Salisbury -- Sabbath and study day
Wesley's middle name must have been "organization." He set the Methodists up into "classes" or "bands," dividing them according to sex, marital status, and location. He then appointed someone in each band to be “visitors of the sick” -- they were supposed to visit every sick person in their area THREE times a week and to ask about their physical and spiritual health. Therefore, he wrote a pamphlet for the visitors called “Collection of Receipts [recipes for treating illness] for the Use of the Poor” (1745). (Madden, “Wesley as Advisor”, 178-180.) It was 17 pages long and sold for two pennies. (Rogal, 82.)
Due to the huge numbers of poor sick people, in 1746 he opened clinics for them, focusing on chronic illnesses. He engaged an apothecary and a surgeon to assist. They treated people “in droves.”
He then wrote the first Primitive Physick: or, an easy and natural method of curing most diseases (1747), which covered 119 pages and 243 illnesses. His focus was on practicality, and the subsequent editions were revised based on patient feedback and the newest medical thought. (Madden, “Wesley as Advisor”, 178-180.) Remember, because of the times, anyone who was reasonably well-educated would have the knowledge and credibility to write a health care book.
Primitive Physick was written for Methodists, who were mostly poor laborers. Thus, it sold for one shilling compared to Domestic Medicine by William Buchan (1769), which sold for six. (Madden, “Wesley as Advisor”, 182.)
Lest you think Wesley was a crackpot who published a meaningless little book, it was the most popular medical self-help text of the 18th century! (Porter, Roy. Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul. New York: WW Norton and Company, 2003.)
References used thus far:
Horrible Histories -- Horrible Hospitals: Georgian Doctor, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHXdhtH7Nc4 or http://www.youtube.com/user/horriblehistoriesBBC?feature=CBAQwRs%3D (then look for “Horrible Hospitals”), accessed 29 August 2012.
Madden, Deborah. “Wesley as an Advisor on Health and Healing” in Maddox, Randy and Jason Vickers, The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley (New York: Cambridge University, 2010).
Maddox, Randy. “John Wesley on Holistic Health and Healiing” in Methodist History, 46:1 (October 2007), http://archives.gcah.org:8180/xmlui/bitstream/handle/10516/564/Methodist-History-2007-10-Maddox.pdf?sequence=1, accessed 13 September 2012.
Olsen, Kirstin. Daily Life in 18th Century England (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Picard, Liza. Dr. Johnson’s London: Coffee-Houses and Climbing Boys, Medicine, Toothpaste and Gin, Poverty and Press-Gangs, Freakshows and Female Education (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000).
Porter, Roy. Flesh in the Age of Reason: The Modern Foundations of Body and Soul. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2003.
Porter, Roy. Madness: A Brief History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.
Rogal, Samuel. “Pills for the Poor: John Wesley’s Primitive Physick” in The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 51 (1978), 81-90, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2595647/, accessed 16 September 2012.
Royal Pharmaceutical Museum http://www.rpharms.com/about-pharmacy/history-of-pharmacy.asp, accessed 9 September 2012.
Snyder, Howard. “Translating Wesley’s Writings,” Northern Nazarene University. Quoted from http://weley.nnu.edu/johnwesley/translating-wesley’s-writings-into-late-20th-century-american-general-english, accessed 1 September 2012.
University of Glasgow Special Collections Department. “The Curious Case of Mary Toft: 1726”, August 2009, at http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/aug2009.html, accessed 16 September 2012.
Waller, Maureen. 1700: Scenes from London Life (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000).
Ward, Ned. The London Spy, quoted in Waller, Maureen. 1700: Scenes from London Life (New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2000).
Wesley, John, “Journal,” quoted in Rogal, Samuel. “Pills for the Poor: John Wesley’s Primitive Physick” in The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine 51 (1978), 81-90, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2595647/, accessed 16 September 2012.
Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in London, http://www.apothecaries.org/index.php?page=101, accessed 9 September 2012.
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