Basic HTML Version
86
Temperance
People need to be taught that drugs do not cure disease. It is true
that they sometimes afford present relief, and the patient appears to
recover as the result of their use; this is because nature has sufficient
vital force to expel the poison and to correct the conditions that cause
the disease. Health is recovered in spite of the drug. But in most
cases the drug only changes the form and location of the disease.
Often the effect of the poison seems to be overcome for a time, but
the results remain in the system, and work great harm at some later
period.—
The Ministry of Healing, 126
.
A Challenge to Conscientious Physicians
—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 ruinous
influence upon the temper, the physical and mental powers....
[87]
Right and correct habits, intelligently and perseveringly prac-
ticed, will be removing the cause for disease, and the strong drugs
need not be resorted to.—
Medical Ministry, 222
.
Study and Teach Laws of Preventive Medicine
—There is now
positive need even with physicians, reformers in the line of treatment
of disease, that greater painstaking effort be made to carry forward
and upward the work for themselves, and to interestedly instruct
those who look to them for medical skill to ascertain the cause of
their infirmities. They should call their attention in a special manner
to the laws which God has established, which cannot be violated
with impunity. They dwell much on the working of disease, but do
not, as a general rule, arouse the attention to the laws which must
be sacredly and intelligently obeyed, to prevent disease.—
Medical
Ministry, 223
.
Medicines Which Leave Injurious Effects
—God’s servants
should not administer medicines which they know will leave behind
injurious effects upon the system, even if they do relieve present
suffering. Every poisonous preparation in the vegetable and mineral
kingdoms, taken into the system, will leave its wretched influence,