Health and Temperance by John Ellis, M. D.

International Tract and Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Sep 30, 1889

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 15, No. 38.

Health and Temperance.

By John Ellis, M. D.

EVILS OF IMPROPER EATING.

DISREGARDING the legitimate use for which he should eat and drink—that is, that he shall eat and drink to build up a healthy body, or to live—man has perverted this department of his being, or has come to live to eat and drink for pleasure rather than for health, and to make the attainment of such gratifications one of the chief objects of his life; and not satisfied with plain, wholesome, nourishing food, he seeks out those substances which stimulate his perverted passions. As a result, gluttony and drunkenness cover the land, and degrade man, the noblest work of God, beneath the brute; for he sacrifices, to gratify his unhallowed cravings, his freedom, and becomes an abject slave to his appetite; his rationality, and becomes a fool; and even his instincts, and thereby sinks himself beneath the brute, at least for the time being.

A large share of the diseases, which the physician is called to treat, have their origin in the perversion of the appetites by which man's body is nourished and sustained. We see then, that directly or indirectly, diseases are but an effect of the evils in the heart of man; and these evils are a perversion of God-given faculties and appetite; not always with the individual suffering, for diseases are sometimes transmitted from parents to offspring; and a tendency to diseases similar to those which have afflicted parents, is generally transmitted to their offspring. The child has thus to suffer physical consequences which result from the evils of his parents. So the child inherits a tendency to the predominant spiritual evils of his parents; but this inheritance is not his fault, and he only becomes evil when he voluntarily does evil, or that which he knows to be wrong himself. If the hereditary inclination to do evil is so strong that the child or man cannot avoid acting it out, or doing evil, and therefore he is not in freedom to do or not to do, he is either insane or a fool, and not responsible for his acts.—John Ellis, M. D.