p. 12 | DIVINE LAW IN DISEASE by David Paulson, M.D.

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 27, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, No. 39.

DIVINE LAW IN DISEASE.

By David Paulson, M.D.

IN these modern times we have been viewing disease from a different standpoint than it was formerly considered. Less than a hundred years ago a prominent physician said he would drive disease out of a patient as he would drive a squalling cat out of a room. His idea of disease was that it was a substance, an entity, which should be driven out of a man—and many speak in the same manner of disease even in these times. They seek for something that will stop the progress of disease and "drive it out."

A mother whose child is sick, asks the doctor if the disease is "driven out." The idea has become deeply rooted in our minds, perhaps we inherited it from our parents, that disease is something to fight; that nature goes wild when we come to sickness, and that we must use all our energies to combat disease.

That is a mistaken notion. We don't have to fight disease, nor even to cure disease.

What we should seek to do is to cure the patient, and then the disease will pass off as the scarf skin does off a healthy person.

Now the thing we call "disease" is simply an effort of nature to throw off something that we have brought upon ourselves through some error in diet or manner of life. Emerson has said that "crime and punishment grow upon the same stem," and that is a divine truth. He says that punishment is the fruit that ripens unsuspected within the flower of the pleasure that concealed it. Here is a flower; the fruit is within the flower; it has not ripened yet, but it will ripen; you do not see it; all you see is the flower. Likewise, here is a man who goes out to have a "good time," as he calls it. Here is another man who has dyspepsia; he eats heartily and toils early and late over his business; he works late at his books and accounts when he should be asleep; it is a pleasure to him to do this work; he feels that he must do it. Or another man goes to an ice-cream social; he thinks there is something good and pleasant in it; and there is a variety of other things that people do which they consider "nice," even if it is nothing but the smoking of a cigar after dinner. The results of these violations of nature's laws may not yet be seen; there is nothing in sight; but, as Emerson says, the punishment is in it. The effect is sure to follow the cause; for, as it is written, "He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption." Gal. 6:8.

The man who is sowing to unnatural, unlawful pleasure is, in his very act, heaping up wrath against himself. The disease that comes as the result of this manner of life is the kindest thing that nature can send. This may seem like an amazing statement, nevertheless it is true. We have so long looked upon disease as a thing to be dreaded, as a thing that we must fight, as an enemy, that it seems absurd to call it friendly.

A certain orator and lecturer has said that if he had the arrangement of the natural order of things he would make pain a pleasure. But he would not improve matters; for this would upset things terribly, as you can readily see; it would be destructive to life, because it would cease to be a warning. Pain is the kind warning, the red danger-signal that nature hangs out. Suppose when you were traveling, your train going rapidly down grade, that just before you came to some ravine or broken bridge or broken rail, you should see a red light waving before you, would it not disturb you? It would certainly disturb the engineer and the train hands. Was it not more kind to keep that signal waving than to take it away and let you go down to destruction?

Now this is exactly the purpose of pain; and yet men instinctively, when in pain, look upon it as an enemy and desire to smother it, regardless of the fact that it is the warning that nature hangs out against some other and deeper trouble. The engineer on the train might have shot the man with the signal lantern; the light would then have disappeared, and, without warning, the train would have rushed on. Then there would have been another "mysterious dispensation of Providence."

As a rule, the attempt is to smother nature's warnings. A man said to me the other day, "I must have something to relieve my pain." I said to him, "Can't you see that the very thing that would stop your pain would also stop the activities by which nature is trying to build up your body?" But he was not disposed to reason the matter with me. Men reason well upon nearly every subject except that of disease, and here it seems as if all their logic fails them.

DAVID PAULSON, M.D.