Good Health by Raymond F. Cottrell

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Nov 27, 1879

Good Health.

By Raymond F. Cottrell

Trust in Treatment.

If I understand aright the principles of the true, hygienic system, the natural laws which God has established in the living being are all that we have to rely on for health, or for recovery from sickness or disease. The treatment which is recommended can do nothing more for the patient than to place him in the most favorable circumstances for nature to work unobstructed.

But people have become so accustomed to depend on foreign, or outside agencies for recovery from disease, that it is very difficult to get the idea entirely eradicated from the mind. The eagerness with which people have been wont to seek for something to swallow in case of sickness, and the consternation manifested when one is terribly sick and has "nothing to take," would be truly amusing but that it is too serious a subject to be treated with levity. And many who have adopted hygienic treatment, instead of drug medication, are slow to drop the idea, so long entertained, of doing that by treatment which nature alone can do. Eager to get rid of some chronic disorder in haste, they constantly have the mind occupied with it, and ply the proper treatment to excess, as if abundance of treatment would hasten a cure.

It is treatment, treatment, treatment, instead of waiting with patience for nature to do the work, after we have, as far as we are able, supplied the proper conditions. This, as I view it, is almost as great an error as to think that drugs can do nature's work. It would be much better, after a moderate amount of hygienic treatment, to quietly wait and trust in God and the natural laws which he has established. Be easy when you have done the best you can. This is much better than to trust in treatment, even of a proper kind, when administered without due moderation. - R. F. Cottrell.