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The Ministry of Health and Healing
easily overcome by temptation. Physicians can help these souls
only as they reveal in their own lives a strength of principle that
enables them to triumph over every injurious habit and defiling lust.
Their lives must reveal the working of a power that is divine. If they
fail here, however forcible or persuasive their words may be, their
influence will tell for evil.
Multitudes seek medical advice and treatment who have become
moral wrecks through their own wrong habits. They are bruised
and weak and wounded, feeling their folly and their inability to
overcome. Such ones should have nothing in their surroundings to
encourage a continuance of the thoughts and feelings that have made
them what they are. They need to breathe an atmosphere of purity, of
high and noble thought. How terrible the responsibility when those
who should give them a right example are themselves enthralled by
hurtful habits, their influence giving added strength to temptation!
Physicians and the Temperance Work
Many come under physicians’ care who are ruining soul and
body by the use of tobacco or intoxicating drink. Physicians who
are true to their responsibility must point out to these patients the
cause of their suffering. But if they themselves are users of tobacco
or intoxicants, what weight will be given to their words? With the
consciousness of their own indulgence in mind, will they not hesitate
to point out the plague spot in the life of their patients? While using
these things themselves, how can they convince the youth of their
injurious effects?
How can physicians stand in the community as examples of
purity and self-control, how can they be effectual workers in the
temperance cause, while they themselves are indulging a vile habit?
How can they minister acceptably at the bedside of the sick and
the dying when their very breath is offensive, smelling of liquor or
tobacco?
With disordered nerves and a brain clouded by the use of narcotic
poisons, how can one be true to the trust placed in him or her as a
skillful physician? How impossible for such a one to comprehend
quickly or act swiftly with precision!