Relation of Morality to Health — The Use and the Need of the Will — Painstaking Effort Required
By DAVID PAULSON, M. D.
Medical Superintendent Hinsdale Sanitarium, Hinsdale, Illinois
I never walk across that wonderful bridge but I think of its heroic builder, and feel inspired to do more with the health, strength, and opportunities that God has so bountifully entrusted to me.
SOME years ago an eminent European physician declared that there were but few natural deaths. Life is generally cut short by wholly avoidable causes.
Dr. Gould, formerly president of the American Medical Association, author of our great medical dictionary, said in a paper read before the Wisconsin State Medical Society:
MAN'S SIN AND THE DEATH-RATE
"We know how to lengthen the average of human life by many years, with an appropriate reduction of all the suffering and expense, but we are powerless to do it because simply of sin. There is no doubt that sin alone prevents a reduction of the death-rate and sickness by one half, and a lengthening of life to fifty or sixty years. . . . We can never cure a much greater proportion of the sick until we have better bodies and souls in the patients."
SCIENCE HAS OUTRUN MORALITY
Dr. Gould, in this same paper, uttered these remarkable words: "Science, it is plain, has outrun morality."
When I was a medical student in the University of Michigan, I heard a well-known professor deliver a masterly address on the evils of tobacco. He vividly portrayed its effect on the human system, its baneful influence in the shortening and narrowing of human life, but at the close of this illuminating instruction he said, "Summing it all up, I would not give a cent for a young fellow who could not smoke a good cigar." And taking one from his pocket, he lighted it, and walked off the platform smoking it in the presence of them all, and the students naturally applauded him most vigorously.
During the great antislavery agitation, Charles Sumner stood up one day in the halls of Congress, and said: "I desire to speak to-day of some laws greater than any passed in this capital or this country, older than America, older than India. I mean the laws of God."
THE LAWS OF HEALTH ARE THE LAWS OF GOD
We shall make but little more progress in this campaign for better health, temperance reform, and community welfare, until our souls are gripped with the great truth that the laws of health are the laws of God, and that sickness and suffering are directly or indirectly due to the violation of those laws, that ill health does not run down ready-made from heaven, that we make ourselves sick, that "My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge." Hosea 4:6.
When the driver of an automobile exceeds the prescribed speed limit, he is liable to arrest. Likewise nature arrests by sickness, suffering, and premature death those who exceed her speed limit. To have health restored and to remain permanently well, it is not enough to smother a few symptoms — in other words, to pick at the leaves. The ax must be laid at the root of the tree. Matt. 3:10. It is necessary not only to acquire but to practise certain essential health requirements.
COULD GET WELL IF THEY WOULD
Surprising as it may seem, in every community there are a number of sick people who could get well if they only would. The earnest determination to recover is an important factor in the cure of almost any disease.
Some years ago I had a patient under my care who to all human appearances was incurable. But he was determined to get well; and he recovered, and as far as I know is alive to-day. His determination undoubtedly did much toward saving him from an untimely grave. No one can predict in advance what obstacles a determined, persistent will can surmount.
This is of particular importance to the Christian invalid, who, when he finds his own will faltering and insufficient, can read in his Bible that God is willing to come in, brace him up, and work through him "both to will and to do." Phil. 2:13.
PARALYZED, BUT STILL A POWER
The engineer who built the first Brooklyn bridge, met with an accident, in the early stages of the work, that practically crippled the lower part of his body. But instead of settling down whimpering and whining over his disaster, and employing a nurse to fan him and bless him, he determinedly stuck to his job, and completed that great enterprise. I never walk across that wonderful bridge but I think of its heroic builder, and feel inspired to do more with the health, strength, and opportunities that God has so bountifully entrusted to me.
GOD MEETS US MORE THAN HALF WAY
It is a tremendous stimulus to our wills to remember that in our struggle for health God is willing to meet us more than half way, for it is marvelous what nature is willing to do for us in the restoration of life.
In my early medical experience, I saw a surgeon perform an extensive abdominal operation. In closing up the wound, he did not make the two sides match, so he had to take in a tuck. I said to myself: "What a horrible looking thing that is going to be! How fortunate it will be covered with clothes!"
A few weeks later I had the opportunity to see the final results. To my surprise nature had completely corrected the surgeon's blunder. That is what nature is constantly doing with our blunders and mistakes. If it were not for that, I fear our life's work would present a sad showing.
TROUBLESOME EFFORT TO GET WELL
It is too much trouble for some people to get well, and that is the only reason they do not recover. Surprising as the statement may seem, there are many who prefer to die comfortably.
Genuine old-fashioned repentance was always a painful process. People had to confess their sins, and go to their neighbors and make right their wrong-doing, before they could be right with God. Some of the modern revivals seem to have a new and more comfortable kind of repentance. All that is really necessary is to sign your name to a card and pass it in to the leader. It is so much more convenient than the old method.
NATURE INSISTS ON REFORM
But nature has devised no new and comfortable method for health restoration. She insists on genuine reform, sometimes painful reform. There are many people who prefer to keep on sinning, swallow a few drugs to keep them comfortable, die years before God intended, and have it said at their funeral, by some ill advised and poorly instructed minister, that it was "a mysterious dispensation of providence."
When I was completing my medical studies in Bellevue Hospital, New York, the pugilist Fitzsimmons was preparing himself for a great prize-fight. He ran around Central Park every morning to improve his "wind." But one rarely finds any preacher, lawyer, or business man who will do anything so inconvenient to improve his health.
