Chapter 28—Statements on the Use of Drugs
A Statement in Answer to Questions on Drugs
Your questions, [
See introductory note, pp. 276-278
.] I will say,
are answered largely, if not definitely, in How to Live. Drug poisons
mean the articles which you have mentioned. The simpler remedies
are less harmful in proportion to their simplicity; but in very many
cases these are used when not at all necessary. There are simple herbs
and roots that every family may use for themselves and need not call a
physician any sooner than they would call a lawyer. I do not think that
I can give you any definite line of medicines compounded and dealt
out by doctors, that are perfectly harmless. And yet it would not be
wisdom to engage in controversy over this subject.
The practitioners are very much in earnest in using their dangerous
concoctions, and I am decidedly opposed to resorting to such things.
They never cure; they may change the difficulty to create a worse one.
Many of those who practice the prescribing of drugs, would not take
the same or give them to their children. If they have an intelligent
knowledge of the human body, if they understand the delicate, won-
derful human machinery, they must know that we are fearfully and
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wonderfully made, and that not a particle of these strong drugs should
be introduced into this human living organism.
As the matter was laid open before me, and the sad burden of
the result of drug medication, the light was given me that Seventh-
day Adventists should establish health institutions discarding all these
health-destroying inventions, and physicians should treat the sick upon
hygienic principles. The great burden should be to have well-trained
nurses, and well-trained medical practitioners to educate “precept upon
precept; line upon line, line upon line; here a little and there a little”
(
Isaiah 28:10
).
Train the people to correct habits and healthful practices, remem-
bering that an ounce of preventive is of more value than a pound
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