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Testimonies for the Church Volume 2
suffering for the want of deep, full inspirations of air, which would
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electrify the blood and impart to it a bright, lively color, and which
alone can keep it pure and give tone and vigor to every part of the
living machinery.
You, my dear brother and sister, can have a much better condition
of health than you now enjoy, and can avoid very many ill turns, if
you will simply exercise temperance in all things—temperance in
labor, temperance in eating and drinking. Hot drinks are debilitating
to the stomach. Cheese should never be introduced into the stomach.
Fine-flour bread cannot impart to the system the nourishment that
you will find in the unbolted wheat bread. The common use of
bolted wheat bread cannot keep the system in a healthy condition.
You both have inactive livers. The use of fine flour aggravates the
difficulties under which you are laboring.
There is no treatment which can relieve you of your present
difficulties while you eat and drink as you do. You can do that
for yourselves which the most experienced physician can never do.
Regulate your diet. In order to gratify the taste, you frequently place
a severe tax upon your digestive organs by receiving into the stomach
food which is not the most healthful, and at times in immoderate
quantities. This wearies the stomach and unfits it for the reception
of even the most healthful food. You keep your stomachs constantly
debilitated because of your wrong habits of eating. Your food is
made too rich. It is not prepared in a simple, natural manner, but is
totally unfitted for the stomach when you have prepared it to suit
your taste. Nature is burdened, and endeavors to resist your efforts
to cripple her. Chills and fevers are the result of those attempts to
rid herself of the burden you lay upon her. You have to suffer the
penalty of nature’s violated laws. God has established laws in your
system which you cannot violate without suffering the punishment.
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You have consulted taste without reference to health. You have made
some changes, but have merely taken the first steps in reform diet.
God requires of us temperance in all things. “Whether therefore ye
eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God.”
Of all the families I am acquainted with, none need the benefit
of the health reform more than yours. You groan under pains and
prostrations which you cannot account for, and you try to submit
with as good a grace as you can, thinking affliction is your lot and