Primitive Physick - John Wesley

Christian theologian and cleric, John Wesley (1703-1791), who is credited with founding the Methodist denomination of Christianity, and due to whose teachings the Methodists were leading activists in the social issues of their day such as prison reform and abolitionism, is not necessarily someone we would expect to write a book detailing treatments for all sorts of medical ailments. But this is what he did in a relatively little-known work of his entitled Primitive Physick; Or An Easy And Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases. 

It is notable, however, that during his lifetime Wesley was considered a quack, both spiritually and medically (Madden, 2007). He led an itinerant lifestyle in order to preach as he never had his own church, and it is thought that the prevalence of disease as well as the prevalence and tendency of quacks who combined their treatments with theology were among the reasons behind writing this book.
 

According to Wesley, the word 'primitive' was akin to 'original' or 'early', and 'physic' was a general term for health care, especially “how to live in accordance with nature by proper diet and exercise, both to restore health and to retain it,” (Maddox, 2007). Taken together, Primitive Physick was a book that would be classed as holistic or alternative medicine today.

In Ingram's Patterns Of Madness In The Eighteenth Century: A Reader, it is noted that Wesley saw disease as a consequence of the Fall and thus regarded mankind as primarily responsible for its own sufferings. Wesley says as much in his preface:

"When man came first out of the hands of the Great Creator, clothed in body, as well as in soul, with immortality and incorruption, there was no place for physic, or the art of healing. As he knew no sin, he knew no pain, no sickness, weakness, or bodily disorder ... But since man rebelled against the Sovereign of heaven and earth, how entirely is the scene changed! ... The seeds of wickedness and pain, of sickness and death, are now lodged in our inmost substance; whence a thousand disorders continually spring, even without the aid of external violence."

Wesley covered the common illnesses of his day in alphabetical order; mental illnesses, curiously, are not distinguished from physical ailments, as in Wesley's view both are derived from man's first disobedience. They are thus stigmatised no more than other illnesses. 

What follows are Wesley's interesting and amusing remedies for various types of psychological conditions, especially the mania associated with rabies:

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44. An Hysteric Cholic.

164. Mrs. Watts, by using the cold bath two and twenty times in a month, was entirely cured of an hysteric cholic, fits, and convulsive motions, continual sweatings and vomiting, wandering pains in her limbs and head, with total loss of appetite.

165. In the fit, half a pint of water with a little wheat-flour in it, and a spoonful of vinegar.

166. Or of warm lemonade: tried.

167. Or, take 20, 30, or 40 drops of balsam of peru on fine sugar: if need be, take this twice or thrice a day:

168. Or, in extremity, boil three ounces of Burdock-seed in water, which give as a clyster:
169. Or, twenty drops of laudanum, in any proper clyster, which gives instant ease. 

45. A Nervous Cholic.

170. Use the cold-bath daily for three or four weeks.

171. Or, take quicksilver and acqua sulphurata daily for a month.

136. Hypochondriac and Hysteric Disorders.

426. Use cold bathing:

427. Or, take an ounce of quicksilver every morning, and ten drops of Elixir of Vitriol in the afternoon, in a glass of cold water.

151. Lunacy.

468. Give a decoction of agrimony four times a day:
469. Or, rub the head several times a day with vinegar, in which ground-ivy leaves have been infused:
470. Or, daily take an ounce of distilled vinegar:
471. Or, boil juice of ground-ivy with sweet oil and white wine into an ointment. Shave the head, anoint it therewith, and chafe it every other day for three weeks. Bruise also the leaves and bind them on the head, and give three spoonfuls of the juice warm every morning.
472. Or, be elecrified: tried.

152. Raging Madness.

473. Apply to the head, cloths dipt in cold water:
474. Or, set the patient with his head under a great water-fall, as long as his strength will bear: or, pour water on his head out of a tea-kettle:
475. Or, let him eat nothing but apples for a month:
476. Or, nothing but bread and milk: tried.

153. Bite of a Mad Dog.

477. Plunge into cold water daily for twenty days, and keep as long under as possible. This has cured, even after the hydrophobia was begun.
478. Or, mix ashes of trefoil with hog's-lard, and anoint the part as soon as possible. Repeat it twice or thrice at six hours distance. This has cured many: and particularly a dog bit on the nose by a mad dog.
479. Or, mix a pound of salt, with a quart of water. Squeeze, bathe, and wash the wound with this for an hour. Then bind some salt upon it for twelve hours.
N.B. The Author of this receipt was bit six times by mad dogs, and always cured himself by this means.
480. Or, mix powdered liver-wort, four drachms: black pepper, two drachms. Divide this into four parts, and take one in warm milk for four mornings, fasting. Dr. Mead affirms he never knew this to fail: but it has sometimes failed.
481. Or, take two or three spoonfuls of ribwort, morning and evening, as soon as possible after the bite. Repeat this for two or three changes of the moon. It has not been known to fail.
482. Immediately consult an honest physician.

References:

Ingram, Allan. Patterns of Madness In The Eighteenth Century: A Reader. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1998.

Madden, Deborah. 'A Cheap, Safe and Natural Medicine': Religion, Medicine and Culture in John Wesley's Primitive Physic (Amsterdam/New York: Rodolpi, 2007).

Maddox, Randy.  “John Wesley on Holistic Health and Healing” in Methodist History, 46:1 (October 2007), 4-33.

Psychic Phenomena Discredited Yet Again

Professor Richard Wiseman, a psychologist and author of several books, and also a personal acquaintance of mine, recently teamed up with New Scientist magazine to carry out athe first ever science experiment using the popular Twitter microblogging site. A rather revolutionary idea. The premise of the experiment was to investigate remote viewing, the ability to gain information about a distant or unseen target by means of extra-sensory perception (ESP). Wiseman announced the experiment on his own Twitter page (@richardwiseman) and recruited a good number participants in that way. The experiment was covered in several newspapers, and sources such as the Guardian, Daily Mail, Daly Telegraph, Sky News and Fox News, generating a fair amount of publicity.

Those of us who are familiar with scientific research in the area of paranormal phenomena are keenly aware that experiments into the same have almost always reported nothing of substance, lending credibility to the idea that when tested under sufficient scrutiny, these psychic powers always tend to fail. This has always been a consistent finding when testing various instances of so-called psychic ability, and based on that it isn't too much to expect this experiment to generate interesting results either. However, informal experiment that it is, the application of stringent scientific principles to a wholly randomised and sufficiently chaotic source such as Twitter was an interesting exercise. I don't know if a journal paper will come out of this but it should make interesting reading.

Wiseman carried out his experiment in the following way. At 15:00 (GMT) each day he travelled to a randomly selected location and sent a 'tweet' (message) on Twitter, asking his participants to tweet back their inclinations about his location. Thirty minutes later, he posted another tweet that linked to a website containing photographs of five different locations (the actual location of Wiseman and four decoy locations) and arbitrarily labelled 'A' to 'E'. Participants would be asked to see the photographs, concentrate their abilities and then vote on the location they believed was correct. They would also be asked their gender, rate their belief in the paranormal, and whether they believed they had psychic ability. Voting would remain open for 1 hour. If the majority of people selected the correct location the trial would count as a success. But before carrying it out, Wiseman carried out a test trial to test the procedure and also familiarise the participants with the procedure of the experiment. After some necessary ironing out of the details, Wiseman proceeded to carry out four experimental trials on four successive days, with three or more successful trials considered as evidence of ESP.

The experiment was carried out as outlined above and the results of the trials were posted at the end of each day at Wiseman's blog (Trial 1, Trial 2, Trial 3, Trial 4). More than a thousand participants were reported to have taken part, with believers in paranormal phenomena claiming a high level of correspondence between their thoughts and the actual locations.

The results of the experiment were also posted on Wiseman's blog, essentially stating no differences in choice between paranormal believer and non-believers. The experiment thus failed to support the existence of remote viewing, and suggested that participants claiming paranormal belief were only proficient at claiming illusory correspondences between their thoughts and actual targets.

Certainly this is not an experiment conducted under orthodox means and there are a number of uncontrolled variables operating that were uncatered for. However, it seems that even an informal study using basic scientific procedures and relying on user input is capable of generating interesting results, even non-significant ones. Wiseman states that he hopes to provide further post-hoc analyses of his results such as the difference between paranormal believers and sceptics, males and females, etc., but one update so far states that the data from those who claimed psychic ability and also a high confidence in their choice of target location scored a zero out of four. Surprise surprise.

As I mentioned, it is unknown if a serious analysis can be made of this strategy or if a journal paper will be published, but I think that that even without the stamp of authority given to 'orthodox' experiments this study is still consistent with those orthodox studies of paranormal phenomena that reported insubstantial results. Not a good day for psychics.