Thought ya'll might enjoy this, being that Fr. Cashin used to be a Methodist minister.
"Drug War" by Dan Russell (1999)
When reading Russell's book, I was surprised to find this reference to John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist church. As one who has taught an afternoon class called "Our Methodist Heritage," I was especially surprised because I had never heard any reference to Wesley's having written "the basic home health guide of the era" that went through 40 editions over a hundred year period. Wesley (1703-91) lived to be 87 in a time when the average life expectancy was less than 40.
Here is a very short description of Wesley's trip to America shortly before he caught fire:
But this omission reflects a central theme in Russell's book - that highly effective traditional medicine has been consciously exterminated for the reasons Wesley describes below. This extermination has been so complete that it might be a serious blow to Methodism for word to get out that Wesley financed his ministry by hawking an "alternative medicine" tome. (See title page below: "Sold at the Rev. Mr. Wesley's Preaching-Houses, in Town and County")
======================================== Excerpt (pp 2-4) from "Drug War" by Dan Russell (1999)
The ancient tribal wisdom was the prescription of John Wesley, author of colonial America's most popular medical book, "Primitive Physic," first published in London in 1747. The book went through more than forty editions over the next hundred years, becoming the basic home health guide of the era.
The populist evangelist worked in Georgia from 1735-37, and was deeply impressed by Native American health and medicine. An enemy of venal practitioners who used high-falutin language to hide their obvious ignorance, Wesley pointed out in his preface that "It is probable Physic, as well as Religion, was in the first ages chiefly traditional; every father delivering down to his sons what he had in like manner received."
"It is certain this is the method wherein the art of healing is preserved among the American Indians to this day. Their diseases indeed are exceeding few; nor do they often occur, by reason of their continual exercise, and (till of late) universal temperance. But if any are sick, or bit by a serpent, or torn by a wild beast, the fathers immediately tell their children what remedy to apply. And it is rare that the patient suffers long; those medicines being quick, as well as generally infallible."
But after our expulsion from this Garden of Eden, "Physicians now began to be in admiration, as persons who were something more than human. And profit attended employ as well as honor; so that they now had two weighty reasons for their keeping the bulk of mankind at a distance, that they might not pry into the mysteries of their profession . . . "
"Those who understood only how to restore the sick to health, they branded with the name Empirics. They introduced into practice an abundance of compound medicines, consisting of so many ingredients, that it was scarce possible for common people to know which it was that wrought the cure; .... chemicals, such as they neither had skill, nor fortune, nor time to prepare; yea, and of dangerous ones, such as they could not use without hazarding life, but by the advice of a physician. And thus both their honor and gain were secured, a vast majority of mankind being utterly cut off from helping either themselves or their neighbors, or once daring to attempt it."The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart.
http://www.people.virginia.edu/~mmd6w/solzh.html' target='_new'>Alexander Solzhenitsyn
