Beware! by A. C. Bourdeau

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 2, 1872

Beware!

By A. C. Bourdeau

I THOUGHT the other day, as I called on a sick man in J——, that it requires but little reflection and observation to convince reasoning minds that many physicians who prescribe drugs for the sick, are not only deceiving others, but are awfully deceived themselves. They are found as deep in the ditch as those who employ them, and thus evince that they are “blind leaders of the blind.” Mr. N. H——, who was sick, had a very sore throat. He breathed with great difficulty, could not swallow anything, and feared that he would choke to death. As Dr. ——, who had been sent for in great haste, was mixing and dealing out his powders, I inquired into Mr. H.’s habits of living. He had lived as people commonly do—had eaten largely of lard, butter, pork, beef, etc.; had recently addicted himself much more than formerly to smoking tobacco; one of his hands was bandaged, and was much swollen on account of a little scratch which had become a painful sore. I stated that he was scrofulous, and that doubtless the impurities of the blood had been greatly increased by his habits and mode of living; and I referred to the hygienic method of living as a much better way to preserve health and to treat disease. These principles were appreciated by the afflicted, but as I left the room, the doctor said that the elder was mistaken; that Mr. H. had no scrofula, had no impurities in his blood, and it was not injurious to any one, not even to infants, to eat lard, butter, and pork, or to use tobacco, tea, and coffee; for nearly all physicians use these things.

But what was the condition of this physician relative to his course of living and to his health? The facts were, that he not only had used largely, as many do, of the articles above mentioned, but he had addicted himself to the habitual use of morphine; hence the doctor was, in his appearance, very weak and delicate; in his movements, tremulous; in his utterance, like one just fainting away; and his eyes were a fit representation of one who is almost insensible to anything around him. Certainly he was a strange object to go about curing the sick! It is astonishing that any one would dare to risk his life in the hands of a man who is thus blindly cutting and whittling down his own life as fast as he can.

Only a few years ago, a Dr. Walker, in Bristol, Vt., was elected to represent his town in the State Legislature. At Montpelier, he got out of morphine, and went to the druggist’s after some, where the clerk, through mistake, handed him a bottle of strychnine. The doctor filled a small vial that he carried in his vest pocket, with the contents for his own use; and just before the morning session of the Legislature he took a dose on the point of his knife; but feeling a strange sensation, he said, “Am I mistaken?” and hastened to his valise, saw his mistake when it was too late, and cried out, “Gentlemen, I am a dead man,” and died in less than two minutes.

About two years ago, a celebrated physician was taken ill, and took a dose of medicine which caused his death in a few hours. Before he died, he said that he had dealt out just such a dose to the sick in hundreds of cases.

In the year 1868, I passed through a village east of the Green Mountains, where I saw what would well illustrate the result of drug medication. Over one door was the sign, “Dr. G. E. Lane,” and over the next door was another sign, “Ready-Made Coffins.”

Reader, beware! Avoid drugs. And let us see, and diligently learn for ourselves the laws of our being, and the application of those laws in the preservation of health and the treatment of disease. A. C. BOURDEAU.