Professionalism and the persecution of "Primitive Physick"

Salisbury

So we have seen how the physicians were jockeying for power to control the medical field of 18th century England, and were dismissive of the barber-surgeons, the apothecaries, the quacks, and the clergy as medical professionals. However, in 1773 the Quaker John Coakley Lettson, a physician-philanthropist, founded the The Medical Society of England, inviting surgeons and apothecaries as members. The earlier Royal College of Physicians obviously included only physicians. (Maddox, Randy. "Reclaiming the Eccentric Parent: Methodist Reception of John Wesley's Interest in Medicine," in Madden, Deborah, ed. in 'Inward and Outward Health:' John Wesley's Holistic Concept of Medical Science, the Environment and Holy Living (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2008), 28).

Physicians were trying to increase the professionalism of their field, and college/university trained physicians were called "the Faculty" or "a Faculty physician" to distinguish them from people (like quacks) who simply took the title "Dr." One of the reasons Wesley said he compiled and wrote Primitive Physick was because medical care had moved from tested and proven treatments to ones based on theories. Physicians had come to be regarded, he said, "in admiration, as persons who were something more than human ... [who] filled their writings with [an] abundance of technical terms utterly intelligible to plain men." Wesley complained about treatments that had too many ingredients or were too expensive, that could not be used without a physician's direction, and that health care books were "too dear [expensive] for poor men to buy, and too hard for plain men to understand." (Wesley, John. Primitive Physic: or An easy and natural method of curing most diseases, 14th ed. (Bristol: William Pine, 1770, reprinted Bristol: The New Room, 2003.), vii-x.)

He initially published Primitive Physick anonymously, probably to have it judged on its own merits.

Politics are everywhere, in every age. Nobody objected to Primitive Physick for the first 30 years it was in print, but in 1775 the furor began. Unfortunately Wesley made an error in one of his recipes, recommending a dose in drams rather than grains. A dram is 60 times more than a grain. There was a flurry of anonymous letters in the press, and then an apothecary, William Hawes, attacked Wesley in the newspaper. He was planning to publish a book analyzing and pointing out the errors in Primitive Physick.

Much was made of what Wesley said was a printer's error. There is no record of anyone suffering from this incorrect recipe. It must be noted, however, that the wrong dose was published in the 2nd edition (about 1750) through the 16th edition (1776). It was corrected in the 17th edition.

The public name-calling continued into 1779; Wesley was described as "a fanatical preacher, a ministerial scribbler, and a quack doctor" and one writer suggested Wesley be hanged! Facing the growing pressure by the professionalism-oriented medical community, Wesley opted to focus on the spirituality and growth of the Methodists rather than on medical care of the sick, even removing the office of "visitor of the sick" and the instructions to Methodists to visit the sick from the published official Methodist guide for practice. (Maddox, Eccentric Parent, 22-32.)