A New Remedy for Nervous Prostration by Carl Theodore Wettstein

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Oct 30, 1913

A New Remedy for Nervous Prostration

By Carl Theodore Wettstein

CARL THEODORE WETTSTEIN

We all know, especially those who have experienced it, that nervous prostration is a terrible disease, which it takes a long time to cure. The writer had some experience with it, and he knows what it means to the patient and the family. It is therefore natural that he should have read in newspapers everything referring to this malady. Among the many articles which he read are three stories from reliable sources, which he found so interesting that he cut them out and preserved them in a scrap-book. As many persons are interested in this subject, we, for their benefit, herewith republish them, by no means, however, thereby insinuating that the immediate call for a physician is not the first duty to perform.

Dr. von Lauer, physician to William I, German emperor, said to a lady in the sanitarium at Gastein:—

“You cannot sleep because your thoughts do not allow you to sleep. They buzz through your head like insects. Therefore, you must concentrate your thoughts so that they are full of peace and harmony. Your wild and excited temperament must be immersed into another air. Therefore, I will give you a good remedy. Before you go to bed, two hours before midnight, read a chapter in the New Testament, slowly and attentively; then pray the Lord’s Prayer, close your eyes, and you will be able to sleep. You see, here in the mountains, at midnight, people gather wholesome medicinal herbs and dig for roots, because then the sap goes down, and the roots are full of it. So man must gather, before bedtime, his vital powers in the roots of his existence, and those can be found only in the good God and the Holy Scriptures.”

The Public Ledger recently published the following story:—

Some years ago a lady, who tells the story herself, went to consult a famous physician about her health. She was a woman of nervous temperament, whose troubles—and she had many—had worried and excited her to such a pitch that the strain threatened her physical strength, and even her reason. She gave the doctor a list of her symptoms, and answered the questions, only to be astonished at this brief prescription at the end: “Madame, what you need is to read your Bible more.” “But, Doctor,” began the bewildered patient. “Go home and read your Bible an hour a day,” the great man reiterated, with kindly authority. “Then come back to me a month from today.” And he bowed her out without a possibility of further protest.

At first his patient was inclined to be angry. Then she reflected that, at least, the prescription was not an expensive one. Besides, it certainly had been a long time since she had read the Bible regularly, she reflected with a pang of conscience. Worldly cares had crowded out her prayer and Bible study for years, and though she would have resented being called an irreligious woman, she had undoubtedly become a most careless Christian. She went home and set herself conscientiously to try the physician’s remedy.

In one month she went back to his office.

“Well,” he said, smiling as he looked at her face, “I see you are an obedient patient, and have taken my prescription faithfully. Do you feel as if you needed any other medicine now?”

“No, Doctor, I don’t,” she said honestly. “I feel like a different person. But how did you know that this was just what I needed?”

For answer, the famous physician turned to his desk. There, worn and marked, lay an open Bible. “Madame,” he said, with deep earnestness, “if I were to omit my daily reading of this Book, I should lose my greatest source of strength and skill. I never go to an operation without reading my Bible. I never attend a distressing case without finding help in its pages. Your case called not for medicine, but for sources of peace and strength outside your own mind, and I showed you my own prescription. I knew it would cure.”

“Yet I confess, Doctor,” said his patient, “that I came very near not taking it.”

“Very few are willing to try it, I find,” said the physician, smiling again. “But there are many, many cases in my practise where, if tried, it would work wonders.”

This is a true story. The physician has died, but his prescription remains. It will do no one any harm to try it.

Dr. Lemme, professor in Heidelberg University, said:—

“Innumerable sicknesses would lose their nourishment if there were more resignation to the will of God, more willingness to commend ourselves at all times to his care, and more cheerfulness to expect help and protection from him. I have experienced this. When, in my sickness, I did not know where I could find help, when I saw all supports breaking away, I prayed: ‘Lord, O God, not my will, but thine be done. If thou needest me yet here in thy service, so be it; and if thou callest me hence, I will come and commit all that is dear to my heart into thy hands.’ And, wonderful to say, from that hour I grew better, and I was soon able to take up my duties again. From this experience I have learned that if there were more faith in the world, there would be more health and less sickness. Many sufferings are nourished by our faint-heartedness, our lack of faith, our worries, and our dependence upon worldly things.”

This remedy is very cheap, and, certainly, it cannot do any harm to try it. Memorize a few verses from the twenty-third and one hundred and third psalms, the sermon on the mount, and that most beautiful chapter in the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians: “If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal,” etc. Rest assured, they will be a comfort to you in sleepless nights.—The Lutheran.