Most of Wesley’s medical advice is standard for the time, though there are a few bizarre tips, such as his treatment for insanity:
“Put the madman under a great waterfall, for as long as his strength would bear, or let him eat nothing but apples for a month.”
His advice for consumption (tuberculosis) is no less strange:
“Cut up a little turf of fresh earth and, laying down, breathe into the hole [for] a quarter of an hour. Have known a deep consumption cured thus. In the last stage, suck a healthy woman. This cured my father.”
Source: John Wesley, Primitive Physic, or an Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, 1744. Content on this page is © Alpha History 2019-23. Content may not be republished without our express permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use or contact Alpha History.