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Revealing sparks: John Wesley and the religious utility of electrical healing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 August 2006

PAOLA BERTUCCI
PAOLA BERTUCCI
Affiliation:
CIS, Dipartimento di Filosofia, University of Bologna, Via Zamboni 38, 40126 Bologna, Italy. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

In the eighteenth century, dramatic electrical performances were favourite entertainments for the upper classes, yet the therapeutic uses of electricity also reached the lower strata of society. This change in the social composition of electrical audiences attracted the attention of John Wesley, who became interested in the subject in the late 1740s. The paper analyses Wesley's involvement in the medical applications of electricity by taking into account his theological views and his proselytizing strategies. It sets his advocacy of medical electricity in the context of his philanthropic endeavours aimed at the sick poor, connecting them to his attempts to spread Methodism especially among the lower classes. It is argued that the healing virtues of electricity entailed a revision of the morality of electrical experiment which made electric sparks powerful resources for the popularization of the Methodist way of life, based on discipline, obedience to established authorities and love and fear of God.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 39 , Issue 3 , September 2006 , pp. 341 - 362
Copyright
2006 British Society for the History of Science

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Footnotes

I am deeply grateful to Geoffrey Cantor and Larry Stewart for their crucial comments on earlier versions of this paper. For discussing related themes or reading earlier drafts I wish to thank Prue Crane, Robert Fox, Dorothy Porter, Lissa Roberts, J. B. Shank, John Walsh and the audience at the Humanities Institute Workshop of the University of Minnesota. My gratitude to Elizabeth Ihrig for providing me with materials from the Bakken Library. Last, but not least, I wish to thank the referees of BJHS and Simon Schaffer for their engaging remarks.