Pills for the Poor: John Wesley's Primitive Physick

While John Wesley's Primitive Physick (1747) cannot be termed a classic of British medical literature, it must certainly be identified as one of the most popular volumes published in England during the eighteenth century. Although the work came under attack from contemporary surgeons, physicians, and apothecaries, who maintained that its remedies were founded upon ignorance, Wesley probably knew as much as most members of the medical profession; in fact, on no less than twenty instances throughout the volume, he paraphrases or cites directly from prominent physicians and theorists—such figures as Sydenham, Boerhaave, Cheyne, Mead, and Huxham. However, despite its obvious emphasis upon practical remedies, the underlying focus of Primitive Physick is upon the soul of man. Wesley had consulted some sources, common sense, and his own experience, tempering those with the general principle of “doing good to all men,” particularly “those who desire to live according to the gospel....” Thus, the Methodist patriarch's own formula for life had as much to do with the spread of Primitive Physick throughout eighteenth-century Britain and America as did all of the remedies and suggestions imprinted upon its pages.