256
Selected Messages Book 2
Strong Drugs Need Not Be Used—The first labors of a physician
should be to educate the sick and suffering in the very course they
should pursue to prevent disease. The greatest good can be done by
our trying to enlighten the minds of all we can obtain access to, as to
the best course for them to pursue to prevent sickness and suffering,
and broken constitutions, and premature death. But those who do not
care to undertake work that taxes their physical and mental powers
will be ready to prescribe drug medication, which lays a foundation in
the human organism for a two-fold greater evil than that which they
claim to have relieved.
A physician who has the moral courage to imperil his reputation in
enlightening the understanding by plain facts, in showing the nature of
disease and how to prevent it, and the dangerous practice of resorting
to drugs, will have an uphill business, but he will live and let live....
He will, if a reformer, talk plainly in regard to the false appetites
and ruinous self-indulgence, in dressing, in eating and drinking, in
overtaxing to do a large amount of work in a given time, which has a
[283]
ruinous influence upon the temper, the physical and mental powers....
Right and correct habits, intelligently and perseveringly practiced,
will be removing the cause for disease, and the strong drugs need not
be resorted to. Many go on from step to step with their unnatural
indulgences, which is bringing in just as unnatural [a] condition of
things as possible.—
Medical Ministry, 221, 222
(General Manuscript
entitled “Sanitariums,” 1887).
As It Is Generally Practiced—Drug medication, as it is generally
practiced, is a curse.—
Healthful Living, 246
(1888).
Less Dangerous if Wisely Administered—Do not administer
drugs. True, drugs may not be as dangerous wisely administered
as they usually are, but in the hands of many they will be hurtful
to the Lord’s property.—
Letter 3, 1884
(To workers at St. Helena
Sanitarium).
Discarding Almost Entirely—Our institutions are established
that the sick may be treated by hygienic methods, discarding almost
entirely the use of drugs.... There is a terrible account to be rendered
to God by men who have so little regard for human life as to treat the
body so ruthlessly in dealing out their drugs.... We are not excusable if
through ignorance we destroy God’s building by taking into our stom-