John Wesley on Holistic Health and Healing

Abstract

Few laity in Wesleyan traditions today are aware that John Wesley published a collection of advice for preserving health and treating diseases, even though that collection, his Primitive Physick, went through twentythree editions in Wesley's lifetime-among the highest number of anything that he published-and stayed in print (and use!) continuously into the 1880s.Those who are aware of this collection, and have glanced at a few of his prescriptions for ailments (samples in Appendix A), tend to dismiss it in bemusement.This is true of many scholars as well.One recent book on Wesley's ethics describes Primitive Physick as "a collection of folklore prescriptions for various ailments . . .[revealing] his reliance on testimony and a sometime credulity in belief in what the folk tradition contained."A new historical study of Wesley characterizes the work as "a strange mix of old wives' tales and recent insights." 2 The goal of this essay is to call such evaluations, and the larger neglect of this dimension of Wesley's work, into question.I hope to demonstrate that, far from being an amusing avocation, Wesley's interest in health and healing was a central dimension of his ministry and of the mission of early Methodism.Moreover, when considered in its historical context, I believe that Wesley's precedent provides a model of the concern for holistic health and healing that is instructive for his present ecclesial heirs.3

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