Chapter 9—Labor Conducive to Health
Dear Brother and Sister I,
I have been shown that you have erred in the management of your
children. You received ideas at-----from Dr. J, which you have spoken
of before the patients and before your children. These ideas will not
bear to be carried out. From Dr. J’s standpoint they may not appear
so objectionable; but viewed from a Christian standpoint, they are
positively dangerous. The instruction which Dr. J has given in regard
to shunning physical labor have proved a great injury to many. The
do-nothing system is a dangerous one. The necessity for amusements,
as he teaches it and enjoins it upon his patients, is a fallacy. In order
to occupy the time and engage the mind, they are made a substitute
for useful, healthful exercise and physical labor. Amusements such as
Dr. J recommends excite the brain more than useful employment.
Physical exercise and labor combined have a happy influence upon
the mind, strengthen the muscles, improve the circulation, and give
the invalid the satisfaction of knowing his own power of endurance;
whereas, if he is restricted from healthful exercise and physical labor,
his attention is turned to himself. He is in constant danger of thinking
himself worse than he really is and of having established within him a
diseased imagination which causes him to continually fear that he is
overtaxing his powers of endurance. As a general thing, if he should
engage in some well-directed labor, using his strength and not abusing
it, he would find that physical exercise would prove a more powerful
and effective agent in his recovery than even the water treatment he is
receiving.
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The inactivity of the mental and physical powers as far as useful
labor is concerned is that which keeps many invalids in a condition of
feebleness which they feel powerless to rise above. It also gives them a
greater opportunity to indulge an impure imagination,—an indulgence
which has brought many of them into their present condition of feeble-
ness. They are told that they have expended too much vitality in hard
labor, when, in nine cases out of ten, the labor they performed was
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