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Primitive Physic: or An Easy and Natural Method of Curing Most Diseases - John Wesley 1747 AD

3. But can there nothing be found to lessen those inconveniences, which cannot be wholly removed? To soften the evils of life, and prevent in part the sickness and pain to which we are continually exposed?

Without question there may.

One grant preventative of pain and sickness of various kinds, seems intimated by the great Author of nature in the very sentence that intails death upon us: "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, 'till thou return to the ground.

The power of exercise, both to preserve and restore health, is greater than can well be conceived; especially in those who add temperance thereto; who if they do not confine themselves altogether to eat either "bread or the herb of the field," (which God does not require them to do) yet steadily observe both that kind and measure of food, which experience shews to be most friendly to health. and strength.

4. 'Tis probable, physic, as well as religion, was in the first ages chiefly traditional: every father delivering down to his sons, that he had himself in like manner received, concerning the manner of healing both outward hurts and the diseases incident to each climate, and the medicines which were of the greatest efficacy for the cure of each disorder.

'Tis certain, this is the method wherein the art of healing is preserved among the Americans to this day.

There diseases are indeed 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 'tis rare that the patient suffers long; those medicines being quick, as well as, generally, infallible.