p. 589 | Health and Temperance

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 23, 1886

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 12, No. 37.

Health and Temperance.

Hereditary Diseases.

It is not difficult for well people to injure their health. Many well people could be sick if they did just as the sick people do; and many sick people would recover if they would do what well people do. Persons inherit from their parents various types of weakness and disease, and they often also inherit stubbornness, indifference, self-sufficiency, and unteachableness; and that by doing the same things that their parents did, refusing counsel, despising reproof, and sticking to old ways, they suffer the same diseases which they suffered. A little hereditary common sense and a willingness to be instructed and directed, would do away with many of the hereditary diseases of the present day. Persons make themselves sick by gluttony, imprudence, and by bad methods of eating, drinking, and dressing; and after having afflicted themselves with innumerable pains and miseries, seem to solace themselves with the thought that their parents suffered just as they did, and that their infirmities are “hereditary” and therefore unavoidable.

The children of consumptive parents are quite likely to have consumption, provided they do just as their consumptive parents did, but if they have sense enough to take counsel from other parents who are not consumptive, they will be quite likely to escape the scourge. And if persons, instead of sitting down contented under their miseries and saying, “This disease was inherited, as it was always in my family,” would sit down and think, “What did my father and mother do to bring this disease upon themselves and me?” and having found the answer to this question, would learn to avoid these evils and errors, we should hear much less about hereditary diseases, and many people who are groping their way along the paths of pain and misery which their parents trod, would turn their faces toward life and health, and conclude to live their own lives as wisely and as well as possible, and avoid the hereditary miseries which vexed their parents and which vex other people who do as their parents did.—Safeguard.