HOW TO BE SICK | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Jan 21, 1902

HOW TO BE SICK.

We’ve read how we ought to keep healthy, Enough a large volume to fill; I now will present a new subject, By telling you how to be ill; Never bathe in a drop of cold water, For fear it may make you take cold By loosening the shell which incrusts you, And make you feel stiffened and old.

Eat plenty of pork in hot weather, And vegetables swimming with grease; Of soda and biscuits and pastry Eat freely as much as you please. If one should suggest that ’tis hurtful, Treat all such advice with a sneer, Just tell them you work for a living, You’ll have it, too, while you stay here.

If it brings on a pain in your stomach, Procure some fine-cut and a pipe,— Tobacco is good for dyspepsia,— Then use it from morning till night. And now and then drink some drugged liquor, Nor mind if teetotalers scold, ’Twill drive out the heat in the summer, In winter ’twill keep out the cold.

Keep storming or scolding at trifles, No matter where blame may belong; All accidents lay onto some one, Though no one but you may be wrong; And never take time from your labors To rest either body or mind, For fear you may lose a few dollars, Or fortune may falter behind.

When nature can hold out no longer, But sinks ’neath a pressure of ills, Then add some more weight to her burden By taking a potion or pills. If then she refuses to labor, Why, just let a doctor prescribe; He’ll add to your system more poisons, And charge you a round sum beside.

Do this till you have to give under, And nature is worn to the quick, Then at kind Providence murmur, And wonder why ’tis you are sick. Search almanac, pamphlet, and paper, Take every quack nostrum you find, And thus, in the prime of your manhood, You’ll ruin both body and mind.

Your thoughts will whirl in confusion, Your form with disease will be bowed, And thus, e’er your days are half numbered, You’ll need both a coffin and shroud. Your neighbors will gather around you, And wonder why death thus should come; They’ll call it a “sad dispensation,” And lay you away in the tomb. — Selected.