The Desideratum; or, Electricity Made Plain and Useful

The Desideratum; or, Electricity Made Plain and Useful - By a Lover of Mankind, and of Common Sense is a 1760 book by John Wesley advocating the use of electric shock therapy. Wesley collected the accounts of other researchers with "electrifying machines," and to them added observations from his own experiments in public clinics.^[1]

The 72-page book has led Wesley to be mentioned alongside his contemporaries Richard Lovett and Jean Paul Marat as a pioneer advocate of the medical uses of electroconvulsive therapy, despite that Wesley's tests and results are not considered scientific by modern standards.^[2]

References

1. Randy L. Maddox, Jason E. Vickers The Cambridge Companion to John Wesley 2009 Page 173 "One other characteristic of Wesley's engagement with the study of nature ... Wesley's embrace of this basic emphasis is evident in The Desideratum; or, Electricity Made Plain and Useful (1760). ...accounts of medical benefits of electrical shock. I Whereas some viewed these accounts with scorn, Wesley collected them and added accounts from his own experiments in public clinics with "electrifying machines." He then published them
2. Linda S. Schwab, essay This Curious and Important Subject - John Wesley and The Desideratum, in Inward & Outward Health: John Wesley's Holistic Concept of Medical Science ed. Deborah Madden 2008, republished 2012 Page 169 ".. has elicited a wide range of evaluations from scholars of the last ... Discussion of its place (if any) in the history of medicine has been complicated and often compromised by a persistent and critical misunderstanding: that the only contemporary application of electricity in medicine is electroconvulsive therapy ."

External links

• Digital copy of an 1871 reprint at Archive.org