PAIN-KILLERS by John Harvey Kellogg

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 19, 1900

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 26, No. 38.

"PAIN-KILLERS."

By John Harvey Kellogg

THE New York World, in commenting upon the International Medical Congress, that has been convened in connection with the Paris Exposition, says:—

"For the laymen, certainly the most interesting, and perhaps the most directly important part of the work of the congress was the papers and discussions upon the indiscriminate use of all manner of nerve and digestion stimulants.

"Nowadays when a man gets that heavy ache in the pit of the stomach, he hastens off for a pill or a tablet, swallows it or them, and, finding the pain gone, congratulates himself upon being 'cured.' Or he gets a headache, and at once pours into his system a round dose of phenacetin, anti-kamnia, or some such drug. The headache disappears, he thinks he is 'well,' and tells all his friends what to do in case of headache.

"What has happened in reality? The disease has not been benefited, may even have been aggravated, for the drug may have weakened nature's recuperative powers. The man has simply smothered the pain—the friendly voice that was warning him of an internal insurrection that was aiming to unseat health from its throne.

"With the enormously-increased facilities for obtaining and using drugs, and in the prevailing ignorance as to their effects, sanitary science is having a hard task in trying to force down the ratios of sickness and mortality."

It is gratifying to see how leading men in connection with the scientific world are coming to acknowledge the evil effects of drugging. Drugs at their best are poisonous, and the very least quantity of them that is taken into the system the better. God has provided us with wonderful recuperative powers through what we call "nature," and if we would study our physical needs with one-half the care that we study how to please the palate, we would soon learn what would be injurious to our health, and, leaving these things off, would find no occasion to resort to drugs. Those who are wasting their vital forces through dosing with all sorts of patent medicines, as well as drugs in general, should pay careful heed to what these men representing the highest medical skill of the world are saying to us concerning the evil effects of drugs.