Improper Eating a Cause of Disease
409
prayerfully hope that, as a physician, you will not forever be blind on
this subject, for blindness is mingled with a want of moral courage to
deny our appetite, to lift the cross, which means take up the very duties
which cut across the natural passions. Feeding on flesh, the juices
and fluids of what you eat pass into the circulation of your blood, and,
as we are composed of what we eat, we become animalized; thus a
feverish condition is created, because the animals are diseased, and
by partaking of their flesh we plant the seeds of disease in our own
tissues and blood. Then when exposed to the changes in a malarious
atmosphere these are more sensibly felt, also when we are exposed
to prevailing epidemics and contagious diseases the system is not in
condition to resist the disease.
I have had the subject presented to me in different aspects. The
mortality caused by meat eating is not discerned; if it were we would
hear no more arguments and excuses in favor of the indulgence of
the appetite for dead flesh. We have plenty of good things to satisfy
hunger without bringing corpses upon our table to compose our bill of
fare.
Testimonies for the Church 2:61-63
The eating of flesh-meats has made a poor quality of blood and
flesh. Your systems are in a state of inflammation, prepared to take on
disease. You are liable to acute attacks of disease, and to sudden death,
because you do not possess the strength of constitution to rally and
resist disease. There will come a time when the strength and health
you have flattered yourself you possessed will prove to be weakness....
Sister H is a woman whose blood is corrupt. Her system is full of
scrofulous humors from the eating of flesh-meats. The use of swine’s
flesh in your family has imparted a bad quality of blood. Sister H needs
to confine herself strictly to a diet of grains, fruits, and vegetables,
cooked without flesh or grease of any kind. It will take quite a length
of time of strictly healthful diet to place you in better conditions of
health, where you will be rightly related to life. It is impossible for
those who make free use of flesh-meats to have an unclouded brain
and an active intellect.