Medicine by Joseph Clarke

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Sep 16, 1875

Medicine.

By Joseph Clarke

POSTED everywhere, on fences and bridges, on walls and trees, and sign posts, advertised in newspapers, and handbills, and almanacs, you will see every sort of medicine, for all sorts of diseases, for man and for beast.

The man of medical science patents his compound according to the known rules of chemistry, and his nicely wrapped bottles stand side by side with the unscientific compound of the ignorant quack, who, among the multitude of patent medicine venders, stands out as prominent as any; for who cares to investigate the matter if the compound sells well!

The shelves of the country apothecary are adorned from the floor to the ceiling with long rows of popular medicines, wrapped in showy papers, or inclosed in tawdry collored boxes or bottles, and these are sold by the hundred, or dozen, or singly, to a credulous public, who really believe that wonderful life-giving properties exist in those bottles, and boxes, and wrappers.

We will no longer wonder at the stupidity of the ancient pagans, who worshiped at druidical altars, or at the Median schools, where the future was divined from the flight of birds, or at the Roman priest, who carefully ascertained the will of the gods from the entrails of the victims slain at the pagan altars. No; the credibility and stupidity of modern society in swallowing unknown compounds of poisons with firm faith, not in Vishnoo, not in Jupiter or Venus, but, oh! horribly lower idolatry, with firmer faith, in mixtures of the most poisonous of poisons. And mankind, old and young, and horses, and cattle, and sheep, and fowl, all must be dosed with these infernal, poisonous compounds.

Jos. CLARKE.