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Citation: Robinson, Barbara. “’I Earnestly Desire Him to be Electrified’: 
John Wesley, the Formative Salvation Army and ‘Irregular’ 
Medicine.” April 29, 2021, Tyndale University, Toronto, Ontario: 
MPEG-4, 50:25 min.

***** Begin Content ******


Thank you all for joining us again for our next paper of the day. And before we get into that presentation, I did want to have a 
moment to welcome the President of Tyndale, Dr. Marjorie Kerr, to bring greetings on behalf of the institution. And she is in her 
first year as our President. Very strange year to take over and make any kind of transition, but as if the job of being a 
university president wasn't challenging enough. But we're thankful that she's here, and she is also one of our denominational 
family. She's a Salvationist. So welcome, Dr. Kerr.

Thank you, James. And hello, everyone. As James said, this is my first year at Tyndale, and it is my first experience with this 
symposium as well. And I'm really pleased to be here. It's been good to scan across the screens today and to see so many familiar 
names and faces of people I have known for short and long time periods. And I hope for those I haven't met today, there are 
those who I will come to know in the coming months and years as I continue to broaden my relationships with so many who are connected 
to Tyndale. But as mentioned at the start today, we really are delighted to be able to host this symposium again after having to cancel 
last year in particular. And while we all look forward to being able to gather again in person for all kinds of activities and events, 
we're nevertheless pleased that the virtual format we're using has significantly increased the number of people who are able to attend 
from a much broader geography. So whether it is your morning, afternoon, or perhaps even evening, welcome and welcome back. As 
President of Tyndale, one of my primary responsibilities is always to tell our story and why we are here. And our mission statement makes 
that very clear. Let me read it to you. Tyndale is dedicated to the pursuit of truth, to excellence in teaching, learning and research for 
the enriching of mind, heart and character. To serve the Church and the world for the glory of God. That's what we do. That's why we're here.
 Everything that we engage in, ultimately, is to equip women and men to serve the Church and the world for the glory of God. And this 
symposium is an important part of equipping God's people. So whether you are here as a presenter, a participant, or both, I want to 
just say thank you for engaging in this symposium and conversations that we're having today. I think all of us are seeking to broaden 
our awareness and deepen our understanding of what it means to know God and to understand God. And through these kinds of opportunities, 
we have the opportunity to do that within and across the denominational theological and historical perspectives that we each represent. 
And I do also want to extend a word of thanks to the Wesleyan Studies Committee, who have made this symposium possible, dating all the way 
back to 2009. As was mentioned this morning, we're grateful for you. If we had the time today, I would love to unpack for you a little bit of 
all that is taking place within and through this university. New opportunities and challenges, a strong focus on the future we're building 
while we honor the past and the present. But that will have to wait for another day, because I promised James I would wait for another day. 
But really, our hope this afternoon and over these next few hours is that you will leave this symposium with perhaps one or two. Either new 
insights, or maybe they're just refreshed insights. Perhaps there will be a question or two that you're going to puzzle over and explore a 
little further in the days and weeks to come. But whatever that is, we also hope that you will leave with the affirmation of God's continuing 
presence and working in our lives, in our communities, and in our world that is hurting so badly in these times. So welcome.
Have a wonderful afternoon, and God bless you. Thank you, James.

Thank you, Dr. Kerr. It's a pleasure to have you join us today. As we're beginning our next session, I did want to mention about next year's event, 
for those of you who may be interested, we are planning a joint Wesley and Pentecostal symposium. We did this a few years ago. We did a symposium on 
experience, and Wesleyan and Pentecostal traditions share a lot of common ground historically and theologically, although we have significant 
differences as well. One thing we share is that we have been on the forefront of giving women opportunities to serve in leadership in the church. 
And so we want to explore the role of women, the voice of women in our two traditions, and the connections between our two traditions. On this 
question, we have Priscilla Pope Levison from Southern Methodist University, who is obviously a Wesley Methodist, she's a specialist in women 
evangelists. And Linda Ambrose, who some of you may know is a Canadian historian and Pentecostal historian. They're going to be our two keynote 
speakers. So I hope you all come back to join us April 26, 2022, for that important event. Thank you, Tabitha. And as we begin, 
I'll just remind you of what we said this morning, that please keep your microphones muted, and it's helpful if you keep your 
camera off as well, just to help focus the bandwidth on our presenter.

Our presenter for this session is Barbara Robinson. She is an Anglican priest. She serves in the Diocese of Ontario, which is a 
bit confusing for non Anglicans, but it's really just Eastern Ontario. That's the name of it, however, and she's located in Brockville, 
also has a long, deep roots in the Salvation Army, a deep knowledge of the Salvation Army, and served in various roles in the Salvation Army, 
including as a faculty member of Booth University College and did doctoral research on Salvation Army history. So really looking forward to 
your presentation, Barbara. Thank you, thank you.

And we're over to Tabitha, I guess, in the screen share this afternoon. I earnestly desire him to be electrified. John Wesley the Formative 
Salvation Army and irregular Medicine are we to assume that the congregational potluck has become a thing of the past? Even before the pandemic, 
it had become a more complicated affair. Some fellowships insist that all dishes be labeled gluten free keto, vegetarian, vegan were urged to 
buy local, to eat clean, to leave raw. We can even diet like Daniel. Dietary preoccupations, even obsessions, are not novel. In 1900, if you 
had been invited for dinner at the home of William Booth's son and successor Bramwell, the meal would have been simple and vegetarian. And had 
you sat down for tea with John Wesley in 1750, he would likely have nagged you to at least limit your consumption to a single cup and then 
only with milk and sugar, sending you home to peruse his tract. A letter to a friend concerning tea printed by William Strawn in December of 
1748. The health regimes and therapeutic practices utilized and promoted by John Wesley in the 18th century and those of the Salvation Army's 
founding family in the 19th century are among the more curious, and, in the case of Salvationist studies, largely unexamined aspects of Wesleyan
history. It's easy to skim over John Wesley's enthusiastic descriptions of the installation in the local chapels, of electrical machines for the 
delivery of electric shock, what he termed, quote, a thousand medicines in one. Or to read a century later of the Booth family's endorsement of 
homeopathy and taking the waters at Mr. Smedley's hydropathic establishment and dismiss their therapeutic guidance as quirky, even a bit neurotic. 
However, the historical study of how health is defined and health care is practiced offers what medical historian Wendy Mitchinson terms a quote, 
a particularly fruitful lens for social scrutiny. The first and most obvious reason for this disciplinary fruitfulness is because it reflects the 
nature of a perennially popular discourse people fret about their health, and they discuss it. For social historians, the study of domestic or 
alternative medicine surfaces issues of gender and class, attitudes to authority, to science, to medical professionalism. For a faith based gathering 
like the symposium, it offers a lens through which we can compare and contrast 18th and 19th century perspectives on the scope of pastoral care, on 
Christian philanthropic responsibility, on the breadth of mission, and on underlying theological emphasis. Both John Wesley and the Booths popularized 
and published articles, manuals, and tracks of health instructions. Both Wesley and the early Army leadership had very practical reasons for doing so. 
In both centuries, the quest was for accessible, affordable, simple natural habits or regimes, for preserving health and treating illness for populations 
with very limited opportunities to doctor. Folks movements believed that they were seeking and promoting what we would today call evidence based treatments. 
But Wesley's primary motivation for the use of domestic or irregular medicine was not quite the same as was that of the Booths. Nor were their attitudes 
to the medical orthodoxy of the centuries in which they worked. And it's only by taking into account their wider cultural context and values, even their 
quite different class backgrounds, that one can adequately make sense, for example, of the ease with which John Wesley incorporated medical advice into 
his pastoral work versus Catherine Booth's contrasting dismay at the interest filmed by her oldest son, Bramwell. In pursuing a medical career, John 
Wesley offered basic medical and therapeutic advice in continuity with Anglican pastoral practice of the 17th and early 18th centuries. In the last 
decade, these historical precedents have been comprehensively explored by Randy Maddox, by James Donnett, by Deborah Madden. When, in 1729, Wesley was 
recalled to his role as a tutor at Lincoln College and tasked with the education of future priests, his diary indicates that he was reading Burnett's 
Discourse of the Pastoral Care. Several years earlier, he had expressed enthusiasm for George Herbert's country parson. Both of these were 17th century 
works which encouraged priests to include physic primarily for the health of their families, but also as a component of their pastoral work. The 
clergyman was often the only university trained citizen of the community, and the study of physics, defined as, quote, the study of human nature and 
anatomy, with an emphasis on the promotion of health regimes to maintain well being, was an element of a broad classical curriculum. Later in life, 
Wesley would write that as an MA student, he had made, quote, anatomy and physics the diversion of my leisure hours. 20 years would pass, however, 
before Wesley was moved to openly embrace the role of priest position, and his motivation seems to have been primarily philanthropic. He wrote, I 
was still in pain for many of the poor that were sick. There was so great expense and so little profit. I saw the poor people pining away and several 
families ruined, and that without remedy. At length I thought of a desperate expedient. I will prepare and give them civic myself. I took into my 
assistance an apothecary and an experienced surgeon, resolving at the same time not to go out of my depth, but to leave all difficult and complicated 
cases to such physicians as the patient should choose. I gave notice of this to the society, telling them that all who were ill of chronicle 
distempers, for I did not dare to venture upon acute might. If they pleased, come to me at such a time, and I would give them the best advice I 
could and the best medicines that I had. Clearly, John Wesley sees himself as offering complementary rather than alternative care. He was quick 
to defend both domestic healers and those professional physicians committed to what historians have called enlightened empiricism medical 
approaches which were relying on the observation of symptoms rather than on galan centuries old theoretical system which understood medicine's 
task as the restoration of balance between the four humors or liquids of the body. The blood flame, yellow bile and black bile. Wesley often 
reviewed with approval the works of orthodox physicians. He often summarized the contents of their medical monograms and texts in pamphlets 
distributed in his missions. For example, in Advices with respect to Health extracted from a late author, Wesley's abridgement commended the 
prominent doctor Tissid for his admirable descriptions of disease and a writing style quote, so clear that even common people of tolerable sense 
could understand. He was heartened by the fact that Tissid's recommendations for medicines were, quote, exceedingly few and moderately priced. 
He did question what he described as Dr. Tissett's, quote violent fondness for bleeding. I think we have a slide showing the patient being bled 
here and what he termed the author's quote, amazing love of blisters that is enemies. Riley commenting I wonder whether he himself submitted to 
or performed the operation. What I pray beside extreme necessity, would induce any but a kind of beast of a man either to prescribe it to another 
or admit himself such a worse than beastly remedy. Wesley seems to have been uniquely conscious of the relationship between physical and mental 
health. This is evident from the extensive case notes that we find in his diary. He writes reflecting today on the case of a poor woman who had 
continual pain on her stomach, I could not but remark the inexcusable negligence of most physicians in cases of this need. They prescribe drug 
upon drug without knowing a jaw of the matter concerning the root of this disorder, and without knowing this, they cannot cure, though they can 
murder the patient. When came the woman's pain, which she would never have told had she never been questioned about it from fretting the death of 
her son. Wesley goes on to argue that physicians need to, quote call in the assistance of a minister as ministers when they find the mind disordered 
by the body. Call in the assistance of a physician. Wesley's domestic manual and what turned out to be his best selling book Primitive Physics, went 
through 23 editions. It remained in print until 1880. Some of his health advice has stood the test of time the benefits of a standing desk walking as 
the safest, most effective form of exercise. He recommended two to 3 hours a day of walking. For scholars, cold compress applied to the back of the 
neck for the nosebleed. Other advice may be a bit less helpful for baldness an onion rubbed onto the scalp, followed by daily electrifying, or for the 
common cold, tiny rolls of orange peel stuffed up the nostrils. In Maddox introduction to Worst, volume 32 Medical and Health writings, he identifies 
two theological assumptions under Germany. Wesley's health advice and I quote the first is his Anglican based primitiveism. Just as Anglican apologists 
assumed that Christian life and doctrine were purists at the origin of the Christian church and sought to emulate those times. Wesley privileged the 
primitive origins of physics and praised, for example, the Native Americans for most closely preserving the pristine practice. And then, of course, 
Wesley saw plant based herbal remedies as the concrete evidence of provenient grace. He argued that God would never have allowed the potential damages 
of sin if God had not also graciously prepared ways to heal these damages. I quote in light of these convictions, Wesley may have viewed the privileging 
of chemical medicines over plants as a failure to trust God's longstanding provisions with the effects of sin. The Salvation Army if Wesley's study of 
domestic medicine was an expression of his broad based intellectual and scientific curiosity, with its practice catalyzed primarily by philanthropic 
concern, this formative Salvation Army's endorsement of alternative medicine, specifically hydrotherapy, homeopathy and vegetarianism, was a response to a 
range of concerns. The ever present threat of disease in the pretty Victorian cities, the still dismal state of early 19th century medicine, the Booth 
family's personal experience of illness ambit 19th century evangelical distrust of medical professionalism. I should also have said orthodox medicine 
exclusion of women as practitioners, the need to ameliorate the Army's rigidly activist expectations. What is less evident in Salvationist discussions of 
health and medicine is the scientific openness. The sheer delight that John Wesley seemed to bring to the topic, flowing directly from his profound sense 
of the manifestation of the goodness of God in creation, see this much in his sermons like Original Sin and The Fall of man. The almost obsessive nature of 
William and Catherine Booth's concern for their personal health, expressed as early as their courtship correspondence was not without warrant. No one could 
assume effective medical or therapeutic defense against the onslaught of disease and epidemic which regularly cut a swath through a vulnerable population. 
Throughout the 19th century, one citizen in six in Great Britain was infected with tuberculosis, a disease killing more people each year than all other 
major infections combined. Working class life expectancy at midcentury remained what it had been during Wesley's ministry 45 years. The Victorians were 
well acquainted with pandemic. They recalled with horror the cholera outbreaks of 1832, 1849 and 1866. Cholera quote outlandish unknown, monstrous, its 
insidious march over continents, its apparent defiance of all known and concentrated precautions. The historian Bruce Haley goes so far as to assert that 
no topic more occupied the Victorian mind than health. Not religion, not politics, not improvement or Darwinism. Victorians worshiped, the goddess Hygiene, 
sought out their laws and disciplined themselves to obey them. As had been the case in the 18th century, many Victorian citizens lived without ever 
receiving professional medical attention. In completing the application form or candidates papers for training as a Salvation Army officers, recruits 
were asked if they could, to produce a medical certificate. Adelaide Cox, the 20 year old daughter of an Anglican vicar, commented on her application 
that this had been dispensed with in her case, as she had, quote, never needed or had a doctor. This was not an unusual claim. It was also common for 
people to distrust and avoid the conventional pharmacology. Florence Soper Booth, whose father was an orthodox physician, credited her mother in law, 
Catherine Booth, with a major influence upon her own approach to health promotion and care. And I think if we just jump to the next slide, Florence 
writes, it is to her advice that we owe the fact that our children have come through life so far almost entirely without a dose of medicine of any 
description. The water treatment has sufficed to overcome with ease the childish ailments of whooping cough measles. The visits to the doctor have been 
nil. Paralleling. We just have a couple slides here showing what that water treatment looked like and a little bit of dissenting views from George Scott 
Railton. But anyway, we'll move on. Paralleling. John Wesley's 18th century experience. Much of the attraction of mid 19th century medicine can be attributed 
to the harshness and futility of the orthodox alternative. Patient testimonials were dense with references to having been doctored to death, drugged without 
mercy, almost constantly, killed by inches for long years, medicine founded on conjecture improved by murder. It wasn't until the final quarter of the 19th 
century that there was a radical turnaround in evaluation of the practice of orthodox medicine among conservative evangelicals like those within the Christian 
Mission and Early Salvation Army. At mid 19th century doctors, especially medical students, were highly suspect, criticized for moral laxity, for coursening, 
for indications of unholy selfish ambition to achieve high social status, and for the godless social scientific materialism which informed their worldviews. 
Bramwell Booth was 15 years of age when he shared his interest in pursuing a medical career with his evangelist parents, William and Catherine, and they were 
less than pleased. Biographers of the Booth describe an emotional debate which ended with a devastated Bramwell quote, shivering from head to foot with 
sobs on a dining room seti. Catherine Booth's opinion was uncompromising and her influence absolute. The practice of medicine was a vortex which swamped 
the religion of thousands of promising, piously, trained young men. She salted the letters written home to her son while she was away on her preaching 
engagements with warnings about the humble, earnest Christians she had heard of who, quote, discarded personal faith when he got the ambition to be a 
doctor and get up in the world. Medical metaphysics. But the 18th 19th century cultural embrace of alternative health practices was more than a practical
 response to medical impotence and social need. For many transatlantic health and holiness reformers, the physical body became a primary focus of religious 
concern. Nature, stable on changing orderly, was a universal and readable religious text. To attend to the eternal laws of natur, as evidenced in bodily 
function, was to attend to the voice of God. Not to attend was to reap the consequences of disease. In sectarian medicine's, religious language, not only 
could believers be saved through hygienic reform, they could be sanctified. A rhetoric of purity widely popularized in evangelical journals, supported 
by evangelicals such as the Herald of Health, went so far as to claim that clean natural therapies such as hydrotherapy, homeopathy and vegetarianism 
held, quote, the power to bring back the human race to its original physical perfection and to advance its moral purity. From the perspective of the 
sectarians, orthodox physicians were mere technicians, concerned only for the acquisition of data. Sectarians, by contrast, claimed insight into grand 
theories of unifying truth. They were the medical idealists of the 19th century. From the 1860s on, William and Catherine Booth and the extended family 
went frequent trips to the Victorian hydro, where it was asserted that vital function could be recharged the body almost like a battery, in part by a 
lifestyle which mimicked childhood state of innocent dependence. Early bedtimes, early rising abstention from a whole list of substance and activities 
regarded as stimulants wine, tobacco, coffee, tea, condiments, playing cards, taking the waters involved a daily regime of hot packs, baths and long 
history taking consultations with the therapist. However, there's no direct evidence that William Booth himself bought into or promoted the perfectionist 
theories underlying these alternative health systems. There was little wholehearted embrace of the metaphysical theories colorfully described by 
historian Catherine Albanese as expressing a conflation of the impulses of enlightenment and evangelical thought swiftly going the romantic scene. 
Notwithstanding the Army's holiness, heritage and transatlantic influences, health practices were infrequently linked with a rhetoric of personal 
purity. As in the Salvationist approach to methods of evangelization, what mattered most was what seemed to work. Consequently, homeopathy hydrotherapy 
vegetarianism were promoted in Army periodicals with a rather atypical hesitancy. For example, with the exception of the addiction treatment protocols, 
the buzz refused to make vegetarianism a matter of order within the Salvation Army. This did not prevent Florence and Bramwell Booth from speaking 
or publishing on the subject. For groups such as the London Vegetarian Society, they contended that a vegetarian diet was biblical, economical and 
physiologically adequate. Yes, they believed, there were moral dimensions to the vegetarian cause. Diet played out because they maintained I'm 
sorry that vegetable products were non stimulating. They argued that meatless meals could help the individual avoid temptation. Vegetarianism was 
favorable to purity, to chastity, to perfect control of the appetites and passions. Elaborate physiological theories equated the consumption of 
meat with the propensity to alcoholism. The slaughter of animals for food was regarded as a brutalizing influence on industry workers. Quote the 
highest sentiments of humane men revolt at the cruelty, the degrading sights, the distressing cries, the perpetual bloodshed and the attendant 
horrors which must surround the transit and slaughter of suffering creatures. As had been the case a century earlier with Wesley's promotion of 
physics, much of the Army's utilization of alternative therapies represented a pragmatic response to missional needs. What was unique was how 
much of the embrace of irregular medicine represented a response not to the needs of the poor but to the health needs of the officer corps. And 
I am just going to skip one forward, one slide here. Tabitha the ministry practice of Salvationist clergy or officers at late century closely 
approximated that of Methodist itinerants a century earlier. The average length of stay at an appointment or posting was six months. During that 
time, the officer would conduct an average of 400 indoor and outdoor services about 15 a week. In an article in the Contemporary Review in 90 98, 
John Hollands, who was a professional journalist and lay member or soldier of the Army, wrote we seem to be working up to the extreme limit of our 
powers of endurance. We have no margin of strength. We lack some element of calm. We have scarcely a green place for rest and recuperation. 
Robert Brown, who became the denomination's medical advisor in 1903, claimed to have been astonished and disturbed by his clinical experience 
among army clergy. He wrote Many very active and enthusiastic Army officers break down completely within a comparatively short time. This should 
not happen and would not happen if they exercised ordinary foresight and care. In regulating their daily round of toil, the physician asserted that 
officers, quote, must obey the laws of health which are the laws of God. They must learn to reject zeal without discretion. Unfortunately, patterns 
of health indiscretion had been established early between 1879 and 1894. Over 500 officers were treated at Mr. Smedley's hydropathic establishment, 
one of the largest centers of alternative medicine in Victorian Britain. To medicalize, the need for the rest that a hydro provided was to 
legitimate it with an apologetic commitment to what the army characterized as aggressive Christianity. These 19th century mission nurse regarded 
themselves as shock troops in the winnable war for the souls of men. In the heat of spiritual conflict, sacrifices were required, suffering was 
inevitable and so the Salvationist emphasis on health remained utilitarian. Officers were encouraged to recognize, yes, the role health would 
play as a recruitment strategy. Healthy people would create a good impression as to what religion would do for people. Health accrued economic 
advantage to the organization. A man or a woman who had good health could live upon a much smaller income than one who was alien or sick. Health 
insured better troop deployment. But declarations of the Army's priorities remained explicit. Soldiers were summoned to engagement in a war against 
sin and the devil on the side of a Christ who, quote, flung aside contemptuously the thought that living in this world was a real benefit. In a 
sermon preached in the summer of 1880, Catherine Booth took as her text Ephesians 5:18 be filled with a spirit, and her sermon summed up her religious 
fuse the very essence and core of religion is God first, the allegiance and obedience to him first. If I cannot keep my health and be faithful to him, 
then I must sacrifice it. If I cannot keep my life and be faithful to him, then I must be prepared to lose it and lay my neck upon the block if need be.
This is my religion and I do not know any other. 

Thank you. Thank you very much, Barbara, for fascinating presentation. Yes. Topic that most of us, 
even people who know this history are not familiar with and hasn't been discussed very much. So it's so interesting. And I'll just remind anyone who has 
a question, please feel free to type it into the chat and we will take them up from there. A couple of things for clarification. I just wonder, can you 
talk about the connection, if there is one, to temperance? I mean, I think you mentioned temperance at some point, but all of our Holiness denominations
 were temperance movements at one point or were involved in that in various levels. So what's the relationship there between this Victorian concern for 
health and the temperance movement, if there is one? It was very much interconnected and a lot of it transatlantic. We see a lot of it coming out of 
groups like places like Oberlin College. We see Jennings early health reformers who very quickly seem to assume that meat and many of these practices, 
this notion of stimulants that stirred up the appetite and then created an increased propensity to alcoholism. So they were always looking for ways 
to control stimulating influences or impulses. I don't know if you want me to go where beyond that, James? You'd really want me to go? Was there a 
connection? Absolutely. Yes. There was the temperance movement. That's helpful. Thank you. And I was really fascinated by the idea of connecting 
this to convenient grace. In Wesley's thinking, it sounded like it was mostly on the natural side. Like, would Wesley have understood from your 
reading human creativity and ingenuity in medicine as also an effective pervenient grace or was it more of a dichotomy? I think it was I think 
the fact that he himself was so drawn to the sciences, to the physical scientists sciences, that he found such joy in it himself. I think his whole 
notion of human reason, that as God had gifted humanity with reason, the expectation as part of moral governance would be that it would be 
used in these ways. But I think he was very edgy about dismissing what was natural. I didn't explain the whole teeth. Why didn't they like 
the tea thing? Partly because he felt in his own personal experience it had created premise. So he said, It causes me to get jumpy. But then 
also he said, look around England, we have all kinds of herbal teas. They're cheap, they're unadulterated, they're pure, they're healing. Take 
advantage, explore, discover, and you will find in the natural creation all kinds of natural cures. And of course they did. I mean, Quinning 
things for malaria. His experience in Georgia where he was fascinated by what he saw in indigenous medicine and some. Of its effectiveness. So 
I think there he's commenting on the extreme use of chemicals that he found. Listen, let's go to the purest, the simplest. Okay. Helpful. A 
question from Amy Patterson. She says, you mentioned concern regarding the effects of slaughter on workers. Was there additional concern for 
animal welfare? Yes, there was. And we find this very early in Catherine Booth, she writes about it consistently. Now, they also did some 
strange things. I mean, there's one bit in one of the stories where one of the family dogs dies, and so they stuff it, make it an ornament 
some of these things which strike us as truly bizarre. But yes, there was very much so. And in fact, there are provisions in Army documents, 
I think, still in the Junior Soldiers pledge. Wasn't there a phrase there, some could correct me that talks about cruelty to animals? That 
one avoids it? As a soldier of Jesus Christ, I should also have mentioned that this vegetarian, this whole putrefication imagery, there wasn't a 
Pure Food Act passed in Britain until the 1860s. So they say about a third of the meat that people were consuming was, in fact, polluted compromised 
meat. So there was also even a very practical physical component there. Would that answer that for Amy? Not enough? Yeah, that's very good. And John Wesley, 
again, there's a connection there because he was also very concerned with the proper treatment of animals and abusive animals. I don't know if you know an 
answer to this one. Cathy asked, does the Salvation Army have a current statement, position statement on alternative medicine? I don't know.
Not that I am aware of. That you're aware of, yeah. It's a very contemporary topic in a lot of ways, isn't it? But the whole conversation has 
changed, of course. But there's still a very contemporary issue. I was thinking about today and thinking there's a lot of things I didn't even 
go into. They saw this both in both Wesley and I was thinking the reference that came up earlier to the to the sermon on visiting the sick, they very 
much saw the provision of care as, quote, softening the soil for the reception of the gospel. Both Wesley and that phrase used later in the Salvation 
Army. But I was thinking about this. Alternative medicine in the 19th century was fulfilling a bit of the role that social media is fulfilling now, 
at least in the perspective of orthodox medicine. They said, Come on, you're writing for patrons, not academic peers, right? You need to be more 
careful in the information that is put out there because of all of the capacity for misuse. The homeopathy which I didn't go into was very much 
linked in the early parts of the 19th century to what worked, for example, in the cholera epidemics of both well, both going back to Napoleon's 
trips with fruits and then the cholera epidemics. The homeopathic hospital statistics were better than their survival statistics were better than 
orthodox medicine of the day. And you say, well, why is that? Well, at least they weren't doing any harm, right? They weren't bleeding them and 
bleaching them and killing them, dominating them to death. And therefore it was assumed, okay, here's evidence based medicine. This is more effective 
than what we're seeing in conventional medical currently. Sorry. Okay, very good. We've got a few others that have come in here. Dennis asks if there's 
references or connection and research connecting to hospitals or the writings of LNG. White 7th Day Adventist. You know, they're also a connection to 
vegetarianism. I don't I did not see well, they were all reading from a common source, but you're absolutely right. Ellen White, the Kellogg's Trawl, 
all of these American health reformers, the the language is very, very similar, and especially in terms of this rhetoric purity. Pure foods, pure, non 
stimulating foods. Yeah. Do you have any this is from Robbie Donaldson. He asks, you mentioned addiction treatment protocols in the mid 19th 
century. Was it only avoidance of meat, for instance, or were there others that you have reference or further information about those addiction? 
That could be a whole other paper. I think it is a whole other paper. I've been absolutely fascinated. Now we're talking now, later, 19th century, 
by the time the Salvation Army is actively one thing was very much the notion of locating the addiction therapeutic environment, which was to be 
homelike and cozy and unquestioning, not putting a whole bunch of barriers up to either admission or falling away. Take them back. Doesn't matter 
how many falls you've had. Take them back. Take them back. Softening again. The cold kind of thing was very much the Army's strategy. And then, yes, 
they did have a whole diet that they prescribed for detox. They had a whole set of therapeutic foods that they felt were more appropriate for ongoing 
addiction recovery, and meat was not part of it. Right. Okay, we are at our time. But again, I'll do what I did this morning, and if there's people 
who want to stay, if you need to go and take your break before we start again at 230, please feel free to do so. But, Barbara, if you're okay to answer 
a couple more questions for those who are interested, go ahead. One thing on the addictions, I think I kind of half I ended my sentence halfway. They 
put the center in proximity of the community, the worshiping community, so that there would be fellowship and friendship. They felt that was really 
important that these not be dispatched. I'm sorry. No, very important point. Okay, we'll do two more. Was there a decisive point when the Salvation 
Army theology and practice moved away from hydrotherapy, vegetarianism, homeopathic medicine, or was this a general slide away from these concepts? 
And that comes from Mary Beth Swanson. Well, by the last quarter of the 19th century, orthodox medicine has seen some real success for example, they 
now have antiseptic medicine. So the surgical rates had dropped from like 60% of people die after surgery down to about four by the end of the century. 
So they were also finding that medical practitioner was effective, but they still maintain this kind of Catherine Booth and Florence would send off 
cadets to the orthodox physician. In two cases, I can think of where the recommendation was amputation. And then the Booth said, hey, wait a minute, 
don't take the leg off yet. Send them back to us. Let us treat them with water therapy first. And they did, and they saved the legs. Right. So it moves 
to more of a complementary relationship by the end of the 19th century and a full medical department into the 1890s, preparing people for overseas missions, 
for example. Wow. Okay, last question. Patricia Ryan. Are you aware that William Booth is associated with the eating of meat with violence? And then she 
says the Children's Home in southeast London had a diet of vegetables organically grown. Children's Home. The Children's Home in Southeast London had a 
diet of vegetables organically grown. She was saying that blame Booth associated eating meat with violence. Absolutely, he did. They go so far as to say it that's, 
I mean, it sounds bizarre that many of these people, they said, who are now murderers, got their training as butchers in the butcher shop. They absolutely equated 
meat eating and the slaughter of animals with violence. And they did some very bizarre experiments. Not the Booth, but they relied or looked to things like 
feeding bears. They thought in zoos, if they gave them vegetables, they wouldn't be carnivores anymore. There's a lot of fascinating backdrop.
Wow. Interesting. Well, John Wesley, he speculated that there would be animals in the new creation and that the carnivorous animals would not 
be carnivorous anymore. He believed, right, they would lose that because he saw this as a problem, that these animals could only survive by 
killing other animals. This bothered him. So there's lots of fascinating connections. Thank you so much for this paper. I really enjoyed it. 
Very stimulating. And they say lots of things that most of us have not heard about or encountered, but at the same time, very contemporary as well. 
So thank you and and hopefully many of you are going to join us at 230 for our papers by either Gerry Mielke on Christian perfection or Jason Mills on 
online pastoral education. Thank you again, Barb.
Thank you. Thank you.


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