George Cheyne, the wholistic vegetarian

George Cheyne, MD
(Source: Wellcome Library)

George Cheyne, MD (1671-1743), was greatly admired by John Wesley.  Cheyne, as you can see here, was grossly obese and very unhealthy.  Like William Buchan he trained in Scotland, and upon his arrival in Bath did what all the physicians of the time were doing to recruit high-paying patients -- he ate and drank a LOT.  He became successful, but by 1705 had ballooned to being "excessively fat, short-breath'd, Lethargic and Listless."  He sobered up, yo-yo dieted for years, and then went on an all-milk diet, which make him "Lank, Fleet and Nimble".  However, he began to drink again, and by 1720 was drinking three bottles of wine a day and weighed a whopping 448 pounds!  The only thing that finally worked was giving up drinking and being a vegetarian (Arnold, Catherine.  Bedlam: London and Its Mad.  (London: Simon and Schuster UK Ltd, 2008), 116-17).  According to Wikipedia, he is best known for his promotion of vegetarianism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Cheyne_(physician).



(Source: Wellcome Library)

Wesley extensively used Cheyne's Essay of Health and Long Life (1724) and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases (1742) in Primitive Physick (Maddox, Deborah.  "Pastor and Physician: John Wesley's Cures for Consumption" in Madden, 'Inward and Outward Health', 102).  His Essay was published in 20 editions over 15 years, so was quite popular.  It addressed sleep, the passions, fresh air, evacuations, and a healthy grains and greens diet.  He himself was a great advertisement for its success after he lost all the weight (Porter, Bodies, 84). Wesley appreciated Cheyne's framework of the intertwined body, mind and soul (97), and the body as a "well-working" whole (Schwab, Linda.  'This Curious and Important Subject': John Wesley and the Desideratum" in Madden, 'Inward and Outward Health', 186). 
Cheyne not only addressed physical health, but also mental illness.  He described a form of mental illness which we would probably now label "Major Depressive Disorder, Severe with Psychotic Features," (Index of Psychiatric Disorders at http://allpsych.com/disorders/disorders_alpha.html, accessed 18 November 2012) and then we would list the religious symptoms or manifestations.  He called it "religious melancholy":

"There is a kind of melancholy, which is called religious, because 'tis conversant about matters of religion; although, often, the persons so distempered have little solid piety.  And this is merely a bodily disease, produced by an ill habit or constitution, wherein the nervous system is broken and disordered, and the juices are become viscid and glewy."  (Cheyne, George. An Essay of Health and Long Life, 1st ed (London, 1724, p. 57, in Madden, "Pastor and Physician", 97.)

Remember, he is basing his explanation on the construct of the humours being out of balance when one became ill.  He does accurately summarize, though, the psychotic (out-of-touch with reality) thought processes that some religiously preoccupied patients have, even though they may not be religious or pious at all in their normal state.  Nowadays we treat these patients with antipsychotics, because we agree it is not a moral or religious issue but a physical illness affected by biochemical changes.

Interestingly, Cheyne and Wesley knew of each other, since Cheyne's brother-in-law, John Middleton, was John and Charles Wesley's physician in Bristol (Barry, Jonathan. "Piety and the patient: Medicine and religion in eighteenth century Bristol" in Porter, Patients and Practitioners, 168).  So early Methodists got what Wesley thought was the best of Cheyne's advice when he incorporated a lot of Cheyne's advice into Primitive Physick.