Health Department by Dudley Marvin Canright

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, Cal. · Sep 9, 1875

Health Department.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." 3 John 2.

Of What Material Are you Made?

Reader, of what kind of material is your body made? Do you not think this an important inquiry? Suppose you are to hire a house built; would you not think it an important part of the bargain to specify of what kind of material it must be made? Would you not care whether the builder used soft bass-wood, rotten, shaky oak, poor pine, good pine, sound black walnut, or hard, fine-grained maple? Certainly you would. There would be a vast difference in the strength, and durability, and worth of your house, according to the material used. If you put in poor material, you might putty it, and paint it, and varnish it, so that it would look very fine for a short time; but it would be a poor house still and would soon fail you.

If, then, it is important that we use good, sound material in building a wooden house, how much more important that we use the best of material in building the house of our bodies. I have a body weighing one hundred and forty-two pounds. Some thirty years ago, it weighed only six pounds. Of what kind of material, then, is the additional one hundred and thirty-six pounds composed? Of course it is made up of the material which I have been putting in there for the last thirty years through the organs of my mouth and stomach. Can any one be so foolish as to think that the nature of the material I have been daily using to build up my body makes no difference in the strength and durability of that body? When a carpenter can make a strong, durable house out of rotten wood and putty, then can the stomach build up a sound, strong, healthy body out of poor food.

As simple as this fact is, thousands of people never stop to think of it. They eat and drink as though the nature of their food had not the remotest connection with the strength and health of their bodies. They will swallow diseased meat, fine flour, from which nearly all the life has been ground out, poisonous tobacco and tea; then when the poor flesh made out of this miserable material begins to give way, they go to puttying, painting, and varnishing it up with drugs, pills, and patent medicines! Then if they die prematurely, it is a mysterious dispensation of Providence! For shame! Friends let us wake up, open our eyes, and examine the food we eat, the material with which we are daily building these bodies of ours.

Look around the world a moment. Who are the strong men, the active men, the business men, the great men—the bone and sinew of society? With few exceptions, they are those who have been raised in poverty, fed on corn bread and potatoes, and had plenty of fresh air, and the free sunshine. But what becomes of the children of the wealthy, those raised in luxury, fed on pies and cakes, rich food, tea and coffee, and shut up in tight rooms, and kept away from the fresh air? The vast majority of them sink below the common level, drag out a life of aches, pains, and pills, and go down to an untimely grave. They were not made of good material. They could not stand the rough and tumble, the storms of life. Others better and stronger made, rose up, pushed them aside, and took their places. Reader, what kind of material are you building with? How are you preparing your children for the storms of life?

D. M. Canright.