Know Your Crackpot Medical Advice: Dr. Leo Spaceman or John Wesley, Co-Founder of Methodism?
Everyone loves to give medical advice, but unfortunately, almost no one is qualified to give medical advice (“There’s no way you’re pregnant,” chimed two hundred text messages just now; “THXX girl ugh fingers crossed haha,” chimed the replies). The Not Qualified category includes both Dr. Leo Spaceman, beloved doctor of 30 Rock, and John Wesley, the 18th-century activist theologian who co-founded the Methodist religious movement and also
published a book called Primitive Physick, or, an Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases.
Excerpts from Wesley’s book are up at Mental Floss; answers to this quiz are after the jump.
John Wesley or Leo Spaceman?
1. Settle questions of paternity by dunking a woman in water.
2. Cure a fever with gentle vomiting.
3. Medicine is not a science.
4. To stop vomiting, hold a live puppy constantly on the belly.
5. The best remedy for a toothache is electrocution.
6. We have no way of knowing where the heart is; every human is different.
7. Animal blood keeps the spine straight.
8. Three months on the milk diet rarely fails to cure epilepsy.
Leo Spaceman: 1, 3, 6, 7
John Wesley: 2, 4, 5, 8