepare, and give them physic myself.' ... I took into my assistance an apothecary, and an experienced surgeon; resolving at the same time not to go out of my depth, but to leave all difficult and complicated cases to such physicians as the patients should choose. I gave notice of this to the society, telling them that all who were ill of chronical distempers

(for I did not care to venture upon acute) might, if they pleased, come to me at such a time and I would give them the best advice I could, and the best medicines I had.66

64 JW and CW to James Wheatley, June 25, 1751, 26:465 in this edn.

65 JW\ Journal, Dec. 4-5, 1746, 20:150-51 in this edn.

66 JW, Plain Account of... Methodists, XII. 1-3, 9:275-76 in this edn.

Medical and Health Writings What made the launch of this semi-public clinic 'desperate' was not just the fact that Bishop Burnet's exhortation for Church of England clergy to offer physic was nearly half a century old. Burnet addressed his charge to priests working within their parish; Wesley was taking up the role outside of a parish assignment. Moreover, he launched this venture in London, where it was more likely to catch the disapproving eye of the Royal College of Physicians. One factor that may have bolstered Wesley's readiness to take the step was his recent recruitment of John Jones, who held a degree in medicine from Oxford, to assist at the Foundery.67 Jones had the training to carry on the venture Wesley had launched when Wesley left London for his next circuit around the connexion.

Wesley's first excursion out of London after launching the clinic at the Foundery was actually a brief visit to Bristol in mid-January

1747, where he tried to establish a similar venture. His letter to a friend describing this launch stressed the difficulty they encountered in obtaining sufficient medicines.68 The effort in Bristol proved short-lived, in part because the Bristol Infirmary already operated a free dispensary.69

The free clinic and dispensary for members of the Methodist society (and others) in London was more successful. Within four months of its launch Wesley estimated that he had seen 'six or seven hundred of the poor', and that nine in ten of these were 'remarkably altered for the better' within six weeks—if they followed his advice. Indeed 'many were cured of diseases under which they had laboured for ten, twenty, forty years'.70 Wesley's account two months later was more modest. After reviewing the records, he estimated that about six hundred persons had sought help over six months, of which: 'More than three hundred of these came twice or thrice, and we saw no more of them. About twenty of those who had constantly attended did not seem to be either better or worse. Above two hundred were sensibly better, and fifty-one thoroughly cured.'71 His

' ' John Jones (1721-85), a native of Haverfordwest, was one of JW's most scholarly helpers. He matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford in 1736, receiving his BA in 1739, his MA in 1742, and a BMed in 1745. Converted under Whitefield, Jones gravitated to Arminianism and preached for the first time at the Foundery on Nov.

30, 1746 (see 20:150 in this edn.).

08JW to Ebenezer Blackwell, Jan. 26, 1747, 26:225-26 in this edn.

69 See A. Wesley Hill, John Wesley among the Physicians (London, Epworth Press, 1958), 11-13,46-48.

70JW to 'John Smith', Mar. 25, 1747, §11, 26:235 in this edn.

71 JW, Journal, June 6, 1747 (20:177 in this edn.). JW gives slightly different numbers in Plain Account of... Methodists, XIE6, 9:276 in this edn.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 19 summary at the end of a year continued in this vein. The count of those who came repeatedly remained at three hundred, of which 'about one hundred1 took the advised medicine regularly and submitted to a proper regimen. Of these, more than ninety 'were entirely cured of diseases they had long laboured under'.72

While Wesley celebrated this initial success in London, he surely recognized the limits of this means of addressing the health needs of his flock. Few of the Methodist societies popping up across Britain would ever be large enough to sustain a free dispensary; and few had a local member like John Jones, qualified to advise patients. Indeed, it proved impossible to sustain the venture even in London. It closed within a couple of years, after Jones was transferred to teach languages at Kingswood School (in 1748) and the expense of the free dispensary proved more than even this large Methodist society could bear.73

The Dimensions of John Wesley's Mature Practice of Offering Medical and Health Advice

The closing of the clinics in Bristol and London in no way signalled a retreat by Wesley from his concern to provide physic for the poor. It did contribute, however, to a change in how he pursued this concern through the last four decades of his ministry. His efforts came to focus on: 1) publishing reliable and accessible resources for his Methodist societies; 2) encouraging members of the societies to take more responsibility in caring for themselves and others; 3) owning more publicly his practice of giving medical advice; and 4) carrying on his personal ministry of physic increasingly through correspondence.

The transition began at the height of the success of the London clinic. One of the points Wesley recognized as he surveyed results in May 1747 was that successful treatment depended not just upon patients taking the medicines prescribed, but upon their embracing the regimen (of diet, exercise, etc.) that he recommended. By his estimate, only one in four were faithful to the regimen, and these were the ones most likely to see improvement.74 This prompted Wesley to action. Even though plenty of copies of the third edition of Collection of Receipts remained available, he undertook a thorough revision and 72 JW, Journal, Jan. 16, 1748, 20:204.

73 It was still open in early 1749, when JW published Plain Account of. .. Methodists (see XII.6). But it had apparently been closed for some time by 1754, when

JW published the extract of his Journal with the account of its founding; see Journal, Dec. 5, 1746, 20:151 in this edn.

74 JW, Plain Account of... Methodists, XII.6, 9:276 in this edn.

Medical and Health Writings expansion of this resource. He doubled the number of disorders for which advice was given and worked through the suggested remedies, cutting out nearly a third and adding about 550 new items. Most importantly, Wesley added a substantial preface that offered theological warrant for individuals caring for their health, and that outlined a regimen of diet and exercise (drawn from George Cheyne) to promote general well-being. Thereby Wesley transformed A Collection of Receipts into a true book of physic, which he renamed Primitive

Physic; or an Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases.

There is no evidence of Wesley advertising Primitive Physic outside of his connexion.75 But it found a ready audience within the connexion and beyond. It went through over twenty editions before his death, totalling some 40,000 copies. As such, it stands among Wesley's most frequently republished works. It stands alone in terms of the number of times that Wesley returned to the work to revise and add material. A summary of the intermittent times of revision, and the published sources Wesley drew upon for the revisions, can be found in the introduction to Primitive Physic below. We would comment here only that the amount of research Wesley devoted to Primitive Physic suggests a parallel to his fifty-volume Christian

Library (1749-55). In both endeavours Wesley distilled the fruits of his broad reading for the benefit of his Methodist people, seeking to provide them reliable guides to spiritual and physical health.

Just as Wesley published more than the Christian Library offering spiritual guidance, his health-related publications grew beyond Primitive Physic (and its nascent form, A Collection of Receipts). Over the following years he issued such works as A Letter to a Priend Concerning Tea (1748); The Desideratum, or Electricity Made Plain and Useful (1760); Thoughts on the Sin ofOnan, chiefly extracted from [Tissot]

(1767); Advices with Respect to Health, extracted from [Tissot] (1769); 'Extract from [William] Cadogan on the Gout' (1774); and 'Thoughts on Nervous Disorders' (1786). All of these appear in this volume.

The reliability of some of Wesley's suggested remedies in Primitive Physic was called into question in late 1775 (we will trace that debate a bit later). There was much less room to question Wesley's commitment that these remedies be accessible. As he elaborated in a 1755 postscript to the preface of Primitive Physic, this meant in 73 JW advertised Primitive Physic in lists of his publications circulated among Methodists. But an electronic search of the Burney Collection (the largest collection of eighteenth-century English newspapers, held in the British Library) found no mention of the work until it appeared within the title of William Hawes's

Examination in 1776.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 21 part that, like Robert Boyle, he gave preference to simple medicines: 'easy to be known, easy to be procured, and easy to be applied by plain, unlettered men'.76 It meant as well that he wrote out the receipts in plain English (not the Latin of professional medical treatises) and used popular rather than technical names for most herbs/' Finally it meant that Wesley produced and sold his health advice as cheaply as possible. When Collection of Receipts was published, it sold for two pence. Primitive Physic was priced initially at one shilling; climbing by 1789 to a shilling and six pence.78 By contrast, Domestic Medicine, William Buchan's popular self-help medical guide, cost six shillings when it appeared in 1769. As one scholar put it, Buchan targeted the upwardly mobile 'middling ranks' of society, while Wesley aimed to meet the needs of'literate workers'.79

Wesley did assume that the sufferer—or someone among their support network—would be able to read, if they were to draw upon Primitive Physic. This was just one of the ways in which he was prodding his followers to take more responsibility in caring for themselves and one another, rather than relying solely on either God

(for divine healing) or professional care-givers.80 In the preface to Primitive Physic, after rehearsing a standard attribution of suffering and death to human rebellion in Eden against God, Wesley's first emphasis (in §3) was that God neither abandoned us to the resulting infirmity nor rendered us purely passive in its treatment. Instead,

God graciously included a role for us in restoring and maintaining health—through exercise and diet. Likewise, while Wesley assumed that God infused creation with medicines to heal injuries and illness,81 he chose to emphasize (in §6) the subtle way in which God

76 See below, Primitive Physic, Preface, Postscript I, §2.

77 Note the contemporary appeal in the anonymous tract, A Cheap, Sure, and Ready Guide to Health; or, A Cure for a Disease Call'd the Doctor (London: J. Roberts, 1742), 1: 'There should be no mystery in physic, any more than religion. We have religion and law in a known tongue, and should have physic in the same.'

78The present equivalents for such prices are notoriously difficult to compute.

Following suggestions of John J. McCusker, How Much is that in Real Money?

(Worcester, MA: American Antiquarian Society, 2001), they might work out to about $2, $12, and $18 respectively (with Buchan's Domestic Medicine rising to $72).

79 Anita Guerrini, Obesity and Depression in the Enlightenment (Norman, OK:

University of Oklahoma Press, 2000), 185.

80This point is highlighted in Daniel Skinner and Adam J. Schneider, 'Listening to Quakery: Reading John Wesley's Primitive Physic in an Age of Health Care

Reform', Journal of Medical Humanities (2016) https://doi.org/10.1007/sl0912 -016-9418-0.

81 Cf. Ecclesiasticus 38:4, 'The Lord hath created medicines out of the earth'.

Medical and Health Writings helped ordinary persons discover many of these medicines. And after praising physicians who showed particular concern to identify simple medicines for the poor (in §12), Wesley placed responsibility squarely in the hands of the patient for using these medicines properly, or knowing when to consult a physician (in §15). He then concluded the preface (§16) with his extract from Cheyne of'plain, easy rules' to be followed by patients to help retain health.

Qualities like this explain why Primitive Physic is given a prominent place on lists of'self-help' health manuals that proliferated in eighteenth-century England.82 One of the things that distinguished it from most other manuals on the list was its price and implied main audience. Another distinctive factor was its origin as a communal resource. Like its predecessor Collection of Receipts, Wesley particularly intended the new Primitive Physic to resource his itinerant lay assistants and the local visitors of the sick, as they ministered within the scattered Methodist societies. But his vision was broader, as evidenced by his later encouragement of lay assistants to get a copy of Primitive Physic into the home of every family.83 This shift toward individual Methodists and their families was heightened by the controversy that broke out in 1775. Satirical critique of his efforts in medical care put Wesley in a bind. Highlighting public structural forms of this effort threatened to undercut the spiritual and theological leadership he and the itinerant preachers were providing the movement. So Wesley made a strategic retreat.

When the next edition of the 'Large' Minutes (the official guide for Methodist practice) was released in 1780, it was pruned of references to the local visitor of the sick, and of the instruction for lay assistants to visit the sick regularly as they travelled the circuit.84

This move did not indicate a decline in Wesley's concern for the 82 Cf. Mary Fissell, Patients, Power; and the Poor in Eighteenth Century Bristol (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); and Porter, 'The Patient in England'.

83 See 'Large' Minutes, §65 (added in 1763) 10:867 in thisedn.;JW, To the Societies at Bristol (Nov. 7, 1767), §5 (vol. 28 in this edn.); JW to Christopher Hopper,

Nov. 20, 1769 (vol. 28 in this edn.); JW to Joseph Taylor, Sept. 9, 1782 (vol. 30 in this edn.); and many more.

84 This can be seen most easily in Minutes of the Methodist Conferences, Vol. 1

(London: John Mason, 1862), where the editions of the 'Large' Minutes are placed in parallel columns. The office of visitor of the sick made it into these Minutes only in the form of an instruction for class leaders to inform them of any sick members; this reference, present from the earliest edition through 1770, is missing by 1772, with the larger expectation of class leaders reporting on who is sick disappearing in 1780ff (see pp. 454-55). The charge for the lay preachers to visit the sick is present through 1772, but missing in 1780ff (pp. 552—53).

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice

sick, or his expectation for those in his societies to embody this concern in their lives and ministry. Visiting and assisting the sick remained an expectation of all Methodists in the General Rules f

Indeed, Wesley reinforced this expectation in 1786 with a published sermon that extolled visiting the sick as a 'plain duty' for all that are in health.86 He also kept updating and issuing Primitive Physic as a resource for this ministry.

In the later decades of his life Wesley also began to own more publicly his personal practice of giving medical advice. Through the earliest years of the revival his published jJournal was more likely to spotlight spiritual healing than physical. A common topic was persons in whom evangelical preaching had evoked a strong sense of guilt—where the 'medicine which healed them' was an assurance of God's forgiveness.87 On some occasions Wesley added that physicians had misdiagnosed the person's guilt or 'low-spiritedness' as a physical malady, and proved unable to provide relief; what the patient needed was the Great Physician.88 When persons with serious physical ailments like smallpox are mentioned in Wesley's Journal during these early years of the revival, his most frequent comment stressed how those who had an assurance of God's love modelled a 'good death' of calm resignation to God.89 This is not to suggest that Wesley encouraged them to seek death. There is never a suggestion of neglecting the aid of physicians and medicines in physical maladies, just encouragement to pray as well for God's healing touch.90 But prior to 1750, when Wesley specified in his Journal that he 'visited' the sick, he never mentioned giving them medical advice.91

Commendation of specific medicines first appeared in Wesley's Journal in accounts of treating his own maladies.92 Starting with an entry in 1750 (in an instalment published in 1756), Wesley also began to record publicly giving advice about treatments for their

85 GeneraI Rules, §5 (9:72 in this edn.), remained unchanged through JW's life.

86JW, Sermon 98, 'On Visiting the Sick', 3:385-97 in this edn. (esp. §4, p. 386).

87 See, for example, JW, Journal, Dec. 5, 1738(19:23 in this edn.); May 1—2, 1739

(19:54-55); Sept. 21, 1739 (19:98-99); Oct. 25-27, 1739 (19:110-11); and Sept.

88Ibid., Jan. 21-22, 1739 (19:32); July 13, 1739 (19:79); Oct. 13, 1739 (19:103);

June 17, 1742 (19:279); and Feb. 20, 1745 (20:53).

89 Ibid, May 14, 1740 (19:149); and Mar. 23, 1741 (19:188).

911 Ibid, Nov. 21, 1741 (19:239); and Dec. 25, 1742 (19:305-6).

91 Ibid, May 14, 1740 (19:149); Sept. 10-11, 1740 (19:167-68); Mar. 23, 1741 (19:188); Mar. 1, 1746 (20:115); and Apr. 23, 1748 (20:220).

92 Ibid, Jan. 22, 1747 (20:153-54); and Apr. 24, 1749 (20:268).

Medical and Health Writings ailments and injuries to persons he encountered as he travelled among his scattered flock.93 Some of these encounters were happenstance, but there is evidence that Wesley also set aside specific times to advise the suffering poor as he moved from one society to the next.94 Public embrace of his work as priest/physician was capped in 1759 by the addition (for the first time) of his name as author, when Wesley released the 8th edition of Primitive Physic.

One further notable aspect of Wesley's mature practice of offering medical advice is his provision of advice at a distance. He proved unwilling to restrict advising followers and friends about their individual health concerns to times when he could meet with them.

And they proved ready to seek his advice. Consider the example of Abraham Brames, a Methodist class leader and society steward in Rochester, Kent. In mid-October 1780 Brames suffered a bout of dysentery. During that time Wesley visited Sevenoaks, Kent, about twelve miles southwest of Rochester. While in Sevenoaks Wesley learned of Brames's ailment, likely through an envoy, and wrote out an advised regimen of diet and drink. There is no address on the sheet, or anything else to suggest that it was part of a letter. It stands, instead, as the only known surviving manuscript in Wesley's hand intended solely as a prescription (for a copy and more details, see Appendix B).

What survives in more abundance through the later decades of Wesley's ministry are letters wherein he offers health advice to friends and the Methodist faithful. One of the first instances is a letter to his future wife, Mary (Goldhawk) Vazeille, in June 1750, where Wesley advised her to ride more often, in order to confirm bodily health.9'' A letter to John Downes the following year stressed the need for a regular regimen of diet and exercise to maintain health.96 This emphasis on regimen was echoed in letters to Joseph

Cownley, Samuel Furly, and Lady Darcy (Brisbane) Maxwell over the next few years.9. It also became common for Wesley to com93 Ibid, Apr. 25, 1750 (20:333); Jan. 20, 1753 (20:444); Apr. 7, 1755 (21:4); Apr.

27, 1755 (21:9); Apr. 5, 1756 (21:48); Oct. 11, 1756 (21:79); Feb. 16, 1757 (21:86); etc.

94 See particularly his Journal comment on June 14, 1773 (22:376-77 in this edn.): 'I preached in the evening at Lisburn. All the time I could spare was taken up by poor patients'

95 JW to Mary (Goldhawk) Vazeille, June 19, 1750, 26:429 in this edn.

96 JW to John Downes, Dec. 10, 1751, 26:480-81 in this edn.

97 See JW to Joseph Cownley, Sept. 17, 1755 (26:589 in this edn.); JW to Samuel Furly, Mar. 24, 1757 (27:75-76); and JW to Lady Maxwell, July 5, 1765 (27:43839).

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 25 mend specific remedies like electrifying or a buttermilk diet; or to warn against such treatments as blisters or Peruvian bark (when taken as a powder).98 To provide a broader sense of the frequency and texture of Wesley's medical advice in correspondence, we have gathered in Appendix C excerpts from a set of letters he penned to Alexander Knox, of Londonderry, Ireland, between 1775 and 1790.

In order to offer good advice, of course, a physician needs to understand the ailment or injury that the patient is suffering. Thus we find Wesley writing Elizabeth Ritchie in January 1775: 'I beg, if you love me, you will send me a minute account how you are, both in body and mind.'99 Wesley stayed with the Ritchie family in Otley, Yorkshire, on occasion, and in May 1774 initiated an ongoing correspondence with Elizabeth, as she became more active in the Methodist society. The 1775 request was Wesley's second solicitation of details about Ritchie's health, as evidenced by the beginning of her letter to him of August 19, 1774: 'I am sorry I have ever given you cause to complain of me. My not speaking to you about my health was chiefly owing to my want of thought at the time I was with you.' Wesley's first request was likely in his letter of July 31,

1774; but we know this letter only through an excerpt that Joseph Benson included in his edition of Wesley's Works, and Benson typically excluded such personal comments. Through whatever means the request was conveyed, it led Ritchie to pledge: 'If the Lord hath inclined your heart, dear sir, to care not only for spiritual health but also for my natural strength, I am willing to tell you all I can, and will endeavour to use the means you prescribe.' She then provided a fulsome description of struggles over the past three years with consumption, diarrhoea, headaches, and a scurvy-like condition.

Wesley's later request for a 'minute description' was in response to Ritchie's letter on January 10, 1775, where she only mentioned in passing that she had been very ill recently with something like a violent colic.

There can be little doubt that Wesley made similar inquiries about the health of other correspondents, and that some obliged with descriptions of their condition. It is difficult to document these responses however, because much of Wesley's in-correspondence through the later decades of his life survives only as published in the Arminian Magazine. From the few cases where the full text of 98 See JW to Joseph Cownley, Apr. 23, 1757 (27:81 in this edn.); JW to Mary

Bosanquet July 25, 1761 (27:269-70); and JW to Jane Lee, May 26, 1763 (27:334).

99JW to Elizabeth Ritchie, Jan. 17, 1775 (vol. 29 in this edn.).

Medical and Health Writings a letter survives to compare with the version in Arminian Magazine, it is clear that Wesley almost always elided this personal information. As such, the best sources for letters to Wesley describing health challenges are among the papers of his correspondents, if they kept record-copies of the letters they sent to him. Elizabeth

Ritchie is one for whom a significant set of copy-letters survives in her papers. To provide the reader with a richer sense of this type of material, we have included in Appendix C sections of letters between 1774 and 1780 where Ritchie commented on health concerns

(including the quotes in the previous paragraph).

The Theological Grounding of John Wesley's Commitment to Offering Medical and Health Advice

While there was historical warrant for John's Wesley's enduring commitment to offering medical advice through his decades of leadership in the evangelical revival, it ran counter to a growing concern for specialization of professions.100 As such, it provided fodder (as we shall see) for ridicule among his detractors. What sustained his commitment despite such pressure? Part of the answer is simply a deep concern for the needy. Works of mercy had been integral to the piety of the group who gathered around the Wesley brothers at Oxford, and John highlighted this concern as a central aspect of The Character of a Methodist from early in the revival:

A Methodist does good unto all men—unto neighbours, and strangers, friends, and enemies. And that in every possible kind; not only to their bodies, by 'feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, visiting those that are sick or in prison', but much more does he labour to do good to their souls, as of the ability which God giveth.101

But the ground of Wesley's commitment went deeper than this.

His actions sprang from a foundational theological conviction. Efforts to minister to the bodies of persons might be merely instrumental in design—to create the opportunity of ministering to their souls. While Wesley undeniably cared about the spiritual life of 100 See Irvine Loudon, 'Medical Practitioners 1750-1850 and the period of Medical Reform in Britain', in Wear (ed.). Medicine in Society, 219-47; and Roy

Porter, 'The Eighteenth Century', in Lawrence Conrad (ed.), The Western Medical Tradition (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 371-475.

"J1JW, Character of a Methodist (1742), §16, 9:41 in this edn. (alluding to Matt

25:36).

Introduction to Offering Medical and. Health Advice 27 those he encountered ('much more does he labour to do good to their souls'), he pushed back against theological developments that helped make the counterposing of care for the body and care for the soul common in his day. The story of these developments is too long to rehearse here. Suffice it to say that while central streams of biblical witness (in both Testaments) portray God's saving concern as embracing the whole person, who remains at home within the larger created (or recreated) order, later Christian piety and teaching widely shifted hope for the fullness of God's saving work to 'heaven above' and focussed it almost exclusively on human souls.102

Such a shift in conception of God's ultimate saving concern (eschatology) was bound to impact assumptions about Christian life in the present world. It fostered a model of spirituality that adopted pilgrimage as a dominant metaphor—where Christians understand themselves as currently placed in an alien and dangerous setting, tasked with making their way home.103 Cast in these terms, the challenge for Christian life became less the need to contend with the temporary corruption of our nature or God's ideal creation, and more the temporary endurance of this probationary setting. Life in this world became less God's blessing than our dominant challenge; and death less a curse than a desired release into a more ideal state

(heaven above).

The most influential articulation of this model of Christian life in Wesley's setting was John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress (1678).

This popular Puritan allegory traced the journey of a pilgrim (named 'Christian') negotiating the many wearisome obstacles that comprise life in this world—all of which tend to distract from his heavenly goal, the Celestial City. The gifts divinely provided for Christian were a guide for his journey and a certificate permitting entrance when he arrived at the heavenly gate. Put in theological terms, God's present saving work was restricted mainly to revelation and justification (removal of the guilt that renders us unworthy to enter heaven). There is little mention of possible healing for 102 For summaries of this contrast, and efforts to reclaim the full biblical hope, see N. T. Wright, Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church (New York: Harper One, 2008); and J. Richard Middleton,

A New Heaven and New Earth: Reclaiming Biblical Eschatology (Grand Rapids:

Baker, 2013).

103 See the detailed discussion of this model in its Puritan form in Charles E.

Hambrick-Stowe, The Practice of Piety: Puritan Devotional Discipline in SeventeenthCentury New England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982),

54-90.

28 Medical and Health Wn tings

Christian's distempered soul or afflicted body on this side of the heavenly gate.

As he immersed himself in the evangelical revival, Wesley became convinced that the mediocrity of moral life and the ineffectiveness in social impact of Christians in eighteenth-century England was due in large part to the prevalence of this restricted conception of present salvation among Christian laity and clergy alike. In response, Wesley championed a conception that made healing in this life more central:

By salvation I mean, not barely (according to the vulgar notion) deliverance from hell, or going to heaven, but a present deliverance from sin, a restoration of the soul to its primitive health ... the renewal of our souls after the image of God in righteousness and true holiness, in justice, mercy, and truth.104

Wesley's dissatisfaction with the vulgar (i.e., common or popular) notion of salvation, for minimizing biblical affirmations of healing in this life, remained clear throughout his ministry. If there was any change it was a progressive broadening of the dimensions of healing that he affirmed to be available now. In the early years of the revival Wesley focussed on assuring his followers that present

Christian life can be more than a life-long struggle as a forgiven but beleaguered pilgrim. God calls us to journey along The Scripture Way of Salvation, a journey in which the gracious forgiveness of our sin is interwoven with (some significant degree of) gracious healing of the damages that sin has wrought in our character and life.105 Wesley's emphasis on this point proved as central as his disavowal of unconditional election to the split that emerged between Wesleyan and Calvinist branches of Methodism. Most of his Calvinist coworkers rejected the extensiveness of Wesley's hope for God's healing of our sin-distorted character in this life.106

What about hope for healing of our afflicted bodies? Here too Wesley pushed against the general tone of Puritan piety, which rem Farther Appeal to Men of Reason and Religion, Pt. I, §3, 11:106 in this edn.

"b See JW's classic 1765 sermon by this title, 2:155-69 in this edn. For JW's shifting views on the possibility of'perfection' in this life see the tracts in 13:3-199 in this edn.

106 See George Whitefield's letter to JW, Sept. 25, 1740, 26:31-33 in this edn.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 29 mained prevalent in his day.107 A good sense of this piety can be gained from Lewis Bayly's Practice of Piety, which included a section on the 'practice of piety in glorifying God in times of sickness'.108 Bayly's volume was one of the most popular of the seventeenth century, read much more widely than any treatise on physic.

The readers included John Wesley.109 Bayly's most central (and repeated) point was that Christians should recognize that illness and affliction do not beset us by chance; they are sent providentially by God—in part as punishment for our sins, but even more as a type of physic administered by the divine Physician.110 The purpose of this divine physic is to draw forth our repentance, and to 'wean our hearts from too much loving this world and worldly vanities'.* * 111

The most important response to affliction is to sanctify it, by giving thanks for it and allowing it to have this twofold effect.112 This is not to say that Bayly, or other Puritans, discounted the help of physicians. As part of their rejection of the miraculous efficacy of sacraments and relics, they stressed God's use of ordinary 'second causes' in effecting providence.113 Thus Bayly ruled out neither prayers for healing nor solicitation of medical advice. But he cautioned: 1) this concern should be secondary to drawing from our affliction the spiritual benefit of reconciliation; 2) our trust for healing must remain grounded in God, not the human physician or medicine; and 3) we should not desire restored health over death, but trust that the eventual outcome is God's providential will.114

The most relevant example of how widespread these emphases remained in John Wesley's day are the strong echoes in hymns of his brother Charles. Consider the hymn framed as a prayer by parents whose child has small-pox (written after Charles and Sarah

Wesley lost a son to this disease). The hymn invokes God's saving concern in the first stanza, then affirms:

107 For a broader treatment of what follows, see David Harley, 'Spiritual Physic,

Providence and English Medicine, 1560-1640', in Ole Grell & Andrew Cunningham (eds.), Medicine and the Reformation (New York: Routledge, 1993), 101-17.

108 Lewis Bayly, The Practice of Piety; Being the Substance of Several Sermons Preached at Evesham (London: Andrew Crook, 1613), 792-855.

109 JW recorded reading this work in late January 1733 in his Oxford diaries, and published an excerpt titled 'Reflections on the Sabbath Day' in AM 4 (1781):

542M6.

110 See particularly Bayly, Practice of Piety, 792-93, 797, 824-26.

113 See Harley, 'Spiritual Physic', 112.

114Bayly, Practice of Piety, 803—5, 815—17, 818.

Medical and Health Writings Love inflicts the plague severe, Love the dire distemper sends:

Let thy heavenly messenger Answer all thy gracious ends:

Give us power to watch and pray Trembling at the threaten'd loss:

Tear our hearts from earth away, Nail them to thy bleeding cross.

The following stanzas walk a fine line, leading the parents in surrendering to God's will, while simultaneously authorizing their weeping (by the example of Jesus) as they wait for God's final purpose (life or death) to become clear.115 In this and many other hymns

Charles Wesley presents submission to God's loving design as more important than seeking renewed health—though he never disparages the longing for healing or seeking medical care, for the Great

Physician often heals through physicians and medicine.116

As his ministry proceeded, John Wesley proved less hesitant than Charles (and reigning Puritan piety) to assure sufferers of God's desire to provide healing now. Consider his advice to Alexander Knox in 1778: 'It will be a double blessing if you give yourself up to the Great Physician, that he may heal soul and body together. And unquestionably this is his design. He wants to give you . . . both inward and outward health.'11' While he does not underline the word, Wesley surely intended 'unquestionably' to be emphatic. He was aware of Bayly's caution against assuming that God's will included restored health in this life. And he had been seeking to counter what he considered to be undue hesitance on the part of Knox (who had been sickly from infancy) for some time—exhorting him from the beginning of their correspondence

'to expect that God will do nothing but good both to your soul and body'.118

In this advice to Knox, Wesley was not implying that everyone who prayed and partook of their medicines with faith would be healed; nor conversely that if one were not healed, it was because

1,5'For a Child in the Small-Pox', Family Hymns {1767), 76-78.

116 See esp. 'For One that is Sick', #2, st. 1, HSP( 1749), 1:261; and 'The Physician's Hymn', HSP (1749), 2:248-50.

117 JW to Alexander Knox, Oct. 28, 1778 (transcribed in Appendix C).

118Ibid., June 6, 1775.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 31 they lacked faith. He had long rejected such suggestions.119 Wesley was also clear that, whatever degree of health we might regain and enjoy in this life, it would fall far short of the full transformation of our bodies in the resurrection.120 But this points to the fork where

Wesley's mature emphasis diverged from the majority of his peers.

While they broadly continued to accept the model of eschatological hope focussed on blessed souls in heaven above, over the last quarter of his life Wesley found this model imbibed in his upbringing called into question by the biblical witness of God's saving concern extending to the whole person, soul and body—and indeed to the entire created order.121 If the body does not matter eschatologically to God, it may make sense to view healing of the body as a secondary concern for God, and for us, now. But as Wesley grew more convinced that God's ultimate healing work extended to both soul and body, he encouraged his followers more strongly to expect both dimensions of God's healing work in our present lives. Reflecting what he believed to be God's own desire, Wesley desired for those he engaged that they might 'be easy and happy, in soul and in body, in time and in eternity'.122 His ministry of providing medical and health advice was one way in which Wesley sought to emulate now the God 'whose mercies are over all his works'.123

Broad Characteristics of John Wesley's Medical and Health Advice Having placed Wesley's practice of offering medical and health advice in historical context, traced this practice through his ministry, and highlighted its key theological grounding, we turn to sketching some broad characteristics of the advice he gave—as an aid to readers in noticing connections as they work through the publications gathered in this volume. n9E.g., JW, Journal, Sept. 10, 1740, 19:167—68 in this edn.

120 See JW, Sermon 62, 'The End of Christ's Coming', §111.1-4, 2:480-82 in this edn.

121 For more details on this, see Randy L. Maddox, 'Nurturing the New Creation: Reflections on a Wesleyan Trajectory', in M. D. Meeks (ed.), Wesleyan Perspectives on the New Creation (Nashville, TN: Kingswood Books, 2004), 21-52.

122 JW letter to Agnes Gibbes, May 1785, Methodist History 6.3 (1968): 59 (vol.

30 in this edn.).

123Ps. 145:9. See JW's appeal to such imitation, in regard to our care for animals, in Sermon 60, 'The General Deliverance', §111.10, 2:449 in this edn.

32 Medical and Health Writings

Affirmed both Divine and Medical Healing The first broad characteristic is that Wesley refused to counterpose divine healing and use of medicines. On the one hand, he was aware of deist writers who emphasized natural accounts of the origin of disease and commended solely medical forms of healing, portraying appeals for divine healing as superstitious.124 Wesley remained convinced of the possibility of divine healing, and highlighted apparent instances in his publications—partly to rebut deism.125 But even in such apologetic settings, Wesley resisted polarizing spiritual and natural accounts of the cause or cure of physical ailments.126 And in his publications devoted to medical advice

Wesley was quick to add: 'as God is the sovereign disposer of all things ... I earnestly advise everyone, together with all other medicines, to use the medicine of medicines—prayer'.127

Turning the potential opposition around, assertions of the spiritual superiority of relying solely on divine healing—refusing all medical treatment—-were rare in Christian tradition up through Wesley's time.128 On the few occasions when he encountered this extreme, he excluded it.129 This extended beyond seeking healing when one was ill, to methods of trying to prevent illness. Here again a contrast with his brother is enlightening. When Charles Wesley was asked in late November 1753 why his wife Sarah had not been inoculated against smallpox, he responded that he 'left everyone to his own conscience; but for my part I looked upon it as taking the matter out of God's hands, and I should choose (if it depended on ,24This challenge is highlighted in Roy Porter, 'Medicine and Religion in 18th

Century England', Ideas and Production 7 (1987): 4-17.

125 For some examples in his Journal, see Dec. 20, 1742 (19:306 in this edn.), Nov. 12, 1746 (20:145), Sept. 22-Oct. 3, 1756 (21:78), and Oct. 7, 1790 (24:191).

See also Robert Webster Jr., Methodism and the Miraculous: jfohn Wesley's Idea of the Supernatural and the Identification of Methodists in the Eighteenth Century (Lexington: Emeth Press, 2013), 165-94. l26This point is demonstrated in further detail in Henry D. Rack, 'Doctors, Demons, and Early Methodist Healing', in W. J. Sheils (ed.), The Church and Healing

(Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1982), 137-52.

127Advices with Respect to Health, Preface, §9. Cf. Primitive Physic, Preface, §15.

128 See Darrel W. Amundsen, Medicine, Society, and Faith in the Ancient and Modern Worlds (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), esp. 6-11.

129 One example is JW's abridgement of the Homilies of pseudo-Macarius in the Christian Library. He omitted Homily 48, which argued that the most spiritually mature would rely entirely on Christ for physical health and avoid physical cures.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice

me) to trust her entirely to him'.130 By contrast, when John Wesley received from its author a tract seeking to alleviate objections to inoculation, he replied: 'Doubtless inoculation has already preserved thousands of lives, and I trust will preserve thousands more.

In your little tract you have given a sufficient answer to the most plausible objections.'131

What about the specific case of mental or emotional ailments?

Puritan thought, which dominated through the seventeenth century in England, generally considered such disorders to be rooted in spiritual causes, prescribing repentance, faith, and prayers for deliverance. As the eighteenth century unfolded, many physicians began to explain mental afflictions in natural terms and to focus on medical treatments. While some Anglicans embraced this change, others reacted with vigorous defence of the prior account. A few scholars have claimed that Wesley exemplified this defensive stance on the cause and cure of mental and emotional disorders.132

In reality, Wesley shared the growing recognition of natural dimensions of emotional disorders. Consider, in particular, the severe disorders known in his day as 'lunacy' or 'raving madness'. Wesley's

Journal account of the early years of the revival presents several instances of such afflictions solely in terms of demonic causation— and divine deliverance.133 After reading a book by George Cheyne in 1742, which argued that true lunacy and madness were due to natural causes and required natural cures, Wesley's Journal comments began to reflect more nuance.134 Soon thereafter he assessed a case of 130 CW, Dec. 4, 1753, entry in journal letter covering Nov. 29 to Dec. 11, in Randy L. Maddox, et al. (eds), The Journal Letters ...of the Rev. Charles Wesley

(Nashville: Kingswood Books, 2018), 324.

131 The tract was by Rev. William Turner Jr., An Attempt to Alleviate the Principal

Objections to Inoculation (Newcastle: T. Saint, 1787). Turner included it in a letter to JW dated May 25, 1788; JW's letter of reply was dated May 29, 1788 (vol. 31 in the collection). Both letters are held in the Menninger Historic Psychiatry Collection of the Kansas Historical Society.

132 See, for example, Michael MacDonald, 'Religion, Social Change, and Psychological Healing in England, 1600-1800', in Scheils (ed), The Church and Healing, 101-25; and Roy Porter, Mind Forg'd Manacles (London: Athlone, 1987),

68-72.

133 See the Journal entries for May 2, 1739 (19:54-55 in this edn.), Oct. 12, 1739

(19:104), Oct. 25-26, 1739 (19:110-11), July 15, 1742 (19:282), and Jan. 13, 1743

(19:311-12).

134 See George Cheyne, The Natural Method of Curing the Diseases of the Body and Disorders of the Mind Depending on the Body (London: Strahan, 1742), 78-95, esp. 90. JW notes reading this volume m Journal, Mar. 12,1742,19:256 in this edn.

Cheyne emphasized a sparse diet and cold baths for the cure.

Medical and Health Writings raving madness to be attributable simply to a fever.13'1 He also began to record instances where prayer for deliverance was not sufficient in curing lunacy.136 Conversely, while he was initially sarcastic about the value of confining anyone in Bedlam (i.e., Bethlehem Hospital), the first public asylum in London, he came to believe that institutional care of lunatics could be beneficial, particularly at Saint

Luke's Hospital, which William Battie established in 1751 with an emphasis on providing medical treatments for mental illnesses.13'

Thus Primitive Physic included natural remedies for lunacy (§151) from its first edition in 1747. To be sure, Wesley continued to remind readers in his later years that some physicians believed many cases of lunacy to be diabolical in origin.138 But he came to consider many cases of insanity to be natural in origin, and assumed that they should be treated by medical means—joined with prayer.139

Appreciated the Interconnection of Physical and Emotional/Spiritual Health George Cheyne influenced Wesley's understanding of emotions long before 1742. We noted above that Wesley read Cheyne's 1724

Essay of Health shortly after it appeared, and included an extract of Cheyne's advice on diet and exercise in the 1747 Preface to Primitive Physic. Cheyne devoted Chapter VI of his Essay to the 'passions', a term for emotional states that arise in response to events

135Journal, Sept. 24, 1742, 19:299 in this edn.

136 See Journal, June 5, 1753 (20: 461-63 in this edn.); Sept. 8—11, 1755 (21:28—

29); and July 2, 1766 (22:48). Note as well Journal, Apr. 27, 1752 (20:421), where

JW describes a woman as either raving mad or possessed, and then makes clear that it was demonic possession, since a prayer for deliverance was effective.

U1 See Journal, Dec. 21, 1762, 21:400 in this edn. For a comparison of Bedlam, which did not focus on medicinal treatment of patients, with Saint Luke's Hospital, see G. S. Rousseau, 'Science', in The Eighteenth Century, edited by Pat Rogers

(New York: Holmes & Meier, 1978), 153-207 (esp. 180-82); and Jonathan Andrews & Andrew Scull, Undertaker of the Mind: John Monro and Mad-Doctoring m Eighteenth-Century England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

138 JW, Sermon 72, 'On Angels', 11.13, 3:26 in this edn.; and Sermon 132, 'On Faith', §8, 4:194 in this edn. Wesley is citing Thomas Deacon (1697-1753), another priest/physician. Deacon trained under Richard Mead (1673-1754), a leading physician, who shared this view of the causes of insanity. Cf. Henry Broxap, A Biography of Thomas Deacon (Manchester: University Press, 1911), 21-22, 81-88.

139This point is well argued in Paul Laffey, 'John Wesley on Insanity', History of Psychiatry 12 (2001): 467-79. A good example of the elder Wesley attributing madness to natural causes is Sermon 41, 'WanderingThoughts', II.3, 2:129 in this edn.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 35 and agents external to the self—such as joy, grief, fear, and love.

Wesley's extract of Cheyne captured the main points:

1. The passions have a greater influence on health than most people are aware of.

2. Violent and sudden passions dispose to, or actually throw people into, acute diseases.

3. Slow and lasting passions, such as grief and hopeless love, bring on chronical diseases.

4. Till the passion which caused the disease is calmed, medicine is applied in vain.

5. The love of God, as it is the sovereign remedy of all miseries, so in particular it effectually prevents all the bodily disorders the passions introduce, by keeping the passions themselves within due bounds. And by the unspeakable joy, and perfect calm, serenity, and tranquillity it gives the mind, it becomes the most powerful of all the means of health and long life.140

Cheyne refused to reduce passions to an epiphenomenon of physical states, and insisted that inordinate passions cannot be cured by medicine alone. Neither did he construe passions as mere psychological dynamics; he accepted the integrity of their spiritual dimension. Thus, his model of proper care for the passions, and thereby for physical health, included attention to one's spiritual life. Wesley's agreement is evident in the following comment in his Journal'.

Reflecting today on the case of a poor woman who had a continual pain in her stomach, I could not but remark the inexcusable negligence of most physicians in cases of this nature. They prescribe drug upon drug, without knowing a jot of the matter concerning the root of the disorder. And without knowing this they cannot cure, though they can murder the patient. Whence came this woman's pain?

(Which she would never have told, had she never been questioned about it.) From fretting from the death of her son. And what availed medicines while that fretting continued? Why then do not all physicians consider how far bodily disorders are caused or influenced by the mind? And in those cases which are utterly out of their sphere, call in the assistance of a minister—as ministers, when they find the mind disordered by the body, call in the assistance of a physician?141

140JW, Primitive Physic, Preface, §16, VI; cf. Cheyne, Essay, 170-72.

141JW, Journal, May 12, 1759, 21:191 in this edn.

Medical and Health Writings The closing sentence of this 1759 comment indicates a reciprocity in Wesley's mature approach to health and healing. Not only should physicians consider spiritual dimensions of physical health, ministers should entertain possible physical dimensions in mental and spiritual disorders. The second half of this reciprocity was not derived from Cheyne's Essay of Health. In that 1724 work, Cheyne limited consideration of emotional life to the passions, and approached these as mental faculties in need of regulation, not as disorders to be cured. Moreover, he insisted that regulation of the passions 'is the business, not of physic, but of virtue and religion'.142

Wesley omitted this line in his extract from Essay of Health in the Primitive Physic. This was likely because Wesley had read by this point Cheyne's work The English Malady; or, a Treatise of Nervous

Diseases of all Kinds. Cheyne's focus in this 1733 volume shifted from 'passions' as mental faculties to 'nerves' as the point of connection between the body and mind/spirit. His main emphasis was that nervous disorders should not be traced to spiritual causes, like sorcery or demonic possession, but to physical causes—specifically, they result from defective connection between body and spirit when the nerves are clogged or atrophied. Accordingly, Cheyne assigned treatment of nervous diseases to physic rather than religion (the inverse of his stance on the passions). His prescription for treating nervous disorders included some medicines, but placed primary emphasis on diet and exercise.

Wesley published his own 'Thoughts on "Nervous Disorders'" in the 1786 Arminian Magazine (included below in this volume).

Watch in these 'Thoughts' how Wesley balanced the alternative one-sided emphases of Cheyne's Essay of Health and The English

Malady, by paying attention to both spiritual and physical dimensions in the cause of the range of emotional disorders, as well as spiritual and physical dimensions in their cure.

Defended both Lay and Professional Medical Treatment The remaining characteristics of Wesley's medical advice focus on treatment of bodily ailments and injuries. We have detailed above how Wesley gave medical advice even though he was not licensed as a physician, how he encouraged his lay assistants to prepare so that they could do the same, and how he provided resources for the use

142 Cheyne, Essay, 171.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice of his followers in general. Wesley rarely defended these practices direcdy. His most extended discussion was in response to an attack from a clergyman upon his support for lay preachers. Wesley explained this support by analogy with a practice that he assumed would be less objectionable:

Will you condemn a man who, having some little skill in physic and a tender compassion for those who are sick or dying all around him, cures many of those, without a fee or reward, whom the doctor could not cure? ... Will you condemn him because he has not learning? Or has not had an university education? What then? He cures those whom the man of learning and education cannot cure? Will you object that he is no physician, nor has any authority to practise?

I cannot come into your opinion. I think he is a physician who heals.

. . . And that every man has authority to save the life of a dying man.

But if you only mean he has no authority to take fees, I contend not—for he takes none at all.143

Wesley considered the legitimacy of (sincere and beneficial) lay medical treatment self-evident. That is, as long as such treatment was not for the purpose of profiting from the suffering of others.

Hence his emphasis that no fee was charged. One way some sought to profit in the 'medical economy' of the eighteenth century was peddling overpriced and/or ineffective potions and pills.144 Wesley was quite concerned to prevent this practice from tainting Methodist ministry among the poor. Thus he not only refused to sell medicines himself, he led Conference to forbid such merchandising by his travelling lay preachers.145

Wesley's concern about profiting from the suffering of others shines through as well in his scattered—but sharp—criticisms of professional physicians. For example, in a 1747 letter describing the free clinic and dispensary he had set up in London and the number of persons who had been helped, Wesley queried:

Now ought I to have let one of these poor wretches perish because I was not a regular physician} To have said, 'I know what will cure you.

143 JW, Letter to a Clergyman, May 4, 1748,1.7-10, 9:248-49 in this edn.

144 See Roy Porter, 'Before the Fringe: "Quackery" and the Eighteenth-Century Medical Market,' in Roger Cooter (ed.), Studies in the History of Alternative Medicine (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1988), 1-27.

145 See Minutes (1768), Q. 22 (10:360 in this edn.); reiterated in Minutes (1770),

Q. 7, (10:381); and retained in the 'Large' Minutes (10:887, 916).

Medical and Health Writings But I am not of the College. You must send for Dr. Mead'? Before Dr. Mead had come in his chariot the man might have been in his coffin. And when the doctor was come, where was his fee? What! He cannot live upon nothing? So instead of an orderly cure the patient dies. And God requires his blood at my hands!146

The Dr. Mead referred to here was Richard Mead (1673-1754), one of the most prominent licensed physicians of the day, and known for travelling in a fancy carriage. Wesley had no reservations about Mead's medical advice; indeed, he included more than a dozen receipts from Mead in Primitive Physic. What Wesley chafed against was the attempt of the Royal College to monopolize health care in and around London at a time when it included fewer than 100 licensed members—hardly enough to attend to the whole population, and for that reason out of the reach financially for the majority.14'

In the Preface (§10) of Primitive Physic, published the same year, Wesley broadened criticism beyond the fees charged by physicians to other practices that he believed were aimed at preserving their monopoly, such as publishing their medical prescriptions in Latin and giving preference to medicines that were difficult to obtain or use safely.148 But his most pointed attack came in a 1760 sermon that condemned those in health care, 'whether surgeons, apothecaries, or physicians, who play with the lives or health of men to enlarge their own gain. Who purposely lengthen the pain or disease which they are able to remove speedily. Who protract the cure of their patient's body in order to plunder his substance.'149

While this final indictment is sharp, it is important to recognize that Wesley was not directing it against all physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries—just those who were dishonest. Nor did Wesley ever question that some ailments required the advice of a professional physician. Even the first edition of Primitive Physic, which was designed as a self-help manual, included in the Preface (§15) a recommendation to 'apply to a physician that fears God' in difficult

letter to 'John Smith', Mar. 25, 1747, §11, 26:235-36 in this edn.

The 1746 published list of members of the Royal College of Physicians in London included just over fifty fellows, one candidate, and about twenty-five licentiates.

148 Such attacks upon learned medicine for its cost and exclusivity had become a standard item in works popularizing medical knowledge by the middle of the seventeenth century; cf. Andrew Wear, 'Medicine in Early Modern Europe, 1500—

1700', in Conrad (ed.), The Western Medical Tradition, 215-360 (esp. 324).

149 Sermon 50, 'On the Use of Money', 1.5, 2:272 in this edn.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 39 cases. This advice was reiterated in the Postscript (§5) added to the preface in 1755, and Wesley inserted a specific encouragement to 'seek a good physician immediately' in cases of apoplexy (§7, receipt

In 1776 Wesley added another recommendation to consult an 'honest physician' for instances of measles (§154). And in his last major revision of Primitive Physic, in 1781, Wesley added a third

Postscript to the preface, again exhorting patients to 'apply without delay to a physician that fears God' in complicated cases.

Wesley's published record of personal health challenges in the Journal provided warrant for his formal recommendations. From the beginning of the revival Wesley often emphasized how he felt strengthened or healed by God when ill or weak, in order that he might continue his travel and preaching.150 But he never hid the fact that, when an ailment became serious, he sought the help of professional physicians. The first published instance was in late October

1741, when he called in John Middleton (c. 1680-1760), a Bristol physician, to advise on a severe cold. Other publicly recorded instances include the following. In April 1749 Wesley sought advice for facial swelling while visiting John Rutty (1697-1775), a distinguished Quaker physician in Dublin. In 1753, and again a year later,

Wesley called in John Fothergill (1712-80), a Quaker physician in London (and a licentiate of the Royal College), about a 'consumption'. In mid-1771 Wesley had a riding accident, which resulted over time in the development of a 'hydrocele'.1'1 A flair up of this condition while in Edinburgh led Wesley to consult the trio of:

James Hamilton (1740-1827), a fellow of the Royal College; Alexander Monro II (1733-1817), Professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the university; and James Gregory (1753-1821), Professor of Medicine at the university. The following month Wesley read a treatise on the condition by Joseph Else (d. 1780), a London surgeon and member of the Royal Society, as he continued to contemplate treatment. The condition eventually required surgery, which was performed in January 1774 by Samuel Wathen (1720-87), a surgeon licensed by the Royal College. In June 1775, struggling with a high fever, Wesley was persuaded to seek the advice of John Law, a physician of Lurgan, Ireland, who was licensed by the Medical Society iso For just a couple of examples, see. Journal, Apr. 15-17, 1741 (19:190-91 in this edn.); and Oct. 29-Nov. 15, 1741 (19:235-38).

151A hydrocele is a swelling of the scrotum caused by build-up of fluid. See JW's later reports of the accident in Journal, Feb. 21, 1772, 21:308 in this edn.; and Jan.

4, 1774, 22:395 in this edn.

Medical and Health Writings of London.152 In early August 1783, during the annual Conference,

Wesley was afflicted with serious cramping and diarrhoea. He sent for and was attended initially by Archibald Drummond (17171801), a physician of nearby Rudgeway; then moved to the home of John Castleman (1734-1801), a surgeon at the Bristol Infirmary.

When this condition recurred in early 1785 in London, Wesley was attended by John Whitehead (1740-1804), who served as his personal physician through his later years.153 Wesley spoke respectfully of each of these physicians and, when praising Whitehead in particular, reminded readers of his Journal of the exhortation in Ecclesiasticus

38:1-2: 'Honour the physician, for God hath appointed him.'154

For all of this appreciation, Wesley recognized that most of his followers lacked the financial resources and connections that enabled him to draw upon the expertise of professional physicians. Thus he continued to offer free medical advice to the end of his days.155

Embraced the Eclectic Stance of an Enlightened 'Empiric'

While Wesley never claimed to be a professional physician, he consulted a number of medical works and was aware of the major developments and controversies in the field. This has allowed scholars to consider where Wesley's medical approach fit within the spectrum of stances in his century. Recent considerations of this question have characterized Wesley's approach as an 'enlightened empiricism'.156

Both dimensions of this characterization deserve comment.

The classification of Wesley's approach as 'enlightened' signifies that he joined most eighteenth-century physicians in setting

152JW misremembered the last name as 'Laws'.

153 For the consultations with the various physicians, see JW, Journal, Oct. 31,

1741 (19:236 in this edn.); Apr. 24, 1749 (20:268); Nov. 13-26, 1753 (20:481-82);

Aug. 6, 1754 (20:489); May 18, 1772 (22:323-24); June 27, 1772 (22:339); Jan. 4,

1774 (22:395-96); June 17, 1775 (22:456); Aug. 5-24, 1783 (23:287); and Jan. 4, 1785 (23:340-41).

154Journal, Sept. 30, 1786, 23:420 in this edn.

155 Perhaps the last letter penned by JW that included specific medical advice was sent to Mary (Cooke) Clarke on Jan. 18, 1791 (vol. 31 in this edn.); where he recommended that her husband Adam Clarke take dried foxglove for his current illness.

156 See particularly Deborah Madden, 'Experience and the Common Interest of Mankind: The Enlightened Empiricism of John Wesley's Primitive Physic', British Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 26 (2003): 41—53; and James G. Donat, 'Empirical Medicine in the 18th Century: The Rev. John Wesley's Search for Remedies that Work', Methodist History 44 (2006): 216-26.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 41 aside the theoretical approach to medical diagnosis and treatment that had dominated Western cultures for over a millennium and a half. This approach, which traces back to Hippocrates (c. 460-370

BCE), was standardized by Galen of Pergamon in the first century of the common era.15/ It dismissed attribution of disease to spiritual or demonic causes, and had little notion of physical causes foreign to the sufferer (like germs). There was also little sense of diseases being passed from one individual to another. Instead, the Galenic tradition posited that human health depended upon maintaining balance among the various constituents of human nature, by means of balance with nature more broadly.

The foundation of this traditional Western approach to medicine was the metaphysical assumption that physical reality was composed of four elements: earth, water, air, and fire. The combination of these four elements also accounted for the human body—as a microcosm of the cosmos. But here attention probed more deeply, identifying the metabolic agents that circulated the four elements in the body. These agents were four vital fluids or 'humours', each associated with one of the elements. Earth was associated with 'black bile'; water with 'phlegm'; air with 'blood'; and fire with 'yellow bile'. There was some divergence in describing how these humours moved through the body, though most assumed the fluid moving through human blood vessels was a mixture of all four.

In this traditional Western approach ailments or disorders in the body—including in one's emotional/psychological state—were attributed to imbalance of the humours, generally due to an excess of one or another. The key to restoring health, and maintaining it thereafter, was righting this imbalance. It should be added, however, that the balance desired was not uniform. Individual persons had distinctive 'natural' balances, with one or another humour holding some dominance, which accounted for differences in states of body and mind identified as sanguine, melancholic, choleric, or phlegmatic.

Moreover, a person's balance could shift over his or her lifespan.

If each person has a natural balance of humours, how was this balance thrown off? As living creatures, we must ingest air, water, and food from nature around us to sustain life and nurture growth.

We must also expel the waste products of respiration, hydration, and digestion. An unhealthy imbalance of humours was attributed

157 The following summary draws particularly upon Lindemann, Medicine and Society, and William F. Bynum. The History of Medicine: A Very Short Introduction

(New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Medical and Health Writings in the Galenic tradition largely to unwise patterns of ingestion and/or obstructed evacuation. They detailed this account in terms of the 'six non-naturals'. As contrasted with constituent parts of our nature (like the four humours or our vital organs), these nonnaturals were external quantities or bodily practices that affected health. They included: 1) air, 2) food and drink, 3) motion and rest,

4) sleeping and waking, 5) retentions and evacuations, and 6) the passions of the soul.158

Having attributed ailments to improper practices of eating, activity, rest, and the like, the foundational form of treatment in this traditional approach was a regimen of diet, exercise, and other practices to help restore balance of the humours. But more drastic measures were common when patients were in the throes of a disorder. These measures aimed at evacuating problematic excessive humours. Common treatments included blood-letting and blistering

(to draw the humour to the surface, then drain it). Physicians also commended emetics, laxatives, diuretics, and enemas—to provoke various evacuations.

The first serious challenge to the traditional Western approach to medicine was in the sixteenth century, by a Swiss physician popularly known as Paracelsus.159 He rejected the suggestion that ailments were caused by an imbalance of naturally-occurring humours, contending that they resulted instead from external agents invading the body. He viewed these agents as seed-like in nature, and argued they were ingested through breathing, eating, and drinking. Moreover, he assumed that distinct agents carried specific disorders and required specific cures. Thereby Paracelsus shifted toward the modern understanding of infectious disease. He also questioned practices like blood-letting, urging in their place chemical remedies. But his specific remedies, which were based on alchemy and homeopathy (treating ailments with small doses of substances that cause the same symptoms in healthy persons), included such poisons as mercury, antimony, and arsenic. His full model also invoked a role of negative occult forces (archai) in disease that many found unwarranted. Thus one cannot draw a direct line from Paracelsus to modern medicine. It was only as later fol158 See Antoinette Emch-Deriaz, 'The Non-Naturals Made Easy', in Roy Porter

(ed.), The Popularization of Medicine, 1650-1850 (New York: Routledge, 1992), 134-59.

159 Ee., Theophrastus Phillipus Bombastus von Hohenheim (c. 1493-1541).

This summary is informed by John Eledley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 67-69.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice lowers stripped away such broader philosophical assumptions that Paracelsus's focus on using specific chemical remedies for distinct disorders made its way into standard medical practice.

Thus the traditional humoral approach to medical diagnosis and treatment remained dominant in England through the seventeenth century. But this century also witnessed roots of an 'enlightened' model that would displace the Galenic model through the following century.160 The key metaphysical shift in this new model, led by philosophers like Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Robert Boyle

(1627-91), and Isaac Newton (1643-1727), was stripping physical reality of its 'occult powers'—such as inherent impulses toward certain goals ('final causes'), innate attractive forces, or associations with various personality traits. Physical reality was construed as uniform and atomistic in structure, void of inherent motion or force. Discrete physical entities, like human bodies, were simply differentiated collections of inert matter. If they exhibited motion and change, this was due to external forces (including immaterial forces, like human souls or God) acting upon and through them. In other words, while this new approach typically retained a spiritual dimension within reality as a whole, the physical dimension of reality was rendered materialist and mechanical.

The traditional model of the humours could hardly survive broad acceptance of such altered metaphysical assumptions, particularly when it had already been called into question by the work of William

Harvey (1578-1657)—whose close inspection of the circulation of blood challenged assumptions like that bright red blood in arteries was a different substance than darker blood in veins. Through the early decades of the eighteenth century physicians like Herman

Boerhaave (1668-1738) and George Cheyne (1671-1743) crafted an alternative 'mechanical' account of bodily functions, wherein blood became a single fluid and attention was focussed on the conduits (veins, windpipes, etc.) that conveyed air, water, and nutrients into, around, and out of the body. Both chronic and acute bodily disorders were attributed primarily to obstructions, contractions, or dilations of the conduits in the body.161 And maintenance of health was focussed on keeping the body well-tuned, rather than on balancing the humours.

160See Frank, 'Medicine', inTyacke (ed.), Seventeenth-Century Oxford, 552-58.

161 This is the central argument of Cheyne's New Theory of Acute and Slow Continued Fevers (1702). For an insightful study of Boerhaave, see Rina Knoeff, Herman Boerhaave: Calvinist Chemist and Physician (Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands

Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2002).

Medical and Health Writings Significantly, while this eighteenth-century mechanical approach to medicine differed dramatically from the Galenic account at the level of theory, it retained most of the traditional therapeutic practices. Cheyne's advice in Essay on Health (repeated by Wesley in §16 of the Preface to Primitive Physic) echoed recommendations on diet and exercise common in accounts of the six non-naturals. He differed mainly in his explanations: particular foods or behaviours were advised against not because they increased one humour or another, but because they tended to hinder free circulation through bodily conduits. In acute ailments the recourse remained bloodletting, emetics, and purgatives—now valued for re-establishing circulation in the conduits.162

By the middle of the eighteenth century this mechanical model of physic had assumed preeminence in England. But those who adopted the model often supplemented it in an eclectic manner with the growing appreciation of therapeutic (as compared to solely purgative) effects of various chemical medicines. There were also influential voices, like Thomas Sydenham, who warned against reliance on any theoretical model of physic, given how the Galenic model had misled generations of physicians.163 These voices championed instead accumulating knowledge of effective treatments simply through trial and error—laying claim proudly to the label of'empiric', which had been used dismissively of such an approach in early Greek medicine.164

In the Preface to Primitive Physic John Wesley placed himself firmly among those suspicious of over-reliance on theoretical models, owned the label of 'empiric' (in §10), and praised 'good

Dr. Sydenham' (in §12). For all of its clarity, this primary selfidentification should not distract readers from noticing that behind

Wesley's simple remedies lay 'a complex body of medical knowledge that regarded the human frame as a system of hydraulics, which needed to protect itself against obstructions'.165 Wesley's clearest expression of the enlightened mechanical model was in 1763, in the chapter of Survey of the Wisdom of God in Creation devoted to causes of disorder in the human body (included in this collection).

While Wesley was abridging a work by Johann Franz Buddeus, he added a section (§6) identifying the chief causes of diseases as:

'1) intemperance in meat or drink, either with regard to the quan162 Cf. Madden, 'Experience and the Common Interest of Mankind', 45-46.

163 See Lindeman, Medicine and Society, 107-9.

164 See Donat, 'Empirical Medicine', 216-17.

165 Deborah Madden, A Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine'-. Religion. Medicine and Culture in John Wesley's 'Primitive Physic' (Atlanta: Rodopi, 2007), 211.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 45 tity or quality; 2) want of exercise, or excess therein; 3) immoderate sleep or watching; 4) unwholesome air; 5) the diminution of some natural evacuation; [and] 6) irregular passions.' This is Wesley's succinct summary of the traditional non-naturals. But his most revealing comment stands at the end, where he explained that 'all or any of these affect the temperature and motion of the blood and spirits'. There is no hint of interest in the humours, just the smooth operation of the body, which Wesley described elsewhere as an 'exquisitely wrought machine' created by God.166

Wesley's embrace of enlightened mechanical assumptions concerning medical care is reflected as well in his decision to publish in the Armiman Magazine in 1779 a letter he had received thirty years earlier from his friend John Robertson M.D. (c. 1691-1761), which included the following paragraph:

As little can I commend any hypothesis in physic, ... as in the whole of it reason and reflection are as necessary to cure diseases well as experience and observation. But speculatively-given physicians are apt to reason too subtly, and so often get out of their depth, and lose themselves—and their patients. If we knew the structure and motion of the machine we are to mend, and the proper materials and tools with which it is to be repaired, we should know as much as we can hope for. The best physician, then, is he who knows anatomy, mechanics, and hydraulics; and the nature and operations of medicines, by chemistry and other means; and reasons solely from these principles upon the phenomena [that] his attentive observations on the healthy and the sick make him a spectator of.lb/

Robertson went on to praise Friedrich Hoffmann (1660—1742) as exemplifying such an approach, which may explain why a set of Hoffmann's medical works are included among a surviving collection of books owned by the Wesley family.168

Wesley's 'empiric' stance would have resonated with Robertson's caution against one's 'attentive observations' of patients being displaced by speculative theories. Wesley disparaged physicians who 166 JW, Sermon 51, The Good Steward, 1.4, 2:285 in this edn.

167John Robertson toJW, Nov. 22, 1748, 26:343 in this edn.; published in Arminian Magazine 2 (1779): 89-91.

168 See Randy L. Maddox, 'Collection of Books owned by the Charles Wesley Family in The John Rylands University Library', Bulletin of The John Rylands

University Library 88.2 (2006): 133—77; esp. p. 135 on why some of these books likely belonged to JW.

Medical and Health Writings simply followed standard practice (secundum artem), rather than attending to which treatments were affective.169 And he endorsed the principle that the best physician was 'not he who talks best, or who writes best, but who performs the most cures'.1/0 These commitments led Wesley to diverge even from standard practice of leading representatives of the mechanical approach—condemning routine reliance in acute disorders on blood-letting, blistering, purging, and vomits.171 While these practices appear among Wesley's suggested treatments, they are much less frequent than in other medical advice texts of the time.172

Wesley's fullest embodiment of an empiricist approach to medicine might be the reports he collected about the results of treatment at the free clinic in London in the 1740s, or the records kept at the clinics he opened in London in the late 1750s to offer electrical shock therapy (see Desideratum). But the last point to make in this section is that Wesley's empiricist orientation reached beyond his own experimentation. He stayed abreast of published reports of findings by other physicians, passing on results that he found convincing. For example, in early 1774 he determined a disorder to be a case of angina pectoris, a diagnosis that had just emerged in the medical literature.173 Similarly, when consulted by Hannah

Ball about a case of dropsy in 1788, Wesley commended foxglove, a remedy championed by William Withering FRS (1741-90) in a 1785 book that Wesley read soon after its publication.174

Favoured God's 'Natural' Cures over Emerging 'Chemical' Medicines Modern readers may know that foxglove is a source for the drug digoxin. More important to Wesley, it was a broadly-available shrub.

169 See JW to Charles Wesley, Dec. 26, 1761, 27:281 in this edn.; and Journal, June 28-30, 1762, 21:371 in this edn.

170JW, Journal, May 9, 1767, 22:81 in this edn.

1/1 See particularly JW's comments 'To the Reader', §§4-5, in his extract ofTissot's Advices with Respect to Health.

172 Cf. Madden, 'Experience and the Common Interest of Mankind', 46.

173 See JW, Journal, Apr. 19, 1774, 22:405 in this edn. JW refers to the initial essay on this topic by William Heberden, which appeared in 1772 in volume 2 of Medical Transactions, published by the Royal College of Physicians; and David Macbride's Methodical Introduction to the Theory and Practice of Physic (pp.

426-32), published the same year.

174 See JW to Hannah Ball, Apr. 12, 1788 (vol. 31 in this edn.). The book was Withering's Account of the Foxglove, and Some of Its Medical Uses (see bibliography).

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice He noted in the Preface (§11) of Primitive Physic that his receipts favoured naturally-occurring plants and roots over all 'chemical, or exotic, or compound medicine'. This is borne out on inspection.

The first edition of Primitive Physic commends about 225 distinct remedies; of which 184 were made from plants, 17 were derived from animals, and 24 were naturally-occurring minerals.175 This dominance swam against the stream of emerging professional medicine, including the practice of most apothecaries.176

Wesley was not swimming alone. In support of his preference of simple medicines over compound, Wesley cited the authority of Hermann Boerhaave (Preface, §14). He could as easily have cited

Robert Boyle, whose discourse touting the advantages of simple medicines Wesley studied while at Oxford. The reasons Boyle offered were largely scientific, stressing that simple medicines made it easier for medical observers to determine which ones had the desired effect or undesired side-effect. Boyle also mentioned that they were easier to procure and use. Wesley would have appreciated all of these reasons, but particularly the final ones.

If this explains his preference for simple medicines, what was Wesley's objection to exotic cures—which are often simple in nature? For some of his peers the objection reflected a notion that diseases native to a country were best cured by remedies found in that country.1/7 Wesley does not seem to have shared this assumption. For example, while he urged that it be taken in solution, he was content to commend 'Peruvian bark' to British readers for some ailments.178 His receipts include several other non-native plant extracts and substances; but in almost every instance Wesley also mentioned locally-accessible alternatives. His main concern about exotic cures was that their foreign origin rendered them less available, less affordable, and less familiar of use among the poor.

This leaves the question of why Wesley favoured natural organic cures over their purified chemical ingredients. The issues of availability and cost surely played a role again—roots might be dug in the forest for free, while chemicals must be purchased from the apothecary. But Wesley hints at two theological assumptions in the 175 Eunice Bonow Bardell, 'Primitive Physick: John Wesley's Receipts', Pharmacy in History 21 (1979): 111-21.

176 See Juanita G. L. Burnby, A Study of the English Apothecary, From 1660 to 1760 (London: Welcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1983).

177 See Wear, 'Medicine in Early Modern Europe', 309-10.

178 Primitive Physic, §56, receipt #1; §103, receipt #2; §197, receipt #1; §234, receipt #1.

Medical and Health Writings Preface to Primitive Physic that may have reinforced this practical concern. The first is his Anglican-bred 'primitivism' (see §4). Just as Anglican apologists assumed that Christian life and doctrine were purest at the origin of the Christian church, and sought to emulate these times, Wesley privileged the primitive origins of physic and praised the Native Americans for most closely preserving the pristine practice.179 Closely related to this is a second assumption concerning theodicy. Wesley refers in §6 to the 'Author of nature', who taught humanity the medicinal value of plants after sin introduced sickness and death into creation. This calls to mind his frequent insistence that God would not have allowed the potential damages of human sin if God had not already graciously prepared ways to heal these damages.180 In light of these convictions, Wesley may have viewed the privileging of chemical medicines over plants as a failure to trust in God's long-standing provisions for the effects of sin.

Explored God's Most Ubiquitous Natural Cure: Electricity!

Wesley's emphasis on long-valued natural cures must be balanced by recognition that he became an enthusiastic supporter of one of the most recent alternatives to traditional therapies: electrical shock.

His advocacy for and experimentation regarding the possible healing benefits of electricity are explored below in the introduction to The Desideratum. We will limit comment here to sources of Wesley's enthusiasm for electrical shock therapy. By his own admission, the evidence of its effectiveness was often ambiguous. Two other factors contributed to his interest. First, electricity was part of God's creational provision, like other natural cures. Indeed, Wesley characterizes electricity in the opening paragraph of Desideratum as the 'soul of the universe', the created power permeating otherwise inert nature. Second, with an anticipated spread of inexpensive electrifying machines, this therapy would be ubiquitous and cheap.

Emphasized Preventative Care: The 'Cool Regimen'

Our final cluster of comments on Wesley's characteristic advice about health focus on his commended regimen for maintaining

'''See Madden, 'Cheap, Safe, and Natural Medicine', chapter 2.

180Cf. Sermon 59, 'God's Love to Fallen Man' (2:423-35 in this edn.); and Sermon 63, 'The General Spread of the Gospel', §27 (2:499 in this edn.).

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 49 health. We noted earlier that the last section (§16) of the Preface to Primitive Physic was an extract of George Cheyne's adaption of the non-naturals. We would highlight now the characteristic eighteenth-century British stamp reflected in Cheyne's adaptation (and echoed by Wesley). A stance known as the 'cool regimen' gained near consensus status in eighteenth-century British healthadvice manuals. A basic assumption of this regimen was that the key to promoting health was to harden the body by exercise and moderate diet, and to bring it into harmony with its environment.

Since the environment in England was cool, this meant that people needed to get plenty of fresh cool air, drink plenty of cool water, take cold baths, favour cool vegetables in their diet, and so on.181 A survey of Wesley's advice on regimen, in the Preface to Primitive Physic and beyond, illustrates this reigning cool regimen.182

Proper Diet, Stressing Cool Vegetables and Water The longest section of Cheyne's advice in Essay of Health focussed on diet. His general call was for temperance, particularly avoiding overly spicy dishes and excessive consumption of meat, while commending water as one's drink. In essence, as Cheyne later admitted, he was advising his patients and readers—mostly from the upper class—to eat the diet and embrace the lifestyle of the middle and lower classes. By repeating Cheyne's advice (in Preface, §16, II),

Wesley reinforced the wisdom of this diet among the lower classes.183

Cheyne actually held up a vegetarian diet as the ideal, as well as total abstinence from alcohol. Wesley committed himself to this ideal on two different occasions, though in each case he returned to moderate consumption of meat and wine after a couple of years.184

His advice to readers in later years echoed Cheyne's less idealistic 181 See Ginnie Smith, 'Prescribing the Rules of Health: Self-Help and Advice in the Late Eighteenth Century', in Roy Porter (ed.), Patients and Practitioners (New

York: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 249-82.

182 Note JW's critique of a physician who persisted in treating citizens of London with the 'hot regimen' when it was clearly ineffective (Journal Aug. 16, 1748,

20:239 in this edn.); and his commendation of Tissot for avoiding this (Advices with respect to Health, Preface, §3).

183 See Cheyne, English Malady, iv-v; and the analysis of Bryan Turner, 'The Government of the Body: Medical Regimens and the Rationalization of Diet',

British Journal of Sociology 33 (1982): 254—69.

184 See JW, A Letter to the Right Reverend the Lord Bishop of London, §14, 11:344—

45 in this edn.; and Journal, Dec. 29, 1746, 20:152 in this edn.

Medical and Health Writings call for temperance, specifically protesting suggestions of abstinence from wine.185 The main situation in which he continued to commend vegetarianism was for weight loss (see Primitive Physic, §104).

Regular Exercise, Particularly in the Fresh Air The second longest section of Cheyne's Essay of Health was devoted to exercise. He insisted that a due degree of regular exercise was indispensable for health and long life, adding that the value of exercise was enhanced when it was done outdoors in fresh cool air.'86 Wesley not only repeated this advice in his Preface (§16, IV), but expanded on it repeatedly in later setting. Consider two examples found in the collection that follows:

Not that any one particular kind of exercise is necessary for all persons. Indeed Dr. Cheyne supposes the natural exercise of walking, where the strength suffices, to be preferable to any other. But it should be used every day, not less than an hour before dinner, or after supper. Where the strength will not admit of this, the want of it may be supplied by riding two hours at least on horseback every day, before dinner or supper. If neither of these can be borne, the end of both may be answered by riding in a carriage. ... Those who cannot afford this may use a chamber-horse, which will suit every constitution.187

Every day of your life take at least an hour's exercise, between breakfast and dinner. If you will, take another hour before supper, or before you sleep. If you can, take it in the open air; otherwise, in the house. If you cannot ride or walk abroad, use within a dumb-bell or a wooden horse. If you have not strength to do this for an hour at a time, do it at twice or thrice. Let nothing hinder you. Your life is at stake. Make everything yield to this.188

185 See 'Thoughts on Nervous Disorders', §§6-7; and 'To the Reader', §§5-6, in JW's extract of Cadogan's Dissertation on the Gout. William Stroup, 'Meat, Ethics, and the Case of John Wesley', in Regina Hewitt & Pat Rogers (eds.), Orthodoxy and Heresy in Eighteenth-Century Society (Lewisburg: Pik: Bucknell University

Press, 2002), 267-80, overstates JW's support for vegetarianism. More balanced is

Charles I. Wallace Jr., 'Eating and Drinking with John Wesley', Bulletin of the John

Rylands Library 85.2-3 (2003): 137-55.

186 For more on the broad conviction of the benefits of open country and fresh air in health manuals of the time, see Andrew Wear, 'Making Sense of Health and the Environment in Early Modern England', in Wear (ed.), Medicine in Society, 119-47.

187'Extract from Dr. Cadogan's Dissertation on the Gout\ To the Reader, §10.

188'Thoughts on Nervous Disorders', §10.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice These quotes leave no doubt as to the importance Wesley placed on exercise. But they may raise questions about some forms of exercise that he commended.

To begin with, riding was broadly recommended in Wesley's day, even referred to as 'Dr. Horse', due to belief that the bouncing action helped to clear the lungs, improve circulation, and raise a healthy sweat.189 The potential loss of this benefit in bad weather, or because of advancing age, is what led to development of an aerobic alternative to be used indoors—what Wesley referred to as a 'wooden horse' or 'chamber horse'. The wooden horse was the inexpensive version, 'a double plank nine or ten feet long, properly placed upon two trestles', upon which one bounced.190 The chamber horse was a permanent piece of furniture, a chair with high arms on both sides and a seat that would rise on springs, allowing the person to bounce up and down. Wesley purchased one for his London house in his later years (it is still present there). As he neared death he encouraged his niece Sarah to borrow it and use it at least half an hour daily.191

The other exercise equipment Wesley mentioned was a dumbbell. This was not the set of weights known by this term today, but a form of upper-body aerobic exercise that mimicked the action of tolling a church bell. The earliest dumb-bells were simply bells with their clapper removed so that they made no sound (i.e., were

'dumb'). Eventually a model was developed that could be used at home. A rope was run through a hole in the ceiling into the attic of the house, where it wrapped around a free-spinning cylinder with counter-balanced weights attached on rods. As one pulled down on the rope, unwrapping it and spinning the cylinder, the weights gave the cylinder sufficient momentum to wrap the rope back up in the opposite direction (like a yo-yo), ready to be pulled down

• 192 again.

189 Cf. Porter, 'Eighteenth Century', 419-20; and Cheyne, Essay of Health, 95.

Francis Fuller devoted an entire chapter to the health benefits of riding in Medicina

Gymnastica; or, A Treatise concerning the Power of Exercise (London: Knaplock, 1705), 165-206.

190 JW to Mrs. Christian, July 17, 1785 (vol. 30 in this edn.).

191 See JW to Sarah Wesley, Aug. 18, 1790 (vol. 31 in this edn.).

192JW may have learned of this device from a description in The Gentlemans Magazine 16 (1746): 478. For a picture and discussion of one of the few remaining examples, see Conrad Volk, 'The Dumb-Bell at Knole: A Seventeenth-Century

Exercising Device', in National Trust Studies 1981, edited by Gervase JacksonStops (London: Sotheby Parke Bernet, 1981), 133-38.

Medical and Health Writings Appropriate Rest and Sleep On the traditional topic of sleep, Cheyne suggested a standard of eight hours a night. His discussion made clear this limit was intended to prevent sleeping too much, rather than too little. Here again we can sense the status of Cheyne's main audience. Poorer classes were least likely to have the luxury of sleeping late! But Cheyne's deepest concern was persons of any economic class who withdrew from life in depression, lingering in bed.19'

Wesley shared Cheyne's concern about the link between sleep patterns and mental health. He revised the standard for sleep slightly in the Preface to Primitive Physic (§16, III), suggesting seven or eight hours. In later years he reduced the standard a bit more, particularly in reference to struggles with depression:

I would allow between six and seven hours, at an average, to a healthy man; or an hour more, between seven and eight hours, to an unhealthy man. And I do not remember that in threescore years I have known either man or woman who laid longer in bed than this,

(whether they slept or no), but in some years they complained of lowness of spirits. The plain reason of which seems to be, while we sleep all the springs of nature are unbent. And if we sleep longer than is sufficient, they are relaxed more than is sufficient, and of course grow weaker and weaker.194

In a related sermon Wesley charged that sleeping too much was not only the chief cause of all nervous diseases, it was the cause for the recent increase in nervous disorders in Britain.195

Cleanliness and Cold-Bathing There are two final commendations about regimen, which move a bit beyond the specific focus of the non-naturals, that Wesley appropriated from Cheyne and amplified in his own advice: cleanliness and cold-bathing.

In the first case, Cheyne concluded his comments related to 'air' with a passing comment that his readers should 'observe all the 193 Cheyne, Essay of Health, 87-88.

194'Thoughts on Nervous Disorders', §7.

195 Sermon 93 (1782), 'On Redeeming the Time', II.4, 3:326-27 in this edn. See also the extended discussion of this topic in JW's letter to his niece Sarah Wesley,

July 17, 1781 (vol. 30 in this edn.).

/ntroduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 53 cleanness and sweetness in their houses, clothes, and furniture suitable to their condition'.196 Starting with the echo of this advice in the Preface to Primitive Physic (§16,1.3), Wesley's repeated emphasis on cleanliness became legendary, drawing the attention of all who study the topic. Indeed, Wesley is sometimes credited with inventing the maxim 'cleanliness is next to godliness'.197 While he definitely did not create this rabbinical proverb, Wesley did cite it often when exhorting his followers to maintain cleanliness in their person, clothing, and housing.198 He once distilled this advice in a letter to a lay preacher as: 'Do not stink above ground!'199 The health benefits of cleanliness are now well recognized, though

Wesley was likely concerned as much with the public perception of Methodists.

By contrast, Wesley's commendation of cold-bathing was primarily for the assumed health benefits, with any sanitary effect or contribution to tidiness an incidental extra. Here again Wesley embraced a practice that Cheyne had commended, this time in loose connection to the topic of exercise.200 Cheyne emphasized how cold-bathing helped harden and acclimatise a person. Wesley went further, contending that it could cure several disorders and inhibit many hereditary ailments.201 Since he believed these benefits were under-appreciated, Wesley not only listed cold-bathing as a remedy for several disorders within Primitive Physic, he appended to the volume a compilation of the ailments supposedly cured or prevented.

Wesley's championing of this treatment is credited by some for the popularity of cold-water therapy at the end of the eighteenth century.202

196 Cheyne, Essay of Health, 28. On this general topic see Virginia Smith, 'Physical Puritanism and Sanitary Science: Material and Immaterial Beliefs in Popular

Physiology, 1650-1840', in W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter (eds.), Medical Fringe and Medical Orthodoxy, 1750-1850 (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 174-97.

197 See Keith Thomas, 'Cleanliness and Godliness in early Modern England', in Anthony Fletcher (ed.), Religion, Culture, and Society in Early Modern Britain

(New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 56-83, p. 65.

198 See especially 'Large' Minutes, Q. 41, pt. 6, 10:890 in this edn. (repeated in revised form as W. 44, 10:921 in this edn.); Sermon 88, 'On Dress', §5, 3:249 in this edn.; and Sermon 98, 'On Visiting the Sick', II.6, 3:392 in this edn.

199JW to Richard Steele, Apr. 24, 1769 (vol. 28 in this edn.).

200 Cheyne, Essay of Health, 102-3, 108; echoed by JW in Preface, §16, IV.10.

201 The phrase 'it prevents abundance of diseases' in §16, IV. 10 is JW's addition, not found in Cheyne, Essay of Elealth, 108.

202 Cf. Smith, 'Physical Puritanism', 180.

Medical and Health Writings Contemporary Reception of John Wesley's Practice of Offering Medical and Health Advice203

Wesley's practice of providing medical care and advice drew little negative attention through its first three decades (a fact some later writers, apparently unaware of the Anglican precedent in this regard, find surprising204)• To be sure, Anglican opponents characterized the Methodists as 'young quacks in divinity' from the earliest years of the renewal movement.205 But this used the term 'quack' in its general sense of pretending to knowledge that one does not have; there was no specific criticism of offering medical advice in the attacks.

One of the particular accusations aimed at the Methodists was that they were fanatics or enthusiasts. Nathaniel Lancaster framed this accusation in his 1767 satirical poem Methodism Triumphant through extended ridicule of the claim of Wesley and others to offer

'ancient remedies' for healing 'distempered souls'.206 While forceful, Lancaster's ridicule was analogical, focussing on evangelistic practices rather than treatment of physical ills.

A common evidence cited by Lancaster and others to prove the fanaticism of Methodists was their reliance on miraculous healing.207 We noted earlier that in Wesley's case this implied no criticism of seeking medical care. Indeed, William Warburton, a bishop and leading critic, mentioned Wesley's offering of medical advice in an (ironic) positive light, suggesting that he took up these efforts merely to demonstrate that he placed more emphasis on works than did George Whitefield. Warburton also proposed that Wesley drew upon his Oxford training in producing Primitive Physic (in principle, apparently, a positive venture) primarily to counter earlier statements that seemed to imply that he disdained human learning.208

203This section draws on Randy L. Maddox, 'Reclaiming the Eccentric Parent:

Methodist Reception of John Wesley's Interest in Medicine', in Deborah Madden (ed.), 'Inward and Outward Health': John Wesley's Holistic Concept of Medical Science, the Environment, and Holy Living (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2012), 15-50.

Readers can find more details there.

204 Cf. Luke Tyerman, The Life and Times of the Revd. John Wesley (London:

Hodder and Stoughton, 1872), 1:564.

203 One of the earliest examples is Tristram Land, A Letter to the Rev. Mr. Whitefield, Designed to Correct His Mistaken Account of Regeneration (London: J. Roberts,

206 Nathaniel Lancaster, Methodism Triumphant (London: Wilkie, et al., 1767) 26, 62.

2"' Cf. Lancaster, Methodism Triumphant, 51; and William Warburton, The Doctrine of Grace (London: A. Millar, 1763), 138-39.

208 Warburton, Doctrine of Grace, 251-52.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 55

Something closer to criticism of Wesley for offering medical advice emerged in the early 1770s, in a debate between the Wesleyan and Calvinist Methodists. In 1771 John Fletcher published his Second Check to Antinomianism, in which he tried to defend

Wesley against the charge of giving inconsistent spiritual advice by drawing an analogy with howr physicians might dispense hot medicines to some patients and cool to others, depending on their condition.209 Richard Hill, a Calvinist Methodist, challenged the appropriateness of the analogy rather sharply: 'Unless Mr.

Fletcher can prove that the ability of the physician may be consistent with him sometimes administering a plentiful dose of hemlock or rats-bane, I fear we cannot allow Mr. Wesley any other title than that of an empiric, or quack doctor.'210 In his reflections on Hill's response, John Wesley singled out this quote as an example of the ungentlemanly tone of the work.211 Responding in turn to Wesley, Hill made clear that he was not attacking Wesley for giving medical advice, he was simply playing with Fletcher's analogy for Wesley's spiritual advice. Then Hill extended the analogical critique in a long satirical poem about Wesley as a quack offering spiritual 'nostrums'!212 Whatever the tone of this piece, it still did not breach the boundary of analogy and criticize Wesley specifically for offering medical advice.

The first clear instance of that breach came in early 1775, from the pen of Augustus Toplady, a more rancorous Calvinist interlocutor with Wesley. In the preface of his response to Wesley's tract

Thoughts upon Necessity, Toplady drew a direct comparison between the dangers of Wesley's 'spiritual medicines' and a 'quack remedy' that Wesley recommended in the Primitive Physic for gout (§120)— applying raw beef steak to the part affected. Toplady noted that Dr.

Edward Townshend, dean of Norwich cathedral, died of gout in 1765, even though he had followed this advice. While Toplady admitted that he had no evidence Townshend had found the advice in Primitive Physic, he insisted that this instance 'demonstrates the unskilful temerity wherewith the compiler [Wesley] sets himself up

209John William Fletcher, A Second Check to Antinomianism (London: New Chapel, 1771), 22-23.

210 Richard Hill, A Review of all the Doctrines Taught by the Rev. Mr. John Wesley

(London: Dilly, 1772), 29.

211 Wesley, Some Remarks on Mr. Hill's 'Review ... §3, 13:437 in this edn.

212 See Richard Hill, Logica Wesleiensis; or The Farrago Double Distilled. With an Heroic Poem in Praise of Mr. John Wesley (London: Dilly, 1773), 44-51.

Medical and Health Writings as a physician of the body'.213 While Toplady was challenging Wesley's qualifications for issuing medical advice, it is also obvious that this was not his primary concern—he invoked the issue in passing, in hopes that it would help discredit Wesley in their ongoing debate over predestination.

As 1775 drew to a close, Wesley came under direct attack for another receipt in Primitive Physic, recommended for 'one poisoned'

receipt #1). This attack led to a running battle of printed exchanges, stretching over more than a year. We have gathered the texts of these exchanges in Appendix D, where readers can look for documentation and greater detail of the following summary.

The onslaught began with a letter to The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser by a person using the pseudonym of 'Antidote', published December 25, 1775. The author mentioned happening upon the prescription in Primitive Physic for one poisoned that read

'give one or two drams of distilled verdigris'. He then exclaimed:

'I could scarce believe my eyesight for some time, nor can at present by any means account for the ignorance and presumption of a man who deals out as an antidote one of the most active poisons in nature, in such an enormous dose.' Antidote went on to note that the proper dose of this drug would have been one or two grains

(a grain being about 1 /60th of a dram), and exhorted Wesley to recall 'these firebrands of death that you have scattered so plentifully through the land' (i.e., copies of the Primitive Physic), suggesting that otherwise he would bring it to the attention of the Royal College of Physicians.

Wesley responded quickly with a letter thanking the 'gentleman', though wishing he had drawn this obvious 'mere blunder of the printer' to Wesley's attention in a more obliging manner. Wesley insisted he had written 'grain' rather than 'dram'. Wesley ended his letter by begging everyone that had a copy of Primitive Physic to insert a correction in their copy.

Wesley's response was attacked immediately by a writer using the pseudonym 'Fly-Flap' (i.e., fly swatter), who argued that, instead of apologizing, Wesley's letter was 'a most crafty piece of evasion and only worthy of an unfeeling quack, regardless of and sporting with the health and lives of his fellow creatures'. The writer dismissed the suggestion that the wording could have resulted from 2,3 Augustus Montague Toplady, The Scheme of Christian and Philosophical Necessity Asserted; in opposition to Mr. John Wesley's Tract on that Subject (London:

Vallance & Simmons, 1775), vi-viii.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 57 a printer's error and challenged Wesley to show any edition of the work in which the error was not present.

In the same issue of The Gazetteer was a second, longer letter protesting Wesley's 'despicable apology', under the pseudonym of 'Civis'. The author argued that Wesley ought to have reviewed personally every edition of Primitive Physic issued, and contended that the only reason he did not was his 'thirst for gain'. He then added: 'Or did more important avocations (political ones perhaps) render you totally forgetful of your duty in this particular?' Civis concluded by admonishing Wesley to publish the correction of the 'poisonous prescription' in papers throughout the kingdom and to revise Primitive Physic immediately.

Another letter signed 'Antidote' was published in the January 10 issue of The Gazetteer. This time the author said that he owned the 8th edition (1759) of Primitive Physic, which also contained the 'famous poisonous recipe', contradicting Wesley's 'artful' suggestion that the error had crept into only a few editions.

This was followed three days later by a letter from 'A Friend to Truth'. This writer suggested that Wesley's confession of the 'fatal blunder' of his printer was a reaction that betrayed Wesley's 'usual levity' about such serious matters. He continued: 'How many thousands may have fallen by it is not easily estimated; but is hoped this, with other fatal blunders and mistakes in politics, will at last teach this Reverend Methodist gentleman, scholar, Christian, physician, and politician, to be more serious' and stick solely to preaching and spiritual writings.

Wesley's answer to this flurry of attacks came in a letter to the editor of Lloyd's Evening Post, published on January 26, 1776. He began with the observation: 'The Primitive Physic might have escaped, had it not been for the Calm Address' (more on this later).

Wesley then sketched the process that led to the publication of the Primitive Physic, insisting that his only motive had been to benefit others. He rebutted several accusations—such as that he considered all physicians to be ignorant knaves, or that he rejected all Galenical medicines. Most of all, he challenged the tone of the letters and their many exaggerations, asking: 'Who can account for these palpable, barefaced falsehoods, advanced without rhyme or reason?

Only on this supposition: a red hot American will say anything to blacken one that loves King George.'

After Wesley had written this reply, but before it appeared in print, another attack was published in The Gazetteer, this time signed 'XXX'. The writer proposed that the real reason for the

Medical and Health Writings 'blundering prescription' was that Wesley mistook a 'dram' for a 'grain', because he did not recognize that apothecaries use a unique type of Troy weights. Broadening the charge, he suggested: 'People who ... generally run as they read, and fling books aside as soon as they fancy themselves possessed of what they were prepossessed in favour of before, are perpetually falling into great errors. Mr. Wesley's whole progress in life stands as a proof that he is one of that species of readers.' XXX closed by again challenging Wesley to point out a single edition of Primitive Physic without the error.

The next day The Gazetteer carried yet another letter from 'Antidote', with the heading 'O thou man of God, there is death in thy pot' (2 Kings 4:40, revised). The writer first claimed that intervening letters (since the first) under that pseudonym were by another author; but he went on to say that he considered Wesley's reply to date unsatisfactory and evasive (Wesley's longer answer did not appear in print until the following day). He then bluntly dismissed the suggestion that the use of 'drams' in the prescription was a printer's error. More pointedly, drawing on the analogy of 2 Kings 4:38-41, Antidote charged that Wesley had raised a false alarm that there was a dearth of physic in the land, and then ostentatiously produced his great pot of Primitive Physic, which actually was a deadly mix, leaving the people now in need of a 'holy hand to cast in the healing meal, that there may be no harm in the pot!'

The writer closed with the suggestion that Wesley's wisest course of action would be to stop offering medical advice.

Wesley replied to these further volleys over his prescription for one poisoned in a letter published on January 31 in The Gazetteer.

He opened with a sarcastic entreaty to continue publishing their letters—since it was helping more people become aware of Primitive Physic. He next insisted that he had given public answers to Antidote and the others. Then Wesley turned to XXX's characterization of him as one who 'reads as he runs'. While admitting that he read while journeying, since his time at home was usually spent in writing, Wesley insisted that his study of Scripture was methodical and asked for some latitude given his age (he was seventy-two).

Let us pause at for a moment in the sketch of this battle to note a few details. First, the suggested dosage of'one or two drams' appeared in the 2nd edition of Primitive Physic (ca. 1750), which was the first to contain this receipt. The dosage remained unchanged through the 16th edition (1774), current during the debate. Hence there was no edition to which Wesley could point that did not contain the error. Second, Wesley almost certainly took this receipt

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice (with its mistaken dosage) from a published source.214 If there is blame, it did not lay with his printer, but on Wesley's failure to catch the mistake in the source. Third, whatever the source of the mistaken dosage, Wesley revised it to 'one or two grains' in the 17th edition of Primitive Physic, published in late 1776, as encouraged by his critics.

Concerning the motives attributed to Wesley by his critics, the suggestion by Antidote that Wesley exaggerated the dearth of physicians in order to create a market for Primitive Physic fails to recognize Wesley's focus on the poor and those in the scattered villages.

The charge that Wesley was motivated to publish by desire for financial gain is equally unconvincing, given the difference in price between Primitive Physic and William Buchan's Domestic Medicine noted previously. There is little reason to doubt Wesley's claim that his main motive was to share his knowledge of medical matters with those in need.

Reversing the table, what about the motives of Wesley's attackers? He charged that they latched onto this minor mistake in Primitive Physic and caricatured it, not because of a deep interest in the health of his readers, but as a tool in their attempt to discredit his public stand in support of King George. Some background will help put this suggestion in context. From the beginning of their disputes with the British government about taxation and representation, through mid-1775, Wesley had shown public sympathy for the stance of the British colonists in North America. Then Samuel

Johnson's tract Taxation no Tyranny (and the declaration of independence by the colonists in July) changed his mind. In September 1775 Wesley published A Calm Address to our American Colonies (digesting Johnson's tract, without acknowledgment), publicly adopting the government's side in the dispute. Released when excitement over the colonies was at a fever pitch, Wesley's 'turncoat'

Calm Address caused a furor. The next three months witnessed numerous critical letters to the editor in London magazines (particularly those with Whig connections) and no less than sixteen tracts published against Wesley.215 Caleb Evans, a dissenting preacher and Whig, took the lead in attacking Wesley, seeking to discredit Calm

Address by exposing it as 'plagiarized' from Johnson—who could be dismissed as a pensioner (or paid propagandist) of the government.

214 Boyle Godfrey, A Treasure of Useful Discoveries (Dublin, 1746), 159-60.

215 A good summary can be found in Donald Henry Kirkham, 'Pamphlet Opposition to the Rise of Methodism' (Duke University Ph.D. thesis, 1973), 290-314.

JW's writing related to this dispute are gathered in vol. 15 of this edn.

Medical and Health Writings Against this background, readers should note the frequent allusions to Calm Address, Caleb Evans, and Wesley's political ambitions in the various letters attacking Primitive Physic. It is also significant that most of the letters appeared in The Gazetteer and New Daily Advertiser, which remained a strong supporter of the American colonists' cause after the war began, reflecting its largely mercantile readership.216 Wesley's Calm Address was a prime target for The Gazetteer, which included a couple of Caleb Evans's final letters attacking Wesley just prior to Antidote's opening volley in the debate of the receipt for one poisoned.217 It is not hard to see how Wesley might suspect that the primary motivation for attacking his receipt was not medical but political—to poison the (ink) well of his Calm Address.

Whatever its original motive, the attack upon Wesley's receipt for one poisoned played out just as a broadened basis for enforcing specialized training and certification of medical practitioners was being put in place. In 1773 John Coakley Lettsom, a Quaker physician and philanthropist, founded The Medical Society of London—the first general medical society of note in England.218 Unlike the Royal

College of Physicians, this Society invited surgeons and apothecaries into membership as well. This act of inclusion was a major step in consolidating and intensifying efforts to define the boundaries of 'professional' medicine—by drawing the line at these two groups.

The debate over Wesley's receipt for one poisoned helped make him a target in these intensified efforts. Actually, the initial debate was largely ignored by broader London society, with few of the letters in The Gazetteer being picked up and reprinted in other newspapers (as was commonly done with prominent topics). But it drew the attention of William Hawes, a London apothecary, who published an advertisement in The Gazetteer on February 3, 1776,

(three days after Wesley's last letter) announcing a book he was preparing that would analyse all of the prescriptions in Primitive

Physic, exposing their many follies and dangers. Hawes thanked Antidote for his 'humane and sensible letter' pointing out the dangerous prescription for counteracting poison, which Hawes credited for convincing him of the need for his book.

216 See Hannah Barker, Newspapers, Politics, and Public Opinion in Late Eighteenth-Century England (Oxford: Clarendon, 1998), 25-27, 31.

2,7 Caleb Evans, 'To John Wesley', The Gazetteer (Dec. 7, 1775), 2; and Caleb Evans, 'To John Wesley', The Gazetteer (Dec. 23, 1775), 2.

218 See Penelope Hunting, The Medical Society of London, 1773-2003 (London:

Medical Society of London, 2003).

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice 61 In other words, Hawes appeared on the scene as the 'holy hand to cast in the healing meal' that Antidote had called for a week earlier. It is tempting to view Antidote's call as an intentional teaser, setting up Hawes's announcement. The possibility could even be considered that Hawes was 'Antidote'. We know that Hawes was an elder in Abraham Rees's presbyterian Church of St. Thomas in Southwark. Like most dissenting ministers, Rees was a Whig and strong supporter of the colonists in their revolt. Hawses's comments in the preface of his published Examination of the Revd.

Mr. John Wesley's Primitive Physic make clear that he shared this stance. He spoke disparagingly of Wesley's character and conduct as a politician, specifically endorsing Caleb Evans's attack upon Wesley.219

Divergence from Wesley on the most burning political issue of the day may help explain the tone of Hawes's book, which a review in Gentlemens Magazine characterized as filled with 'sourness and rancour'. But disdain for Wesley—as a minister—having the audacity to offer medical advice is also evident. This is particularly noticeable because there was little in Primitive Physic that merited contemporary criticism. The majority of Wesley's suggested cures were commonplace, taken from recent authorities. He was more cautious than most concerning questionable treatments like bleeding and purging. As Deborah Madden has argued, the result is that Hawes's Examination became a 'petty, hair-splitting exercise' that only occasionally rose above 'sectarian, political, and even ad hominem denunciation of Wesley's text'.220

Wesley's initial response to Hawes's Examination was a brief letter in Lloyd's Evening Post in mid-July, thanking him for publicity, which increased the demand for Primitive Physic. Hawes replied immediately to this cynical dismissal with his own public letter, which compared Wesley to the 'most mercenary quack that ever disgraced a stage in Moorfields' and ranked him among 'the most base and unworthy of mankind'.

Within a week Wesley published a more serious response to Hawes. He made clear his belief that Hawes was motivated to attack

Primitive Physic by his strong disagreement with Wesley's Calm 2,9 William Hawes, An Examination of the Revd. Mr. John Wesley's Primitive

Physick (London: J. Dodsley, 1776), iii-iv.

220 Deborah Madden, 'Contemporary Reaction to John Wesley's Primitive Physic:

Or, the Case of Dr. William Hawes Examined', Social History of Medicine 17 (2004): 365-78; see 368-69.

Medical and Health Writings Address. He rejected the suggestion that he lacked basic medical knowledge, stressing the numerous medical sources he had consulted. Wesley then worked through Hawes's Examination, answering several specific criticisms. He ended the letter by thanking

Hawes for drawing some problematic prescriptions to his attention and noted that he was preparing a new edition of Primitive Physic that would address these cases.

Hawes's answer to this letter appeared two weeks later. He rejected the suggestion that disagreement with Wesley's political stance motivated him to do the Examination. He rebuffed Wesley's assumption that he should have recognized the sources of Wesley's receipts, noting that Wesley typically did not cite his sources—in keeping with his 'character as a plagiary'! Hawes contended that Wesley should have responded sooner in correcting the dangerous remedies, charging that the reason he did not call in the earlier unsold copies was fear of financial loss. He closed with the suggestion that instead of issuing a revised copy, Wesley should simply cease publishing medical advice.

While the initiating tempest in The Gazetteer had not been broadly noticed, Hawes's Examination was reviewed in several London journals. Some of the reviews echoed the tone of the book, with one calling for Wesley to be hanged!221 Others expressed appreciation for the medical insights of Hawes's volume, if sometimes questioning its tone. Most concurred with the Critical Review that this case proved the need for respecting professional specialization. As a formal expression of this sentiment, the recently-formed Medical

Society of London issued Hawes, the apothecary, public thanks for his efforts to restore 'true medical knowledge'.222

In principle, admonitions to restrict himself to his pulpit (in the words of Civis) need imply no deprecation of Wesley in his appropriate professional field. But these public satirical attacks on Wesley's efforts in medical care by critics of his political views were soon taken over by persons who differed with Wesley on theological issues—-whether Anglicans wary of his dissenting tendencies, or Calvinists scornful of his Arminian and perfectionist stance. A letter in The Gazetteer in early July 1776 by 'Public Applause' was perhaps the first to weave together this threefold attack:

221 The suggestion of hanging comes at the end of the review in the acerbic London Review of English and Foreign Literature 3 (1776): 412-13.

222 Cited in Public Applause, 'To Mr. Hawes, Author of An Examination of Mr.

Wesley's Primitive Physick', The Gazetteer (July 7, 1776), 1-2.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice I here has, I doubt not, always been impious divines, seditious quacks, and ignorant and profligate politicians, who have each committed horrid mischiefs in their different professions. But I never till this era found all these enormities united in one person, who attempted to poison the soul by religious doctrines, the body individual by quackism, and the body politic by a Jesuitical and daring attempt to vindicate the violent measures of government to tax three millions of unrepresented free-born Englishmen.

By early 1777 active debate about Wesley's Primitive Physic subsided. But the linking of his efforts of offering medical care to satirical attacks upon his role of providing spiritual and theological leadership for his Methodist people created the bind that led Wesley (as noted earlier) to strip the next edition of the 'Large' Minutes of references to local visitors of the sick and instructions for his lay assistants to visit the sick. Thereby Wesley bowed to the emerging specialization that would permeate modern Western cultures.

This specialization became both a source and the reinforced result of the explosion of knowledge over the last two centuries. While it has had many benefits, it also spawned disciplinary insularity and reductionist approaches to issues. And it weakened among Wesley's ecclesial heirs the balance that characterized his approach (at its best) to issues of health.223

Later Evaluations of John Wesley's Practice of Offering Medical and Health Advice

Echoes of Hawes's professional disdain for Wesley's efforts in medicine continued to reverberate for some time. When Robert Southey, a prominent British author, published his generally sympathetic biography of Wesley in 1820, he judged the Primitive

Physic as revealing a 'lamentable want of judgment and perilous rashness'.224 An essay (apparently) by a physician published on both sides of the Atlantic in 1906 contended that Primitive Physic could only strike modern readers as evidence of a hiatus in Wesley's faculties, which was 'natural and inevitable in a theologian of that day,

223 For reflections on this history see Elmer Brooks Holifield, Health and Medicine in the Methodist Tradition (New York: Crossroad, 1986); and Harold Y. Vanderpool, 'The Wesleyan Methodist Tradition', in Ronald Numbers & Darrel

Amundson (eds.), Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious

Traditions (New York: Macmillan, 1986), 317-53.

224 Robert Southey, Life of Wesley (London: Longman, et al., 1820), 2:347.

Medical and Health Writings and not unfamiliar even in some of the theological intellects of the present'!225 Similar judgments appear in some historical studies through the mid-twentieth century.226 As a result, many of Wesley's twenty-first century ecclesial descendants view his medical interests as eccentric, if they are aware of these efforts at all.227

But there has been a growing counter-voice to echoes of Hawes as well, reclaiming this dimension of Wesley's ministry. In 1846, the year after John Stamp expressed the reserve about Wesley's medical advice that opened this introduction, Thomas Marriott published an article in the same British Methodist magazine noting that it was the centenary of Wesley's opening the health clinic in London.228

While Marriott did not explicitly rebut Stamp, his survey of Wesley's efforts to provide medical care had an appreciative tone. His became the first in a string of publications that have looked with more favour upon the Primitive Physic and upon Wesley's medical efforts more generally.229

The majority of these publications are brief and fall in the vein of bemused interest on discovering this dimension of Wesley's work.

By no means are they all by Methodists or other descendants of the Wesleyan revival. The earliest examples in North America come from the pen of John Plummer, a Quaker physician in Richmond,

Indiana.250 As this suggests, many in this vein come from medical practitioners of various types. Their general tone can be illustrated by the conclusion of a 1902 essay in The British Medical Journal about the Primitive Physic:

Such are a few of the quaint ideas and practices dealt within this old book of popular medicine. It is only fair, however, to note the fact

221 Burton G. Thomas, 'John Wesley on the Art of Healing', The British Medical Journal (Apr. 28, 1906): 987-88; reprinted in American Physician (Nov. 1906):

295-98. The published name is probably a pseudonym.

226E.g., John Harold Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Penguin, 1950), 96; and Lester S. King, The Medical World of the Eighteenth Century

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), 34-39.

227 See, for example, the description of Primitive Physic as 'a strange mix of old wives' tales and recent insights' in John Munsey Turner, John Wesley: The Evangelical Revival and the Rise of Methodism in England (Peterborough: Epworth,

228 Thomas Marriott, 'Methodism in Former Days: Medicine and Medical Advice', Wesleyan Methodist Magazine 69 (1846): 359-64.

229 See the bibliography, and more detailed references, in Maddox, 'Reclaiming the Eccentric Parent'.

211 John T. Plummer, 'John Wesley's Primitive Physic', Nashville Journal of Medicine and Surgery 15 (1858): 282-86.

Introduction to Offering Medical and Health Advice

that the author's strong common sense guarded him from many of the more absurd and disgusting prescriptions of his day.231

Some make this point more strongly, contending that 'Wesley's treatment of diseases was at least as reconcilable with common sense as that of the contemporary regular practitioner, much more so in most cases'.232 A few studies slide over into panegyric, championing Wesley as an exemplary amateur physician.233

The string of publications on Wesley and medicine has been laced with occasional more rigorous studies that explain and evaluate Wesley's general practice and specific receipts in their historical context. While noting the limitations and tensions of his efforts, these studies concur in judging Primitive Physic as better than most of the popular medical works of the age.234

Finally, a recurrent theme in recent studies has been appreciation for the precedent that Wesley provides for help in countering the insular and reductionist tendencies of modern specialization, seeking balanced and integrative models of health and healing.2"

231 Anonymous, 'A Medical Tract by John Wesley', The British Medical Journal (Mar. 29, 1902): 799-800.

232 William Ren wick Riddell, 'Wesley's System of Medicine', New York Journal of Medicine 99 (1914): 64-68; here, 68.

233The most developed example is A. Wesley Hill, John Wesley Among the Physicians (London: Epworth, 1958).

234 See George Dock, 'The Primitive Physic of Rev. John Wesley', Journal of the American Medical Association 64 (1915): 629-38; George Sebastian Rousseau,

'John Wesley's Primitive Physic', Harvard Library Bulletin 16 (1968): 242-56; Clifford Wayne Calloway, 'John Wesley's Primitive Physic: An Essay in Appreciation',

Proceedings of the Mayo Clinic 49 (1974): 318—24; John Cule, 'The Rev. John Wesley: "The Naked Empiricist" and Orthodox Medicine', Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 45 (1990): 41-63; and the studies by Donat and Madden cited earlier.

235 See particularly Philip Wesley Ott, 'John Wesley on Health as Wholeness , Journal of Religion and Health 30 (1991): 43—57; Randy L. Maddox, John Wesley on Holistic Health and Healing', Methodist History 46 (2007): 4-33; Melanie Dobson Hughes, 'The Holistic Way: John Wesley's Practical Piety as a Resource for Integrated Healthcare', Journal of Religion and Health 47 (2008): 237—52; and Karen

D. Scheib, 'Christian Commitment to Public Well-Being: John Wesley's "Sensible Regimen" and Primitive Physic', in Ellen Louise Idler (ed.), Religion as a Social

Determinant of Public Health (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 113—32.

A COLLECTION OF RECEIPTS

FOR THE USE OF THE POOR

(1745) An Introductory Comment The broad background and commitments that led to Wesley's publication of A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor in 1745 were explored in the general Introduction to this volume.

The pamphlet was an important resource through which Wesley exercised his vocation of priest/physician within the early Methodist revival, as it spread from Bristol and London into the many villages and cities covering the British landscape. It embodied his concern to provide the poor with safe and accessible medical advice.

A few specific aspects of A Collection of Receipts deserve further comment, to aid in appreciating its content. A good place to begin is with the title term 'receipts'. All three editions of the pamphlet that Wesley published actually used the archaic spelling 'receits', but he adopted the modern spelling when he brought the collection into Primitive Physic in 1747. In keeping with the editorial principles of this edition, we have standardized to this spelling. But whatever the spelling, the use of 'receipt' in this title is puzzling for modern readers, because this term is used most commonly now to denote a record of the amount of something received, particularly of money in a financial transaction. One must scan down to the fourth-ranked cluster of possible meanings in the Oxford English

Dictionary to locate the sense of the term in eighteenth-century medicine: 'a statement of the ingredients and procedure necessary for making a medicinal preparation. . . . More generally: a remedy or cure.' A Collection of Receipts was Wesley's first published gathering of recommended remedies for ailments.

Turning to the term 'collection' in the title of the pamphlet, one question that it naturally raises concerns the source(s) from which the various receipts were drawn. Wesley does not cite a single source in any of the three editions of the pamphlet, which has led some to assume that he was simply compiling popular folklore. However,

Medical and Health Writings thirty years after publishing A Collection of Receipts, when Primitive Physic came under attack, Wesley stressed the role of published sources in response to the question: 'But how came this tract into the world?'

Above fifty years ago Mr. Boyle's Remedia Parabilia, or Remedies Easy to be Procured fell into my hands.1 2 I transcribed many of them for my own use, adding a few more from books or conversation, and afterwards from a treatise I found in Carolina entitled Every Man his own Physician.1 After proving the virtue of many of these, near forty years since I published Receipts for the Use of the Poor,3

The annotated text of A Collection of Receipts below confirms Wesley's description in this response. Over half of the 244 receipts included have been traced confidently to published sources (based upon significant replication of terms, quantities, etc.). Several of the remaining receipts are likely also dependent upon published sources, as yet unidentified. Others would be drawn from Wesley's

'conversation' with family, friends, followers, and the like.4

Another aspect of Wesley's account of the origin of Collection of Receipts confirmed by this annotated edition is his reliance upon Robert Boyle. Over a quarter of the receipts (66 of 244) can be confidently traced to Boyle.5 The next most prominent published source, in terms of number of receipts included (at least 38), was a two-volume overview of medical advice by 'the most celebrated

11.e., Robert Boyle, Some Receipts of Medicines, For the most part Parable and Simple. Sent to a Friend in America (London: [s.n.,] 1688). JW does not mention this specific book in his Oxford diary (which begins in April 1725). He does record translating the Latin version of Boyle's essay championing simple remedies, and their capability with a Newtonian approach (De Specificorum Remediorum) on July

9, 1725, which may have pointed him to Some Receipts.

2 John Tennent, Every Man His Own Doctor: or. The Poor Planter's Physician (Williamsburg, VA: William Parks, 1734).

'JW, 'To the Editor of Lloyd's Evening Post', c. Jan. 23, 1776 (in Appendix D below).

4 See Boyle's description of collecting receipts from conversation in Some Receipts, [p. vii].

5 In preparing the text of Collection of Receipts, JW drew upon a more extended version of the earlier work he read: Robert Boyle, Medicinal Experiments; or, A Collection of Choice and Safe Remedies, for the most part Simple and easily Prepared, very useful in Families, and fitted for the service of Country People, 4th edn., enlarged

(London: Smith and Taylor, 1703). It is clear that JW was using at least this 4th edition, because he included one receipt that was first integrated into the collection in that edition.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor authors', published by John Allen.6 Wesley's financial records show that he purchased this work shortly after its publication in 1730.7

By contrast, the third largest set of receipts clearly drawn from a published source (at least six) come from a book published within a year of the appearance ofA Collection of Receipts, George Berkeley's defence of the Virtues of Tar Water.8 The authors of other books drawn on by Wesley for scattered remedies his Collection include John Floyer, John Hancocke, Mary Kettilby, and Thomas

Sydenham.9

Perhaps the biggest surprise among the annotations in this edition of A Collection of Receipts is that the name of John Tennent

(author of Every Man His Own Doctor) never appears as the source of a receipt. This can be explained in part by Tennent's focus on medicinal herbs common in North America. But the more central reason can be seen by comparing Wesley's suggestions for a daily ague (in Section I below) with Tennent's advice:

After the second fit, you must bleed eight ounces. The next day, purge with Indian physic [i.e., ipecacuanha]; and two days after that, repeat the same again. This must be followed by taking, every morning and evening, 20 grains of the powder of sassafras-root, mixed with 10 grains of snake-root, in two spoonfuls of the decoction of wormwood.10

Notice the multiple steps involved in Tennent's advice, as compared to the set of alternative, simple receipts in Wesley's Collection. Notice as well that Tennent begins treatment for an ague (and many other ailments) with letting blood, while Wesley never commends bleeding in his Collection. Similarly, purges and vomits play a central role in Tennent's advice, but much less so in Wesley's Collection. Overall, Tennent's typical prescription failed to meet Wesley's criteria, stated in the Advertisement, of including in his Collection only receipts that were cheap, safe, and simple.

6John Allen, Dr. Allens Synopsis medicinae; or, A Brief and General Collection of the Whole Practice of Physick. Containing the opinions and judgments of the most celebrated authors, concerning diseases, their causes and remedies, 2 vols. (London:

Pemberton & Meadows, 1730).

7 It appears on a manuscript list of his personal library that JW compiled in Michaelmas 1731 (MARC, MA 1977/503, vol. 18, pp. 114-17).

8 George Berkeley, Philosophical Reflexions and Inquiries concerning the Virtues of Tar Water, and Divers other Subjects (London: Hitch and Davis, 1744).

9 Publication details in each case can be found in the Bibliography.

10Tennent, Every Man His Own Doctor, 27—28.

Medical and Health Writings This is not to say that Wesley's earlier exposure to Tennent's book had no impact uponH Collection of Receipts. Its influence is likely best seen in what Wesley carefully omitted from his pamphlet. Nowhere among Wesley's selected receipts appear mercury, opium (or laudanum), or Peruvian bark—even though these were frequently recommended in medical works of Wesley's day, including many of those upon which he drew as sources. Whether in conscious dependence or not, Wesley emulated Tennent's carefully defended precedent of avoiding these three items in medical advice for 'every man', despite their touted efficacy, because they were dangerous unless administered by a person of'great skill and discernment' (i.e., a physician)."

One other point of interest in Wesley's description of the process that led to publication of A Collection of Receipts is the mention of his typical practice of transcribing for his own use material of interest he found in his reading. Several manuscript notebooks filled with Wesley's transcriptions of poetry, devotional readings, and natural philosophy survive.12 Perhaps prompted by the example of Robert Boyle, Wesley almost certainly created a distinct notebook with transcriptions of medical receipts, since they do not appear scattered in the other notebooks.1-1 This notebook would have been

Wesley's reference tool when giving medical advice at the beginning of the revival. But if it existed, where is it now? Wesley's typical practice in publishing was to give printers a manuscript copy of the item to be published (or, when doing a new edition, a prior printed copy with changes inserted by hand). Very few of these source documents survive. They were discarded after the publication emerged. While he left no explicit record of the process, when

Wesley decided to publish A Collection of Receipts he most likely worked through his set of transcriptions, marking which receipts to include and how to organize them. He then either gave the notebook to the printer, or prepared a clean copy for the printer and discarded the notebook sometime after the publication appeared.

Wesley put the finishing touches on the manuscript source for A Collection of Receipts after his arrival in Bristol on July 25, 1745, from a five-week-long preaching tour in Cornwall and Wales. His prefatory 'Advertisement', the last item penned, is dated August

1, 1745—the opening day of the second Conference held with 11 See ibid., 55.

12 Many of this are part of the 'Colman Collection' in MARC (MA 1977/503); see particularly MS Poetry Miscellany (Yol. 1), and MS Prayer Manual (Vol. 8).

13 Notice Boyle's description of compiling such a manuscript 'collection', and drawing from it the materials he was then publishing, in Some Receipts, [i-ii].

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor his growing connexion of preachers. Given the short length of the pamphlet, and Wesley's favoured relationship with his Bristol printer, Felix Farley, by the third day of Conference there were apparently at least proofs to show the assembled preachers, because the question could be raised (and answered affirmatively): 'Shall we keep a little stock of medicines at London, Bristol, and Newcastle, according to the Collection of Receipts?'14

The initial edition published in Bristol, which ran seventeen pages in length, covered ninety-three numbered physical ailments or injuries (though the numbering only went up to XCII, since

LXXVII was mistakenly used twice). In keeping with Wesley's principle of giving multiple choices, a total of 234 discrete remedies were included (though a few were not numbered separately).

Wesley apparently took a stock of this printing with him when he shifted from Bristol to London in the middle of August, as there is no record of a printing by his London printer, William Strahan. By contrast, when Wesley moved from London to Newcastle in midSeptember, he quickly arranged for another printing of the Collection by his printer there, John Gooding. This second edition was a near replica of the first, only correcting the numbering error and adjusting the page layout sufficient to reduce the length by a page.

A Collection of Receipts proved popular enough that Wesley arranged for a third printing in Bristol in 1746. While everything in the first two editions was retained, the third edition was enlarged by two new ailments and ten new receipts,15 increasing the length of the pamphlet by two pages. This was the last printing of A Collection of Receipts authorized by Wesley, because the following year he reworked the tract into its larger successor, Primitive Physic A Even after Primitive Physic appeared, the third edition of A Collection of Receipts continued to be offered in Wesley's book catalogues—always at the price of two pence. Only in the 1770 catalogue (Bibliography/, No. 764) does it disappear, the remnants of the third edition having apparently been exhausted.

14Minutes, Saturday, Aug. 3, 1745, Q. 8, 10:160 in this edn.

15 See ailments 'XXIII. Convulsive Cough' and 'XLII. The Gravel'; as well as receipts 4, 5, 60, 62, 63, 104 114, 120, 121, and 137.

16 The first edition of Collection of Receipts (including its error in numbering) was reprinted in 1747 in Chester, by Peter Jovnson. There is little chance that this was authorized by Wesley. The date of the Advertisement is changed to 'April 10,

1747'. Wesley was nowhere near Chester at that time and on no other occasion did he use this printer. For this reason (and because it adds nothing new) we have ignored this printing in our notes and in Appendix A.

Medical and Health Writings Because A Collection of Receipts was subsumed into Primitive

Physic, it did not appear separately in Wesley's edition of collected Works (Pine, 1771-74). We include it in this edition both to illustrate the trajectory of growth toward Primitive Physic and to document the full range of Wesley's medical advice. In revising A Collection of Receipts into the first edition of Primitive Physic Wesley not only added new material, he dropped nearly a third of remedies

(71 of 244'7) found in the earlier pamphlet. A Collection of Receipts remains the only source in which to find these recommendations by Wesley.

For the sake of completeness, the text that follows is based on the longer third edition. We have silently corrected one numbering error (the third edition mistakenly numbers two consecutive receipts #15) and assigned numbers to six distinct remedies that were not numbered separately in any of Wesley's editions (usually short entries tagged onto another, like #21 below). A brief editorial note is given in [square brackets] at the end of most receipts, indicating if the receipt is found only in the third edition, and/or whether it was retained in Primitive Physic. Finally, we have noted the published source of Wesley's receipt whenever this could be determined with sufficient confidence. Readers are referred to the Glossaries in Appendix E and Appendix F for definitions of eighteenth-century medical terms Wesley used and identification of the medicinal herbs, etc., that he commended.

For a stemma illustrating the relationship of the three authorized editions of A Collection of Receipts published during Wesley's lifetime, and the few textual variants, see Appendix A, p. 630. For further details see Bibliography, No. 105. l7The receipts that do not include the editorial note [PP] at the end.

COLLECTION

0 F For the Ufe of the P O O R.

Hmo fum: Human nihil a me alienm puts.

Tr ii.

BRISTOL:

Printed by Felix Farley.

Price 'two ■ Pence. 1

Medical and Health Writings A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor Advertisement

I suppose there are a few infallible medicines, but believe most of those which follow will fail as seldom as any, and much more seldom than the costly ones in common use.

From a vast number, I have selected those which are not only cheap but safe—very few of them, if they do no good, being likely to do much harm.1

For most distempers I have set down several. If one does not help, another may. And they may generally be tried, one (at some distance) after another, using the easiest and simplest first.

August 1, 1745 A Collection of Receipts

I. For an Ague 1. Take a handful of groundsell, shred it small, put it into a paper bag four inches square, pricking that side that is to be next the skin full of holes. Cover this with a thin linen, and wear it on the pit of the stomach, renewing it two hours before every fit.2

[PP3]

2. Or boil yarrow in new milk, till it be tender enough to make a plaster of it. Just before the cold fit, apply this to the wrists, and let it be on till the hot fit is over. If another fit comes, use a fresh plaster.4 [PP]

1JW is echoing Boyle's denial that he considered the remedies in Some Receipts to be 'infallible', claiming only that these cheap and easily procured remedies were

'good in their kind' and 'safer than many other medicines'. See Some Receipts, [p. iii]; Medicinal Experiments, l:[xiii] (for full bibliographical details on all sources cited, see the Bibliography).

2 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:8.

'This editorial addition indicates that the receipt was carried over into Primitive

Physic.

4 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 3:21.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor

3. Or spread soft wax, about the thickness of a crown piece, large enough to cover the wrist. On this spread the leaves of the tops of rue, not yet fully opened. Let this plaster lie on the wrist five or six days.5 [PP] 4. Or slit two large figs, and spread on them white alabaster beaten to powder. Bind these to the wrists. [3rd edn. only;

PP] 5. Or as much sal-prunella as will lie on a shilling, an hour before the fit. Take it three times. [3rd edn. only; PP]

6. Or take as much snake-root finely powdered as will lie on a shilling, in a glass of wine, just before a fit. Repeat this, if need be, once or twice.6

7. Or from half a dram to a dram of angelica root grated, two hours before the cold fit.7

8. Or from a dram and a half to two drams of good stone brimstone finely powdered, in a little honey or wine, two hours before the fit. If need be, repeat it.8 [PP]

II. An Anasarca, or flesh-dropsf 9. Apply the leaves of green dock to the joints and soles of the feet, changing it once a day. [PP] 10. Or fry rue in oil of walnuts, and apply it hot as a poultice to the navel, changing it once a day.10 [PP]

III. St. Anthony's fire 11. Take a decoction of elder leaves as a sweat. Applying cow dung to the part. [PP] 12. Or a cloth dipped in blood, and laid on moist.11

13. Or a cloth dipped in lime water (see Art. 149), mixed with oil of elder and camphorated spirits of wine. [PP]

5 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:53.

6 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:54.

7 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:54.

8 Cf. Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:13-14.

9 The separate listing of this disorder ended after the second edition of Primitive

Physic, being subsumed into 'Dropsy'.

10 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:52.

11 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 3:55.

76 Medical and Health Writings

IV. An Apoplectic fit 14. Fix a cupping-glass, without scarifying, to the nape of the neck, and another to each shoulder.12 [PP]

V An Asthma

15. Drink largely of water saturated with the smoke of sulphur.

16. Or of toast and water, with a little nitre and sal ammoniac,13 especially at going to bed.

17. Or take morning and evening a spoonful of juice of nettles mixed with clarified honey.14 [PP]

18. Or, for the present relief, a spoonful of vinegar of squills. It is a gentle vomit.

19. Oranges, lemons, barberries, vinegar, juice of radishes, are often helpful.

20. Or take roots of elecampane, thinly sliced one ounce, and

a handful of ground-ivy leaves. Boil them in three pints of spring-water to a quart. Strain and sweeten it with honey, and drink six or seven spoonfuls morning and evening.15 [PP]

21.16 Or half a pint of tar-water.17 [PP]

VI. A dry or convulsive Asthma

22. Beat fine saffron to a kind of powder and take eight or ten grains, in any mixture, every night.18 [PP]

VII. Bleeding at the nose

23. Apply to the neck, behind and on each side, a cloth dipped in cold water, mixed with sal-prunella.19 [PP]

12 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:33.

13Orig., 'armoniac'; throughout the Collection.

14Kettilby, Collection, 156.

15 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 3:30. l6This prescription is not numbered separately in any edition.

17 Berkeley, Philosophical Reflexions, 5-6.

IR Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:71.

19 Sydenham, Compleat Method, 80.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor

VIII. To stanch Blood 24. Take puffballs full ripe, break them warily, and save the powder that is within. Strew this powder over the wound and bind it on.20 [PP] IX. A Bruise

25. Apply as a plaster chopped parsley mixed well with fresh butter.21 [PP] 26. Or clarified honey spread on cap-paper.22 [PP]

27. Or common treacle so spread.

X. A Burn 28. Apply immediately a bruised onion.21 [PP] 29. Or a rag dipped in rum or spirits of wine. [PP]

30. Or oil and parsley stamped together. [PP] 31. Or apply oil, and strew on it powdered ginger. [PP]

XI. A deep Burn or scald 32. Take inner rind of elder and fresh sheep's dung; made it into an ointment with fresh butter.24 [cf. PP]

33. Or dress it several times a day with a feather dipped in linseed oil and lime water beaten well together.25 [cf. PP]

XII. Chilblains 34. Apply salt and onion pounded together.26 [PP] 35. Or roast a turnip in the ashes, beat to a poultice; apply it hot, and keep it on three or four days, if need be.2/

20 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:9.

21 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:57.

22 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:15.

23 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:61.

24Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:61-62.

25 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:43.

26 Cf. Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:61 ('For a recent burn').

27 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:26.

Medical and Health Writings XIII. A Cancer 36. Apply a poultice of hemlock, but let it not lie on so long as to raise a blister. [PP] 37. Or take half a dram ofVenice soap twice a day, either in a pill or in wine or water. [PP]

XIV Canker in the mouth 38. Take an ounce of flowers of sulphur, and half an ounce of rock alum, finely powdered. Mix these well together with pure honey, to be applied from time to time.2* [PP]

XV The Colic

39. A pint of cold water.29 [PP] 40. Ora quart of warm water. [PP] 41. Or a pint of small beer or water, in which a red-hot flint has been quenched. [PP] 42.30 Or as much of haws dried and powdered as will lie upon a shilling, in a cup of warm water.31 [PP]

43. Or from two scruples to half a dram of the yellow peel of orange, powdered, in a glass of water or in tea.32 [/,/)]

44. Or grind in a stone mortar an ounce of nitre, with half a scruple of fine saffron. Of this take about half a dram at once, in a large glass of cold water.33

XVI. A stubborn Colic

45. Mix half a dram of mastic with the yolk of a new-laid egg, and take it once or twice a day.34

46. Or a decoction of mallow leaves, drank largely. [PP] 47. Or camomile tea. [PP] 28Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:71.

29 John Hancocke, Febrifugum Magnum; or, Common Water the best Cure for Fevers, and probably for the Plague (London: Halsey, 1722), 57-58.

30This prescription is not numbered separately in any edition.

31 Kettilby, Collection, 148 (JW substitutes water for white wine).

32 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:72.

33 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:44.

34Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:40.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor 48. Or a bag of hot oats, applied externally.35 [PP]

49. Or root of garlic.

50. Or aniseed oil, from 40 to 100 drops, in a little sugar. [PP] XVII. To resolve Coagulated blood

51. Make a paste of black soap and crumbs of white bread, and bind it on the part for some hours.36 [PP]

52. Or grated root of burdock, spread on a rag. Renew this twice a day.37 [PP]

XVIII. Convulsions 53. Take half a dram of mistletoe as a bolus every six hours, drinking after a draught of a strong infusion thereof. This also cures the falling sickness.38 [PP]

XIX. Convulsions in children 54. Give the child, according to its age, in water or tea, from two to seven grains of volatile salt of amber.39 [PP]

XX. Corns 55. Apply a little piece of fresh beef every morning.40 [PP] 56. Or boil the juice of radishes till it is thick enough to spread as

a plaster. Shift it as it grows dry.41 [PP] 57. Or the yeast of small beer, spread on a rag, and renewed once a day.42 [PP] 35 Allen, Synopsis, 1:279.

36 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:57-58.

37 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:59.

38 Cf. Digby, Choice Receipts, 61.

39 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:11.

40 Allen, Synopsis, 2:123.

41 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:69.

42 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:70.

80 Medical and Health Writings

XXI. A Cough 58. Drink a pint and half of cold water, going to bed.43 [PP] 59. Or mix the juice of boiled turnips with as much finely powdered sugar candy as will make a kind of syrup. Swallow a little of this, drop by drop, from time to time.44 [PP]

60. Or mix an ounce of linseed oil with an ounce of white sugar candy powdered, and take a teaspoonful when the cough comes. [3rd edn. only; PP]

XXII. A consumptive Cough 61. Slit ten or twelve raisins of the sun, take out the stones, and fill them with the small tender tops of rue. Take these early every morning, fasting two or three hours after.45 [TP]

XXIII. A convulsive Cough [3rd edn. only]

62. Preserved walnuts. [3rd edn. only; PP] 63. Or boil a handful of bay leaves in milk; turn this with white wine, and drink a draught of the whey. [3rd edn. only; PP]

XXIV. Costiveness 64. Rise early. [PP] 65. Or take a decoction of tamarinds in whey.46 [PP]

66. Or boil in a pint and half of broth, half a handful of mallow leaves chopped. Strain this, and drink it before you eat anything else.47 [PP]

XXV. The Cramp (to prevent)

67. At going to bed, tie your garter tight under your knee. [PP] +3Hancocke, Febrifugum Magnum, 20-21.

44 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:67.

45 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:67—68.

46 Allen, Synopsis, 1:256.

47Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 3:24.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor 68.4X Or sew the leaves of rosemary in linen, so as to make a kind of garter. 1 ie this under your knee when you go to bed.

XXVI. Deafness 69. Drop juice of elder leaves into the ear. [.PP] 70. Or, if the ear be stopped with wax, gently syringe it with sage tea mixed with white wine. [cf. PP] 71. Or put a grain of musk, or amber, or chive,49 wrapped in raw silk, into the ear, going to bed.50

72. Or ant's eggs, bruised and mixed with juice of onions.51

XXVII. Diabetes 73. Drink wine boiled with ginger, as much and as often as your strength will bear. Let your common drink be milk and water.

All milkmeats are good. [PP]

XXVIII. Dropsy

74. Drink, morning and evening, a spoonful of the juice of those artichoke leaves that grow on the stalk. \PP]

75. Or abstain from all drink thirty days. If you hold on your tongue a thin, small slice of toasted bread dipped in brandy, it will ease your thirst.52 [PP] 76. Or boil three handfuls of the inner hark of elder in a pint of water and a pint of milk, to half the quantity. Take half of this in the evening, and the other half in the morning. Repeat this daily till you are well.53

77. Or infuse a pound of white and clean ashes of broom, and a large handful of wormwood, in two quarts of Rhenish [wine], cold; of which take a quarter of a pint in the morning, at four in the afternoon, and at night.'4

+8This prescription is not numbered separately in any edition.

490rig., 'civet'; an obsolete borrowing from French.

50 Allen, Synopsis, 2:54.

51 Allen, Synopsis, 2:53-54.

52 Allen, Synopsis, 1:338.

53 Sydenham, Compleat Method, 61.

54Sydenham, Compleat Method, 62.

Medical and Health Writings XXIX. The Earache 78. Apply a hot roll to the ear. [PP] 79. Or put into it a roasted fig, as hot as you can bear it. [PP]

80. Or rub the ear hard for a quarter of an hour. [PP] 81. Or blow the smoke of tobacco strongly into it.* * 5 * *" [PP]

XXX. Earache from worms 82. Drop in warm milk, and it brings them out.56 [PP] 83. Or drop in juice of wormwood, which kills them."' [PP]

84. Or oil of bitter almonds. [PP]

XXXI. A bloodshot Eye

85. Mix half a dram of well-powdered tutty with an ounce of red rose water. Drop this often into the eye."8 [PP]

XXXII. A bruise in the Eye

86. Apply, as a plaster, conserve of roses. [PP] 87. Or a paste of black soap and white bread crumbs; but take care it get not into the eye.59 [PP]

XXXIII. To clear the Eye, even from films 88. Dry zibethum occidentale slowly, then reduce it to an impalpable powder. Blow this into the eye twice or thrice a day.60 [/¥*]

XXXIV. Hot or sharp humours in the Eye 89. Beat the white of an egg into a water, in which mix fine sugar, and drop it frequently into the eye. 61 [PP]

55 Allen, Synopsis, 2:52.

56 Allen, Synopsis, 2:52.

5'Allen, Synopsis, 2:52.

58 Cf. Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:79 (JW omits frog's spawn, Canary wine, and aqua mirabilis).

59Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:77.

60 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:11.

61 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:37.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor

XXXV. Weak or sore Eyes 90. Heat half an ounce of lapis calaminaris red hot, and quench it into half a pint of French white wine and as much white rose water. Then pound it fine and infuse it. Shake the bottle whenever you use it. I have known this to cure total blindness.62 [PP]

XXXVI. The Falling sickness 91. Drink only decoction of lignum guaiacum for a month. [PP]

92. Or use an entire milk diet for three months.63 [PP] 93. Or rub the limbs thoroughly, and then use the cold bath daily.

94. Or take in a glass of white wine as much of the powder of mistletoe as lies on a six-pence, early in the morning, for two days before and two days after the full moon.64

95. Or take daily for six weeks half a dram of choice amber, finely powdered, in tea or water.65

96. Or drink warm, twice a day, half a dram of fine Castile soap, boiled in a quarter of a pint of milk.

97.66 Or drink a large glass of tar-water every night, and two hours before breakfast every morning, for three months.6' (See Art.

99.) [PP]

XXXVII. A Fever

98. Drink a pint and half of cold water, lying down in bed.68

99.69 Or put a gallon of cold water to a quart of Norway tar. Stir them together with a flat stick for three or four minutes. After 48 hours, pour off the clear water and bottle it. Of this drink a large glass every hour, in the beginning of this or any acute distemper.70 [TT]

62 Close variation found in Dictionarium Rusticum & Urbanicum (London: J.

Nicholson, 1704), entry for 'Blood-shotten-eyes'.

63 Allen, Synopsis, 1:169-70.

64Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:155.

65 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:39.

66This prescription is not numbered separately in any edition.

67 Berkeley, Philosophical Reflections, 5. For specific mention of epilepsy (i.e., falling sickness) see Berkeley, Letter to Prior, 13-14.

68Hancocke, Febrifugum Magnum, 27.

69This prescription is not numbered separately in any edition.

70Berkeley, Philosophical Reflections, 4, 55.

84 Medical and Health Writings

XXXVIII. An intermitting Fever 100. Drink warm lemonade in the beginning of every fit, a little at a time. In a few days the fever will cease. [PP]

101. Or twenty grains of sal ammoniac in a dish of tea, one or two hours before the fit.

102.71 Or powder of the root of blackthorn, with a little salt of wormwood.

XXXIX. A Flux 103. Take the stalks and leaves of flea-bane, dry them gently, and powder them. Of this powder give about a dram at a time, in green tea or broth, twice or thrice a day.'2

104. Or dry and beat the powder of jawbone of a Jack (the fish) and take as much as will lie on a shilling. [3rd edn. only]

XL. A bloody Flux

105. Take twenty or thirty grains of toasted rhubarb at night, twice or thrice a week.

106. Or a small nutmeg powdered in the yolk of an egg. [PP] 107. Or a spoonful of juice of ground-ivy, twice or thrice a day, in a little small broth.

108. Or, after a dose or two of toasted rhubarb, take frequently a teaspoonful of oil of sweet almonds, mixed with citron juice.

Sweats should be intermixed.

109. Or take juice of ground-ivy, three ounces, [and] juice of plantain, one ounce, mixed, once or twice a day.75

110. Or the powder of puffballs, from a scruple to half a dram, as the constitution and case may require.74

111. Ora dram of the seed of flax-weed, in two or three spoonfuls of broth, once or twice a day.75 [PP]

71 This prescription is not numbered separately in any edition.

,2 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:10.

73 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:75.

74 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:75.

75 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 3:25.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor XLI. The Gout 112. Use little flesh, no strong drink, and much exercise. 6

113. Or at rising drink a pint of spring-water daily, breakfast and sup on boiled milk, dine on whitepot77 or vegetables, spend at least an hour in exercise, rub the parts (as you can bear) morning and evening.

114. Or take thrice a day 30 drops of spirit of hartshorn, in a draught of buckbean78 tea. Keep very warm after it. [3rd edn. only; PP] 115. Or take equal quantities of rue, nettles, and elder-flowers; make therewith a strong tea; of which, drink half a pint at least, every morning, for three weeks.

116. Or, about six in the evening, undress yourself and wrap yourself up in close blankets. Then put both your legs up to the knees in a pail of water as hot as you can bear it. As it grows cool, let hot water be poured in afresh, so as to keep you in a strong sweat till ten. Then be carried into a bed well warmed, and sweat till morning. [PP] 117. Or rub the part with warm treacle, and then bind on a flannel smeared with the same. Repeat this, if need be, once in twelve hours. [PP] 118. Or (to allay the pain) apply spirit of sal ammoniac with a feather.79

119. Or beat linseed in a mortar with a little water, till the water is pretty white. Dip a clean rag in this and apply it warm to the part, shifting it once an hour.80

XLII. The Gravel [3rd edn. only]

120. [Drink] warm water sweetened with honey. [3rd edn. only; PP] 121. Or drink largely of pellitory of the wall tea, sweetened with honey. [3rd edn. only; PP] 76The central argument of Thomas Sydenham's Treatise of the Gout and Dropsy, as found in A Collection of Chronical Diseases (London: Henry Bonwicke, 1692),

86-143; esp. 119ff.

77 A type of milk pudding or custard.

780rig., 'bugbane', but this was not used to cure gout. Another name for buckbean is bogbean.

79 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:102.

80 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:101-2.

Medical and Health Writings XLIII. Headache 122. Rub the part that aches for a quarter of an hour. [PP]

123. Boil a handful of rosemary in a quart of water. Put this in a mug and, covering the head and face with a napkin, hold it over the steam as hot as you can bear. Repeat this till the pain ceases.81 [PP] 124. Or wear green hemlock that is tender, thinly spread on the soles of your feet. Shift it every day.82 [PP]

125. Or snuff up the nose juice of ground-ivy.83 [PP] 126. Or any camphorated spirits. [PP] 127. Or the juice of horse-radish, scraped and tied in a rag. [PP]

XLIV. A nervous Headache

128. Dry and powder an ounce of marjoram and half an ounce of asarabacca (it is like garden scurvy-grass, only larger and of a darker colour). Mix them and take them as snuff, keeping the ears and throat warm. [PP]

XLV. An Hemicrania 129. Apply to the part of the head, shaved, any plaster that will stick, with a hole cut in the middle of it as big as a halfpenny.

Apply over that hole leaves of ranunculus, bruised and very moist. It is a gentle blister.84 [PP]

XLVI. The Hiccup 130. Swallow a mouthful of water, stopping the nose and ears.

131. Or take any thing that makes you sneeze. [PP] 132. Or two or three preserved damsons.85 [PP]

133. Ora little candied ginger. [PP]

81 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 3:22.

82Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 3:11.

83 Allen, Synopsis, 1:135.

84Allen, Synopsis, 1:134.

83 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 3:11. A damson is a type of plum.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor XLVII. Hoarseness 134. Decoction of turnips.

135. Or juice of radishes. [FF] 136. Or chew stick liquorice.

[XLVIII.86] The Itch 142. Wash the body with black soap; but wash it off soon, lest it should take off the skin.87 [PP] 143. Or steep a shirt half an hour in a quart of water mixed with half an ounce of powdered brimstone. Dry it, and wear it five or six days.88 [FF]

144. Or mix powder ol white hellebore with cream, three days; then anoint the joints three mornings and evenings. [FF]

145. Or boil a handful of the roots of elecampane, and a handful of the roots of sharp-pointed dock, in two quarts of springwater to three pints. Strain it, and wash the parts affected once or twice a day.89

[XLIX. ] Jaundice 137. Take calcined eggshells, as much as will lie on a shilling, for three mornings fasting; using exercise after, till you sweat.

[3rd edn. only; FF] 138. Or boil three ounces of hemp seed in a pint of new milk, till some of the seeds begin to burst. Drink this warm in the evening, if need be, for some days together.90

139. Or half a dram of Castile soap, boiled in milk.

86 In classic Latin and medieval English the 'I' was used as both a vowel and a consonant. Eventually this double usage was divided by the introduction of 'J' for the consonant. But in the eighteenth century it was still common to treat 'I' and 'J' as identical letters when alphabetizing. Wesley ordered his receipts in this way, placing Jaundice before Itch. We have reorganized to modern alphabetizing for the benefit of the reader.

87 Willis, London Practice of Physick, 226. This is repeated in Allen, Synopsis,

2:71; but JW specifically calls it 'Dr. Willis's cure' in a letter to Andrew Wilson,

July 8, 1774.

88 Allen, Synopsis, 2:71.

89 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:111.

90Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:4.

88 Medical and Health Writings

140. Or a large glass of tar-water morning, afternoon, and night.91

[L.] The Jaundice in children 141. Take half an ounce of fine rhubarb powdered; mix with it throughly by long beating two handfuls of good, well cleaned currants. Of this give the quantity of a nutmeg every morning for several days.92 [PP]

LI. Stoppage in the Kidneys 146. Take twelve grains of salt of amber in wine or water.93 [PP]

LI I. The Kings evil 147. Drink daily for six weeks a strong decoction of devil's-bit.94

[PP] 148. Or boil a handful of felon-wort in a quart of water, and use it three months for common drink.91 [PP] 149. Or infuse a pound of good quick lime in a gallon of springwater for twenty-four hours, then decant the liquor and use it for common drink.96 [PP]

LIII. The Leprosy 150. Wash or swim in the sea, often and long.97 [PP] 151. Or drink for a month a decoction of elm bark, morning and evening, mixed (if need be) with a little white wine. [PP]

152. Or an ounce of pomatum, a dram of powdered brimstone, and half an ounce of sal-prunella; mix them well, anoint the parts so long as there is need.98 [PP]

91 Cf. Berkeley, Letter to Prior, 13-14.

92 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:36.

93 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:113.

94Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:113.

95 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:155.

96Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:42.

9/ See John Floyer, Psychrolousia, 158-59.

98Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 3:11.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor LTV. The Lethargy 153. Snuff strong vinegar up the nose. [PP]

154. Or powdered white hellebore. [PP] TV. Lice

155. Wash the head with a decoction of amaranth. [PP] 156. Or sprinkle on it the berries of cocculus indicus powdered.

LVL. Lunacy 157. Boil juice of ground-ivy with sweet oil and white wane into an ointment. Shave the head, anoint it therewith, and chase it in warm every other day, for three weeks. Bruise also the leaves and bind them on the head, and give three spoonfuls of the juice in warm ale every morning." [PP]

LVII. The bite of a Mad dog

158. Apply, as soon as possible, juice of fig-tree made into an ointment with hog's grease. [PP] 159. Plunge into cold water, and keep as long under it as can be done without drowning.100 [PP]

LVLIL. To resolve coagulated Milk101 160. Cover the woman with a tablecloth and hold a pan of hot water just under her breast, then stroke it some minutes. Do this twice a day till it is cured. [PP]

LLX. To increase Milk

161. Make pottage with lentils, and use it freely.102 [PP] "Kettilby, Collection, 177.

100 Cf. Alien, Synopsis, 1:198 (Allen recommends purging after immersing in cold water).

1011.e., mastitis.

102Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:114.

Medical and Health Writings LX. The Piles 162. Apply warm treacle. [/>/>] 163. Or drink treacle and water largely. [PP\

164. A drop of oil of box stops the pain.103

165. Or root or leaves of scurvy grass, green or dried, taken in substance or in decoction.

166. Varnish applied cures both the blind and bleeding piles. [PP]

LXI. The Pleurisy

167. Drink a glass of tar-water every half-hour.104 [PP] LXII. For a Prick or cut that festers

168. Anoint it with oil of turpentine. [PP] LXIII. The Quinsy 169. Swallow, drop by drop, white rose water sweetened with syrup of mulberries. [PP] 170. Or apply a large white bread toast, half an inch thick, dipped in brandy, to the crown of the head till it dries. [PP]

LXLV. The Rheumatism 171. Dry elder-flowers picked from the stalks and put them up in canisters; drink tea made of these twice a day for a month.

172. Or use the cold bath every morning. [/V3] 173. Or live fourteen days on new milk-whey and white bread.105

[PP\ 174. Or use an entire milk diet for a month.106

175. Or infuse earthworms in white wine, and drink a glass twice a day.107

176. Or take twenty-five grains of toasted rhubarb every other night.108

103 Allen, Synopsis, 2:100.

104Berkeley, Philosophical Reflections, 29.

103 Sydenham, Complete Method, 22.

106Allen, Synopsis, 1:365.

Cf. Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:115 ('To increase milk').

108Cf. Allen, Synopsis, 1:364-65.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor 91

177. Or chew rhubarb two hours a day, and swallow your spittle.109

[PP] 178. To ease the pain, rub the part with warm treacle. [PP] 179. Or apply to the part live worms.

180. Or a poultice of white bread and milk.110

181. Ora rag dipped in linseed water (see Art. 119).

182. Or spirit of sal ammoniac, with a feather.

LXV. Scald head

183. Anoint it with Barbados tar.* * 111 [PP] LXVI. Sciatica

184. Apply quicklime mixed with soft soap. [PP] 185. Or leaves of ranunculus, bruised, for six hours.112 [PP]

186. Or white bryony root, bruised, mixed with linseed oil, and applied warm. Repeat it till you are well.113

LXVII. Scurvy 187. An entire milk diet for six months.114 [PP]

LXVIII. Sickness in the morning 188. Eat nothing after six in the evening. [PP]

LXIX. Skin rubbed off 189. Apply self-heal115 pounded in a stone mortar. It seldom needs to be renewed.116 [PP] 109 Allen, Synopsis, 1:364-65.

110 Allen, Synopsis, 1:361.

111 Allen, Synopsis, 2:3 (pisseloeum Indicum).

112 Allen, Synopsis, 1:397.

113 Allen, Synopsis, 1:397.

114 Allen, Synopsis, 1:365. ll5Orig., 'self-head'; corrected in Primitive Physic.

116 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:16.

Medical and Health Writings LXX. The Smallpox 190. Drink largely of cold spring-water at the beginning.11'

191. Or a large glass of tar-water once an hour.118

LXXI. A Sore mouth

192. Apply the white of an egg, beat up with loaf-sugar. [PP] LXXII. To draw a Splinter

193. Apply a poultice of chewed bread. [PP] LXXIII. A Sprain

194. Boil bran in wine vinegar to a poultice. Apply this warm, and renew it once in twelve hours.119 [PP] 195. Or make a plaster of four ounces of bean-flour,120 with two ounces of wine vinegar, and apply it warm.121

196. Or dissolve common Barbados aloes in a little hot water.

Spread it pretty thick on a strong rag, and bind it easily on the part.

LXXTV. A poisonous Sting

197. Apply a poultice of bruised plantain and honey. [PP] LXXV. The Stone

198. Drink linseed tea every morning for a month.122

199. Or take a teaspoonful of linseed oil thrice a day.123

200. Or of oil of mustard seed.

117 Hancocke, Febrifugum Magnum, 93—94.

118 See Berkeley, Philosophical Reflections, 5; and for the dosage, Berkeley, Letter,

3-4.

1,9 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:43.

120Orig., 'bean flower', as in Boyle; but for a plaster it would be flour ground from beans.

121 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:43.

122 Allen, Synopsis, 1:315.

121 Allen, Sy?iopsis, 1:314-15 (Ol. Uni is linseed oil).

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor

201. Or oil of sweet almonds, with some drops of balsam of Peru.124

202. Or a scruple of cochineal in a glass of Rhenish [wine].12:1

203. Or a teaspoonful of whitethorn-flower water.126

204. Or burn the dried shells of kidney beans to powder. Of this put two teaspoonfuls into half pint tea pot. Pour boiling water on it at night. In the morning pour it off clear. Warm it again and drink it, sweetened with honey. Do this every other fortnight, till cured. [PP] 205. Or slice a large onion, pour warm water upon it, and after it has lain twelve hours, drink the water. Do this every morning till you are cured, [PP]

LXXVI. Strangury

206. Drink largely of decoction of turnips.127

207. Or decoction of mallows. [PP] 208. Or chicken broth, in which mallow leaves are boiled.

LXXVII. Suppression of Urine 209. Take three bees, dried and powdered, in a little white wine.128

210. Or juice of lemons, sweetened with syrup of violets.127 [PP] 211. Or a spoonful of juice of radishes, or bruised mustard seed.'3,1

[PP] 212. Or burnt eggshells, from two scruples to a dram.

LXXVIII. Swelled legs 213. Take equal quantities of wormwood, southernwood, and rue; stamp them together and fry them in honey, till they grow dryish. Then apply them as hot as you can bear. [PP]

124 Allen, Synopsis, 1:307.

125 Allen, Synopsis, 1:313.

126 Kettilby, Collection, 103 (includes instructions on how to make it).

127 Allen, Synopsis, 1:320 (Decoct. rapar.) 128Allen, Synopsis, 1:319.

129 Allen, Synopsis, 1:319.

130 Cf. Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:146.

94 Medical and Health Writings

LXX1X. A white Swelling (on the joints) 214. Hold it daily under the stream that falls from a mill.131 [PP]

215. Or apply a green colewort leaf with red veins, bruising the ribs. Renew this twice a day.132 [PP]

LXXX. To clean the Teeth 216. Rub them with ashes of burnt bread. [PP]

LXXXI. To prevent the Toothache 217. Rub the teeth frequently with tobacco ashes.133 [PP]

218. Or wash the mouth with cold water every morning. [PP]

LXXXII. To cure the Toothache 219. Rub the cheek a quarter of an hour. [PP] 220. Or chafe the ear and side of the head with camphorated spirits of wine. [3rd edn. only] 221. Or touch the tooth with oil of box.134

222. Or oil of pennyroyal.

223. Or chew the root of an iris (Flower-de-luce). [PP]

[LXXXIII.135] An Ulcer 226. Apply a poultice of chewed bread every twelve hours. [PF]

227. Or boil walnut tree leaves in water, with a little sugar. Apply a cloth dipped in this, changing it once in two days. [PP]

131 See Baynard, in Floyer, Psychrolousia, 440-41.

132 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:140.

133 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 1:17.

134 Allen, Synopsis, 2:50.

135 In classic Latin and medieval English the 'V' was used as both a vowel and a consonant. Eventually this double usage was divided by the introduction of 'U' for the vowel. But in the eighteenth century it was still common to treat 'U' and 'V' as identical letters when alphabetizing. Wesley ordered his receipts in this way, treatingVertigo and Viper before Ulcer, etc. We have reorganized to modern alphabetizing for the benefit of the reader.

A Collection of Receipts for the Use of the Poor [LXXXIV.] A stubborn Ulcer 228. Burn to ashes (but not too much) the gross stalks on which red colewort grows. Make a plaster with this and fresh butter, changing it once a day.136 [PP]

[LXXXV.J Bloody Urine 234. Take four ounces of sheep's milk twice a day.13/ [PP]

[LXXXVI.] Sharp Urine 235. Take half an ounce of fresh juice of ground-ivy.138 [PP]

[LXXXVJI.] Uvula relaxed 236. Bruise the veins of a cabbage leaf, and lay it hot on the crown of the head. Repeat in two hours, if needed. [TP]

[LXXXVIII. ] A Vertigo 224. Apply to the top of the head, shaven, a plaster of flower of brimstone and white of eggs.139 [PP]

[LXXXIX. ] Bite of a Viper 225. Rub the place immediately with common oil.140

Qfuery]. Would not the same cure the bite of a mad dog? [PP]

[XC.] To stop Vomiting

229. Apply a large onion slit to the pit of the stomach. [PP] 136Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:148.

137 Allen, Synopsis, 1:323.

138 Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:146.

139 Allen, Synopsis, 1:140.

140 Cf. Sydenham, Works, xix.

Medical and Health Writings 230. Or a bag of saffron.141 [PP] 231. Or a spoonful of lemon juice and salt of wormwood. [PP]

[XCI.] Vomiting blood 232. Take a spoonful of juice of nettles. [PP] 233. Or of juice of quinces. [PP\

XCII. Warts

237. Rub them daily with a radish. [PP] 238. Or with juice of dandelion.142 [PP]

239. Or water in which sal ammoniac is dissolved.144 [PP]

XCIII. A Whitlow 240. Apply a poultice of chewed bread. Shift it once a day. [PP]

XCIV. Worms 241. A teaspoonful of wormseed and treacle, for six mornings.

[PP] 242. Or of powder of burnt hartshorn, mixed with sugar. [PP]

XCV Wounds 243. Apply chewed bread. [PP] 244. Or juice of celandine, as a balsam.144 [PP]

141 Allen, Synopsis, 1:250.

142 Allen, Synopsis, 2:123 (dentis leonis is the dandelion).

143 Allen, Synopsis, 2:123.

144Boyle, Medicinal Experiments, 2:149.

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