John Wesley, electrical quack? and physicians

Physicians believed that cures by electricity were theoretically impossible according to their training in Hippocrates' and Galen's methods.  Therefore, the physicians asserted, the results were either fraudulent or due to enthusiasm (Barry, 155).

 1789 medical electrical machines from
The New Royal Encyclopaedia, 2nd edition
(Wellcome Library)

William Dyer, a Bristol businessman who practiced medicine, recorded that after he bought a electrical machine (he had read The Desideratum), that several Bristol surgeons bought them and even St. Peter's Hospital in Bristol obtained one.  He sadly noted the machines "never did much good therewith, probably from want of the will and labour to attend to the application." (Barry, 153).  In 1767 the Middlesex Hospital got one, in 1777 St. Bartholomew's followed suit, and in 1778, St. Thomas's Hospital obtained an electical machine (Madden, Cheap, 248).  In 1793, the London Electrical Dispensary was founded by William Hawes (remember him?  He was the one who criticized Primitive Physick so mercilessly).  Its purpose was to give free electrical treatment to poor people, and between 1793 and 1814, the dispensary treated 300 patients per year (Madden, Cheap, 254).  

John was quite frustrated with physicians' overall lack of interest in electrical therapy (Madden, Cheap, 269-70).  He admitted in The Desideratum that "the electrical method of treating disorders cannot be expected to arrive at any considerable degree of perfection, till administered and applied by the gentlemen of the faculty [physicians]" and said this would not happen until "the gentlemen of the faculty have more regard to the interests of their neighbours than their own."  (Wesley, John.  The Desideratum, quoted in Gadsby, Gordon.  "The Rev. John Wesley MA (1703-1791) - Pioneer Electrotherapist: A History of Medicine Study" from "Electroanalgesia: Historical and Contemporary Developments", selections from PhD thesis, 1998, www.drgordongadsby.talktalk.net/page 12.htm, accessed 3 December 2012.)  By the 1781 edition of The Desideratum, the back pages included endorsements for "electric chains["] by over 10 "gentlemen of the faculty["], including four of the Queen's physicians (Malony, np), but the support for electrification was sporadic.

John's living room with original furniture,
electrical machine in back corner in glass box
(Photo used with permission of
The Museum of Methodism and John Wesley's House
London)

Electricity was used in the 1770s to restart a child's heart (Sophia Greenhill had fallen from a window), but it was also used by "Dr." Joseph Graham in his Temple of Health.  Unfortunately, due to the use of electrification in quackery, by 1900 medical electrical treatment was abandoned except for resuscitation and later, electroconvulsive ("shock") therapy (Schwab, 193).