John Wesley's interest in medical science and healing is well-known, yet though he was a genuine child of the Enlightenment, his ideas have often been caricatured. The kind of remedies that are to be found in Primitive physic which he published in 1747, for example, are often seen as belonging to the realms of folklore and ‘kitchen-physic’ recipes, and references from this work tend to focus on the more spectacular cures, such as the use of electricity. Inward and outward health succeeds in debunking old myths and also in making a somewhat specialised (or rather, neglected) subject accessible to the general reader. This compilation of six essays by scholars across different disciplines – including both science and religion – examines (to quote the subtitle) ‘John Wesley's holistic concept of medical science, the environment and holy living’. Deborah Madden – a scholar with inter-disciplinary experience herself – has brought together a group of authors from both sides of the Atlantic to produce an interesting anthology. The editor's introduction aptly sets the scene by placing the essays in context, and her own contribution on Wesley's treatment of consumption – ‘the dreaded disease’ – combines eloquence with erudition. Randy Maddox, whose name will probably be the most familiar in the list, heads the collection, though readers will find his chapter on ‘Reclaiming the eccentric patient’ less informative than his superb article ‘John Wesley on holistic health and healing’, Methodist History (2007). His helpful bibliography surely deserved to have a place of its own as an appendix. Other minor criticisms: some of the chapters seem to be a case of squeezing a quart into a pint pot and are less readable as a result. The use of footnotes could have been monitored more carefully – one chapter of thirty pages has no fewer than 277. I would have also wished for a little more exploration of the relationship between Wesley's Arminian beliefs of future salvation and his commitment to health care for all in the present, though Robert Webster's contribution in the last chapter does do this in part. But these minor criticisms do not detract from what is a meticulously-researched and well-presented anthology. In recent decades there has been an effort to reverse the modern trend of over-emphasising ‘medicine’ (i.e. drugs and therapy) at the expense of ‘well-living’ (i.e. preventative measures and lifestyle). The latter, which in Wesley's days was called ‘physick’, is an attempt to rediscover a holistic approach to health. In this, John Wesley still has something to teach us, and Inward and outward health – the first edited volume of scholarly essays of this kind – provides a useful resource for studying this neglected area.