John Wesley, electrical quack?

Electricity first became popular in English society in 1747, when it was all the rage.  There were practitioners who knocked people down with electricity for a sixpence, a scientist who sent an electrical charge through a four-mile circuit, Ben Franklin was writing about it in America, and a Swiss professor cured a patient's paralyzed arm by giving it a series of small electrical shocks (Schwab, 170).  John went to see electricity at work and wrote, "How must these [experiments] also confound those poor half-thinkers, who will believe nothing but what they can comprehend?  Who can comprehend, how fire lives in water, and passes through it more freely than through air?  How flame issues out of my finger, real flame, such as sets fire to spirits of wine?  How these, and many more as strange phenomena, arise from the turning round a glass globe?  It is all mystery ..." (Wesley, Journal, 16 October 1747, vol 3, 320-21 in Schwab, 170-71).

Several persons appear to have thought about using electricity to heal within the same time frame.  Wesley wrote in 1753, "I advised one who had been troubled many years with stubborn paralytic disorder, to try a new remedy.  Accordingly, she was electrified, and found immediate help.  By the same means I have known two persons cured of an inveterate pain in the stomach, and another of a pain in his side, which he had had ever since he was a child.  Nevertheless, who can wonder that many gentlemen of the Faculty [the university trained physicians], as well as their good friends, the apothecaries, decry a medicine so shockingly cheap and easy ...?" (Wesley, Journal, 20 January 1753, vol 4, 51 in Schwab, 176.)

John's electrical machine.
Photo taken at Wesley's home
London, 13 Oct 2012 

Having read extensively about the use of electricity as a medical treatment, in 1756 John got an electrical machine:  "Having procured an apparatus on purpose, I ordered several persons to be electrified, who were ill of various disorders; some of whom found an immediate, some a gradual, cure.  From this time I appointed, first some hours in every week, and afterward an hour in everyday, wherein any that desired it, might try the virtue of this surprising medicine.  Two or three years after, our patients were so numerous that we were obliged to divide them:  So part were electrified in Southwark, part at the Foundry [his headquarters in London], others near St. Paul's, and the rest near the Seven-Dials [part of London]:  The same method we have taken ever since; and to this day, while hundreds, perhaps thousands, have received unspeakable good, I have not known one man, woman, or child, who has received any hurt thereby: So that when I hear any talk of the danger of being electrified, (especially if they are medical men who talk so,) I cannot but impute it to great want either of sense or honesty." (Wesley, Journal, 9 November 1756, vol. 4, 190-91 in Schwab, 177-78.)

Randy Maddox suggests there were three primary reasons for John's passion about electrification: (1) he had observed positive results for himself and others, (2) electricity was part of God's creation and was thus more natural than chemical treatments, and (3) it was easy to access and inexpensive (Maddox, Holistic, 25).  As always, he was concerned about those who were poor and sick (Schwab, 176).