p. 14 | The Mind in Sickness

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · Nov 11, 1875

The Mind in Sickness.

In whatever state the mind is, in almost every case the health will be in a corresponding condition. If the mind is depressed, the body will be ailing. On the contrary it is almost invariably the case that a jovial person is remarkably free from ills. The mind is the best curative agency in sickness; not that it is warranted to be a specific cure in all cases, but the pharmacologist can prepare no medicine that is susceptible of such a variety of uses as this is.

Physicians prescribe travel and sanitaria. They send one man to Minnesota and another to Brazil, and the temperament of the man is not taken into account. If a man can be fully impressed that in a certain country and under those climatic influences he will be almost entirely exempt from the pains that are now racking his frame, and if he succeeds in getting to that place without having his opinion refuted, he will, ninety-nine times in a hundred, have those glorious expectations realized; on the contrary, if you can succeed in getting just the opposite opinion thoroughly impressed on his mind, the most invigorating climate under the broad heavens will work no desirable changes in his condition, even if he should tarry there half of fourscore years and ten.

We will make another statement, and think it will stand the test of a trial. Take a healthy person possessing a nervous temperament; let five of his most esteemed friends separately and seriously tell him daily for one week that his health is failing, the bloom on his cheek is departing, the vigor of his youth is wasting away, and already the seeds of his final disease are being sown in his constitution, and he will soon commence to be alarmed concerning his condition; once alarmed, he begins to waste away, till the idea is eradicated from his mind, or death is the result.

From these uncolored pictures it will be seen that we can almost entirely will sickness or health. That we can, by control of the will, but disregarding the sanitary laws, be free from illness, I do not assert; but observing these, and keeping the mind properly directed, no person can fail to add ten years to his life. If you are an invalid, arrange your life so that you can enjoy it, and you can do it by being restful and happy. Wherever you go, you are not benefited by a climate when you stay one hour in a place that is not enjoyable to you.

Whatever is true of the health is true of happiness. We can be happy and materially advance the comfort of those around us if we so incline, or we can bring just the opposite upon us and others. If our business amuses us, and we are succeeding, and we can keep our tempers happy, then we can spurn the offer of medicine. On the other hand, if we have a distasteful business and have not the will or the power to adapt ourselves to it, then we are an excellent subject for pity. If we look on the dark side of every obstacle and search not for the other, then we are more deserving subjects for sympathy.