John Wesley, electrical quack? the book

Desideratum
(Wellcome Library)

In 1760, John anonymously wrote and published a 72 page book called The Desideratum: Or, Electricity made plain and useful. By a Lover of Mankind, and of Common Sense (Schwab, 178).  (Desideratum means "desired thing" in Latin.)  It was almost entirely abridged from other writers, especially from Richard Lovett's The Subtil Medium Prov'd (Maddox, Holistic, 25), which was the first English work on electrotherapy (Schwab, 177).

John didn't really care how electrical treatment worked.  "We know it is a thousand medicines in one: In particular, that it is the most efficacious medicine, in nervous disorders of every kind, which has ever yet been discovered.  But if we aim at theory, we know nothing.  We are soon Lost and bewilder'd in the fruitless search." (Wesley, Journal, 4 January 1768, vol. 5, 247 in Schwab, 198.)  He knew it worked because nearly half of the case studies detailed in The Desideratum were about his own patients or himself (Schwab, 188).  Before The Desideratum, John had experimented on himself, shocking himself for nerve pain and lameness (Maloney, H. Newton. "John Wesley and the Eighteenth Century Therapeutic Uses of Electricity," Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith 47:4 (December 1995), 244,  http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1995/PSCF12-95Malony.html, accessed 30 November 2012).  To treat more people, John even carried the machine with him on preaching tours around the country (Webster, 217). He recommended it to his brother, Charles, asking him to try it and not ignore it as "a quack medicine." (Wesley, John.  Letter to Charles Wesley 26 December 1761, Letters (Telford), vol. 4, 166 in Schwab, 193).  John wrote in his journal of at least two other times he used electrification on himself, once in 1773 for pain in his side and shoulder caused by inflammation, and once in 1783 for leg cramps, fever, and tightness in the chest (Maloney, np).

1791 edition of Primitive Physic, opened to "Electrifying"
Photo taken at Oxford Centre for Methodism, Oxford, UK
16 October 2012

Oxford Centre for Methodism
Charles "Charlie" Wallace from Willamette University doing research
17 October 2012

In the 1760 edition of Primitive Physick, John included fifty illnesses that could be treated electrically (Webster, 218).