THE HARVEST OF DISEASE by David Paulson

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, Cal., Kansas City, and New York · Nov 29, 1899

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 25, Nos. 48, 49.

THE HARVEST OF DISEASE

By David Paulson

By David Paulson, M.D., of the American Medical Missionary College, Battle Creek, Mich.

WHAT shall the harvest be?" The question need no longer be raised in reference to disease, for the harvest of insanity, imbecility, epilepsy, tuberculosis, and premature death by other maladies, is being reaped before our eyes.

There came a time in the history of the wanderings of the children of Israel when, on account of their persistent violation of God's laws, both spiritual and physical, the Lord was forced to withdraw His restraining power from over the deadly serpents that infested the wilderness. Soon the dead and the dying were throughout the camp. Every individual was brought to decide what was to be his relation to God. Those who were willing to look in faith at the uplifted serpent lived; those who scorned to do so, died. It was a definite sifting time in the camp of Israel, and it revealed who were on the Lord's side and who were not.

It was only when God withdrew His Spirit that Israel began to appreciate the daily protection of God. But the things that happened to Israel were written for the admonition of those upon whom the ends of the world are come. 1 Cor. 10:11. We have again reached the time when God's restraining power is being withdrawn from the evils of earth, and for the same reason that He withdrew it from the camp of Israel. Humanity is again seeking to forget God. A child may enter the primary grade of school, grow up, and graduate from the university, and every step of his education may tend to foster in his mind the conviction that God has nothing to do with His handiwork nor with the affairs of man. Meanwhile the popular theology is educating him to look with distrust upon the Word that should speak to him in clear tones above all other voices.

While this is gradually taking place, sowing for disease has become almost a science. For if a definite and systematic plan should have been elaborated to produce disease in the shortest and most effective way it could not have been more successfully planned than what we now see. The highly-spiced and irritating foods pervert appetite. Perverted appetite craves unnatural foods. Unnatural foods produce poisons, which are absorbed into the blood, which lessen vitality, and which break down the barriers of natural resistance that nature has reared within us to ward off disease.

This whole system is bearing its legitimate fruit. One-third of all who die in the United States between the ages of fifteen and sixty die from tuberculosis. This disease alone is the cause of four and one-half more deaths than are caused by scarlet fever, smallpox, typhoid, and diphtheria combined. It is estimated that 500 persons die every day in this country from tuberculosis alone. There were 13,000 funerals resulting from this disease in the State of New York last year. It is estimated that there are 1,200,000 suffering from tuberculosis in the United States to-day, or practically one in fifty, the majority of whom, from human calculation, must go to their long home within a few months or years at best. The great plagues of antiquity bore no comparison whatever to these ravages, for they swept over the face of the earth like a tornado, weeded out the feeble and sickly ones, and humanity was given a respite again. But this modern plague knows no beginning or ending; its ravages increase as it gains momentum. Fifty years ago in England of every 127 deaths one was caused by cancer; now of every 22 deaths one is due to cancer; and Dr. Rosewell Park, the eminent American surgeon, predicts that if cancer shall continue its increase in the next ten years as it has in the last few years, it will compete with tuberculosis in its claims for victims.

THOU SHALT NOT BE AFRAID FOR THE TERROR BY NIGHT; NOR FOR THE ARROW THAT FLIETH BY DAY.

During the last fifty years insanity and imbecility have increased, as compared with the population, 300 per cent. The same is practically true of epilepsy and many other serious nervous diseases.

Sufferers from dyspepsia now comprise so large a portion of society that this disease is generally looked upon as a sort of necessary accompaniment to our modern civilization; and in a way this is certainly true; for it is the legitimate product of its unnatural conditions—the harvest of its seed-sowing. Yet the poisons absorbed from a dyspeptic's stomach are insidiously laying the foundation for Bright's disease, diabetes, rheumatism, and many other dread maladies, as well as degenerated arteries, which in so many instances sooner or later result in apoplexy. And as dyspepsia is becoming more and more common, so the names of these diseases are becoming household words in every community.

Cerebro-spinal meningitis in a most malignant form has already begun to cause the inhabitants of some of our fair American cities to flee from its ravages. Surely men's hearts are "failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth."

These diseases can not be quarantined nor shut out by the most rigid military inspection, any more than similar measures would have excluded the fiery serpents from the camp of Israel. The children of Israel had to make sure of such an experience that they were made superior to the effects of the serpents' sting. So to-day there must be voices crying to the people, "Turn ye, turn ye; for why will ye die?"

The divine principles of God's plans for us, both spiritually and physically, must be recognized and carried out in the life. This will necessitate a return to the simple habits of our forefathers, and then these misused bodies will feel the spring of a new life, which is untrammeled with vicious and health-destroying habits. The eyes of the people must be directed to the Man of Calvary; then they will receive such an endowment of self-control as will enable them to rise above and become master of the soul and body-destroying habits that are now imprisoning them with bands of iron.