A CHEAP SAFE AND NATURAL MEDICINE

Without any concern about the obliging or disobliging any man living, a mean hand has made here some little attempt, towards a plain and easy way of curing most diseases. I have only consulted herein, Experience, common sense, and the common Interest of Mankind. John Wesley, ‘The Preface’, Primitive Physic (1747) 1 John Wesley’s medical manual, Primitive Physic: Or, An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases, was one of the most popular medical volumes published in eighteenth-century England – twenty-three editions went to press in his lifetime; the last and thirty-seventh edition was published in 1859. 2 No one was more surprised at the public’s response to Primitive Physic than Wesley himself, as is apparent in the ‘Postscript’ to the fifth edition of 1755: It was a great surprise to the Editor of the following Collection, that there was so swift and large a demand for it; that three impressions were called for in four or five years; and that it was not only re-published by the Booksellers of a neighbouring nation; but also inserted by parts in their public papers, and so propagated through the whole kingdom. This encouraged him carefully to revise the whole, and to publish it again with several alterations, which it is hoped may make it of greater use to those who love common sense and common honesty. 3 Primitive Physic was certainly in great demand, but to categorise this text as simply ‘populist’, as most historians continue to do, is to obscure its rich cultural meanings and discursive contexts. This interpretation conceals the extensive range of authoritative references drawn from a variety of European sources that are brought to bear by Wesley in Primitive Physic. On the face of it, Primitive Physic is a manual which seems to contain a strange combination of common sense and religion. There is no doubt that emphasis on the populist strains of Primitive Physic can largely be attributed to the effective nature of Wesley’s rhetoric, of which the passage previously quoted is a good example. Here, Wesley seeks to convince, comfortreassure his reader that Primitive Physic is concerned to steer an empiricist course between the Scylla of abstruse medical theory and the Charybdis of speculative philosophy.

If you are interested, in reading this book download at the link below..