The Best Physicians by R. F. Cottrell

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

The Best Physicians.

By R. F. Cottrell

ALL physicians give fewer drugs than formerly, and have greater faith in the curative powers of nature and good nursing. A French physician gave good advice to his medical friends.

As the celebrated physician Desmoulins lay on his death-bed, he was visited by the most distinguished medical men of Paris, as well as other prominent citizens of the metropolis. Great were the lamentations of all at the loss to be sustained by the profession, in the death of one they regarded as its greatest ornament. But Desmoulins assured his brother practitioners he left behind him three physicians much greater than himself. Each of the doctors, hoping his own name would be called, inquired anxiously who would be sufficiently illustrious to surpass the immortal Desmoulins. With great distinctness the dying man answered: “Their names are Water, Exercise, and Diet. Call in the services of the first freely, of the second regularly, and of the third moderately. Follow this advice and you may be well without my aid. Living, I could do nothing without them; and dying, I shall not be missed if you make friends of these, my faithful coadjutors.”—Youth’s Companion.

If physicians have lost their faith in drugs, why not abandon them, and tell the deluded people frankly that all the curative powers are to be found in nature; and that the sick must depend wholly upon God and nature, with good nursing?

R. F. COTTRELL.