CORRECTIVE VALUE OF SYMPTOMS.
By David Paulson, M.D.
DAVID recognized the reformatory value of disease in his own case when he exclaimed: "Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept Thy word." "It is good for me that I have been afflicted; that I might learn Thy statutes." Ps. 119:67, 71. Likewise many a man during disease comes to look upon many of the symptoms which appear, as in many ways corrective as well as curative. For instance, in morphinism: Patients who are afflicted with the morphine habit come to the doctors for treatment. They have taken the drug to smother the various pains of disease, and when they have succeeded, they imagine they have gotten ahead of nature; but in this they are mistaken. They must get rid of this habit, which, if persisted in, will bring them down to ruin. There is no royal road out of any disease; there is no way out except by coming into harmony with nature. The patient often says: "Is there not some way for me to get well without suffering pain?" "Don't you know of some institution where I can get over the morphine habit without any suffering?" And we can only assure such that it would be contrary to the established laws of nature; for there is no way of dodging nature; it is impossible for one to violate the laws of health without suffering some penalty. The most important point to consider is that if there were some way by which a man could get out of the morphine habit without suffering, then whenever he felt the pangs of pain he would as readily take the drug again, and it would bring him down just the same as before. But when a man has been rescued from that habit, he looks back to the pain and suffering which he endured, and as he remembers the horrible pit from which he has been digged, he has no desire to go back again and go over that road. When a child has put his hand on the stove, the pain which he experiences is so great that he does not wish to put it into the fire again; thus pain is corrective. So the symptoms of disease are both beneficial and corrective, and the thing to be done is to find out and remove the causes of the trouble, and thus cure the man,—we are to find out what nature is trying to do, and then assist nature in doing it.