Review and Herald, Vol. 21, No. 12.
Diptheria, its Causes, Treatment and CurePage 1
Diptheria, its Causes, Treatment and Cure
By James C. Jackson, M. D.
[We give the following on the causes and cure of diptheria, from Dr. James C. Jackson of Dansville, N. Y., out of a sense of duty to our readers. Diptheria is making dreadful ravages in our land. It is a much-dreaded disease, because physicians so often fail to cure it. If it can be cured by the simple prescription of Dr. Jackson, found in the following article, it is important that the fact should be known. Having a good degree of confidence in his manner of treating diseases, and having tried his prescription on two of our children who were suddenly and severely attacked with sore throat, hoarseness so that they were unable to speak, and high fever, with perfect success, we decided to give the entire article.] [We would also add that in the absence of the parents, Mrs. W. was called in the evening to see the eldest child of Eld. M. Hull, about six years old. The child was severely attacked as our children had been. This form of disease has been common and quite fatal in this city of late. Mrs. W. pursued the same course of treatment as with our own children, and the child appeared well the next morning.—Ed.] Diptheria, its Causes, Treatment and Cure.
BY JAMES C. JACKSON, M. D. MY DEAR SIR: INASMUCH as I have not been able, in compliance with the invitation you gave me to visit Penn Yan and present to the consideration of your citizens my views in regard to diptheria, I take the liberty to address to you this letter. I am prompted to do so all the more for the reason that this is the time of year when the disease recurs and commences its slaughter. Its name is derived from two Greek words, signifying a membrane. The name was given by M. Brettonneau to a class of diseases which are characterized by a tendency to the formation of false membranes, and affect the mucus membranes and sometimes the skin. It is not a contagious, nor an infectious disease, but only epidemic. The causes that produce it are of two classes: First. The Predisposing, or those which operate to fit the organism to take on such abnormal conditions as are indicated by the disease. Second. The Proximate, or those which immediately operate to produce these conditions. The predisposing causes are to be found in the general habits of life common to the people of our country. Till attention is called to it, thinking persons are not aware how uniformly and strikingly similar the habits of all children are. As for instance, in the sphere of dietetics, almost all children eat the same kind of food, prepared in nearly the same ways. Culinary preparations, at the beginning of the autumnal season, and so on through the winter and spring, partake largely of oleaginous materials. Butter is one of these, and is used largely; fat pork is another, and lard another. So also sugar or syrup is used largely, and so, as a condiment, is common salt. Now with grains, vegetables and fruits as a base for our foods, with butter and lard intermixed, and fresh-meats, as staple articles of diet, together with narcotic beverages, in more or less use, the conditions of the blood, of the fleshy tissues, and of the nervous system of children are such as greatly to predispose them, under circumstances unfavorable to health, to take on disease of the mucous membrane. Add to these predisposing influences those which grow out of confinement in school rooms, where the occupants are compelled for hours to sit upon benches and study while the air which they breathe is quite impure, or if not so, is of such a temperature that the stratum in which their feet are bathed, is from five to ten degrees lower than that which envelops their head, and you have another predisposing cause to the production of this disease. To this add another in dress, and you have efficient cause enough to predispose the bodies of such persons to take on the disease. Consider with me now the proximate causes. These may be regarded in the main as two: First, Sudden and great changes in the degree of temperature of the atmosphere. Second, Suppression therefrom of the circulation of the blood on the external surface of the body, and the forcing of it thereby violently upon the internal skin, or, as it is called, the mucous membrane, thus inducing severe congestion of the throat, in the case of such persons, as by the operation of the predisposing causes before alluded to, have had their vital resistance weakened, and so are specially fitted to take on such congestion. Under the general habits of living common to our adult and child population therefore, and the imperfect action of the inherent forces of the living organism, in the department of the circulation of the skin, together with the sudden changes of temperature common to our climate, in the autumnal, winter and spring seasons of the year, are to be found the efficient causes for the existence of this disease. It is a curious fact which statistics most certainly show, that of adult persons or children, who take the disease, females, as compared with males, in the best ratio rank as two in three, and in the worst ratio they rank as three in four. Thus, under the most favorable view, two-thirds of the persons attacked are females, and under the most unfavorable view, three-fourths are females. It is easy to account for this from two simple considerations: First, In the case of adult females, women eat nearly as much carbonaceous material for food, as men, yet they live so as to get very much less pure, and very much more impure air than men. As a consequence their blood becomes less perfectly aerated, or oxygenated, as it is termed. From want of aeration it becomes foul, its constituents being made up largely of materials which have been separated from the solid tissue, and received into the blood with a view of being passed off through the various alimentary departments, which are the lungs, the bowels, the kidneys and the skin. Not being carried off as they should be, they become acrid and poisonous. When under sudden changes of the temperature, therefore, the blood is forced from the capillary blood vessels of the skin, back upon the capillary vessels of the mucous membrane, the impurities in the blood become a source of irritation and inflammation. In the case of children, the dress of girls may account for their preponderance in numbers of those who take the disease. Has your attention ever been directed to the unhealthy way in which for the most part parents dress their girls, especially during the colder seasons of the year? A boy has thick covering for his feet and legs in the shape of high-topped boots, with thick soles, and woolen stockings, and a pair of pantaloons coming over his boots down to the ankle. A girl has a pair of calf-skin booties, with stockings, a pair of pantaloons coming a little below the knees, together with a short skirt, which serves no other purpose in the world save to hide her nakedness, but that of so arranging the lower portion of her body as to bathe it continually in air, which, if of low temperature, must necessarily produce constant and uninterrupted chilliness of the surface. As an illustration of the truth of this view, one has but to carry an umbrella over his head when currents of cold air exist, to find how much sooner, with the umbrella, the upper part of the body becomes chilled, than if he did not have it. Now, thus to chill the lower extremities from want of proper clothing, and by means of the ill adaptation of such clothing as the girls wear, is to force the circulation to the upper portions of the body, and, when the temperature is cold, to drive the blood from the external surface of the upper extremities to their internal surfaces, thus producing the congestions which are termed diptheriite. What then is diptheria? It is a disease of the mucous membrane of the throat and air passages, caused by their sudden inflammation. So far it is like croup, and simulates common influenza, as this is often seen in its incipient stages. The points of difference between these diseases and diptheria are frequently noticeable in their incipient stages, but become more obvious in their advanced stages, through the more complicated conditions in diptheria, than in croup, influenza, or scarlet fever. Persons taken with croup, nine times out of ten show like symptoms; so they do in cases of influenza and scarlet fever. In croup, especially may the disease be said to be local, scarcely dependent upon any general derangement of the organism. Children may be, to all appearance very healthy and almost instantaneously show croup symptoms. Influenza is almost always preceded by headache. In scarlet fever, a child, as a condition precedent to any exhibition of difficulty of the throat, in a majority of instances, shows disturbed conditions of digestion. I have never seen one taken down with scarlet fever, who, as a condition precedent to its unmistakable manifestation, did not show more or less irritation of the digestive organs, for some time previous. The complications of diptheria are as numerous and as varied as the persons attacked by it, and they differ very much by reason of the temperament, age, special conditions of sex at the time of being taken down, &c. I have seen persons, both children and adults attacked with diptheria, exhibit some or other of the following symptoms: Very sudden vertigo, with blindness; very sudden nausea, with vomiting; very sudden ringing in the ears with deafness; excessive palpitation of the heart, with great faintness; the most violent neuralgic pains in the lower portions of the legs, especially in the heels; sudden and unconquerable desire for stool90with diarrheic flow; violent pain in the bladder, with great difficulty of making water; irregular, painful and sudden menstruation; chills as severe as those in the chilled state of fever and ague; great mental irritability, producing mental excitement without cause, in some cases indicating great fearfulness, in others an audacity unusual, amounting in a few instances to temporary aberration of mind, in other cases exhibiting immoderate and excessive laughter; very difficult and painful respiration, in some cases amounting in severity to the worst cases of asthma,—in all such instances, however, these varied symptoms last but a little while, and pass away, to be followed by peculiar conditions of inflammation of the throat and air passages, now known to be the unmistakable exhibitions of diptheria. Now no such varied introductory exhibitions of morbid conditions has it been my lot to witness in connection with any other disease. For the most part the symptoms of any disease are, with slight modifications, the same in all persons. Scarlet fever, croup, bilious colic, fever and ague, typhoid fever, whooping cough, yellow fever, acute dyspepsia, inflammatory rheumatism, inflammation of the bowels, dysentery, and so on, show so nearly in all persons, the same morbid conditions, as to enable physicians of any experience to determine almost instantly, when brought within the range of observation, what the matter is with the person or persons affected. But so far as my experience has gone, the introductory stages of diptheria are quite likely to be different in different persons. Thus, out of the great number of adults whom I have treated, I might specify the following: A German hired girl, at work in my family, was taken with sudden blindness and vertigo, and fell to the floor. In thirty minutes the symptoms of diptheria were unmistakable. A German hired man who had not been sick in ten years, to any great disservice, upon splitting wood, and stooping over to pick up a stick, was taken with such violent congestion of the lungs as with great difficulty to breathe. In half an hour diptheria was most manifest. A gentleman sustaining intimate business relations to me, and a member of my family, was taken all of a sudden with violent coughing. In a very little time the diptheric symptoms were in full exhibition. A woman cleaning house for me, was taken with violent pains in her heels, and in a little time showed particular affection of the throat. Children whom I have treated have been attacked with a great variety of morbid conditions; some complaining of darting, sharp pains in the eyes, some ringing in the ears, some of pains in the bowels, others of chills running up and down their backbones, pains in the legs, and so on. My treatment of this disease began years ago. At the outset I had in my own mind no very clear explanation to offer of the causes of the disease, and therefore I could not satisfy myself as to its nature. However, as the unsuccessful results of the course then pursued by physicians of the Allopathic school, and in view of their want of success I pursued a course of treatment converse to theirs. They seemed desirous to produce relief by increased action of the mucous tissue of the stomach and bowels. Some of them therefore gave emetics, but most of them gave cathartics. As most of their patients died I saw no use in pursuing that course, so I turned my attention to the external skin, and sought to produce changes in the circulation of that structure, hoping thereby to produce the desired end. I know of but few men who have treated so many cases of diptheria, as my associates at Our Home, and myself. We have never yet lost a case. We have been the means of saving many persons who were considered to be in advanced stages of the disease, and many more who, having taken the disease, passed under our care in its incipient stages, and were saved, though they were members of families wherein from two to five persons had previously died under the drug-medicating plan of treatment. Our success has been so great, while as yet our plan of treatment has been so simple, as really to introduce a decided change in the medical practice in this particular disease, in this locality. I do not know of a physician of any school in this town, who has not practically abandoned the administration of cathartics in cases of diptheria, and with such modifications of our plan of treatment as his own individuality would naturally prompt him to make, adopted in fact our method. The result has been that, whereas great numbers of persons, four years ago, died of the disease in this town, and whose deaths caused a real panic among the people, the disease has become no more to be feared than any other morbid condition of body common to our people. Owing to our residence here, and as the result of our teachings on the subject of health or to some silent influence affecting the views of the people of this town, there is much more care given to the conditions of living of children, especially in the cold season of the year than formerly. This of itself, in my judgment, is a very great security, for it stands to reason that if one can manage the predisposing causes he need not fear the proximate causes of disease. The best course to be pursued in any family, or any community, in respect to this fearful scourge, is that of prevention, and to look well after the general habits of life is greatly to add to the securities against its appearance. There is one feature connected with its exhibition and progress to which I feel bound to call public attention. It is its greater prevalence in families which are hereditarily scrofulous, and thereby predisposed to disease of the throat, the air passages of the lungs, than in families not thus affected. I have been able by personal advice and by personal examination in this direction, to forewarn parents of the liabilities under which they themselves and their children rested. A scrofulous child, permitted to eat pork, and if a girl, to dress and live as do most children in our society, is, by virtue of the taint in blood derived from ancestral currents, predisposed to take on diseases of the air passages, and when diptheric conditions of these exist, is as sure almost to die as he or she is to be attacked. Nothing under such circumstances saves the child, but the possession on its part of great vitality, and medical administration marked by great judiciousness and care. The public does not know it, but it is none the less a fact, that scrofula has come to be a household disease in the United States. I can pick out a scrofulous man, or woman, or child, just as far as I can see them. Such persons, more likely than not, are high livers; eat gross and high seasoned foods, and are therefore liable to take on inflammatory diseases, and to have these located in or about the throat and air passages. To live so as to be able to avoid disease is a very great attainment. That it can be done, and in such a degree as to lessen in a very large measure the number of persons who are likely to suffer from diptheric inflammation, is as certain in my own mind, as is the existence of the law of gravitation. I tell you, my dear sir, there is no need, in the first place, of our children, nor of ourselves having this disease; and in the second place, if, by reason of some carelessness on our part, in the way of simple, uncomplicated exposure, we find ourselves or our children attacked with it, there is no more need of our or their dying with it, than from a common cold in the nose. Two things we only want to know: one is how to live so as to keep our bodies in the best possible relations to life; and second, if from causes that are unhealthful we become sick, and diptheria is the form of our sickness, to know how to treat it in view of the causes that have produced it. My method of treatment has been as follows: When I repeat that out of the hundreds of cases which have come under my professional handling, I have never yet lost a case, I leave the public to estimate the value of the suggestion I now offer: 1) In all cases, no matter whether the subjects are children or adults, I have uniformly, as the first thing to be done, given a hot bath. Its temperature and duration were regulated by the age, sex and vitality of the patient, the bath ranging from ninety-eight to one hundred and ten degrees, the person sitting in it from five to thirty minutes, always however until profuse sweating was produced. The bath I choose to make in such a way as to render it feasible to be given in any private family. Hence it has been my practice to give a sitz bath, for which purpose any wash-tub will answer, by putting a block under the side so as to tip it forward a little, and filling it as full of water as possible without having it run over when the patient sits down in it, and, taking a common keeler, or pail, if the former cannot be had, and fill it up full of warm water, for the purpose of immersing the feet, setting it down in front of the sitz-bath. I then place the patient in a sitting posture and wrap a heavy blanket round him in front, bringing it across his shoulders in the rear, and tucking it smoothly down. Then I bind his head in the shape of a wreath or band, with a towel wet in cold water and let him sit till perspiration is induced. If the patient is a child, quite small, the arrangement must be made to suit the size and age. In many instances the attendant is directed to kneel down, and lifting up one side of the blanket, dip his or her hands in water and rub the upper portion of the chest of the person. If sweating is not readily induced, some of the water is dipped out, and hotter water poured in until as high a temperature is raised as the patient can bear. I have never had a case where the primary symptoms were not mitigated, in some measure, as soon as increased action of the circulation by the skin was manifest. 2) Upon taking the person out, my uniform practice has been to pack him. This, as most of my readers will know, consists in spreading upon a bed two or three woolen blankets, or a woollen blanket and comfortable, the woolen blanket at the top, and over these one or two linen sheets wet in cool water, and left so wet as simply not to drip, and upon coming out, having him lie down and be enveloped in this wet sheet from head to foot, with additional cloths laid over the chest, and coming up close round the throat, these being cold or hot as my own judgment, derived from the sensations of the patient, might dictate. In this envelopment, just taken out of a hot bath, he feels very pleasant bodily sensations. The effect upon the nervous system is decidedly sedative, so much so, as, in a majority of instances, to induce sleep. If sleep is induced, I allow the nap to continue undisturbed, even though it is prolonged for three, four or five hours. If the person does not go to sleep, I generally permit the pack to continue from forty-five minutes to an hour and a half, as the patient's sensations may indicate. During the period that the patient is in the bath, and while being put in the pack, the room is kept thoroughly warm, but upon being wrapt up in the wet sheet, the windows are opened, and thorough ventilation and lowering of temperature is secured, so that he may be sure to have the coldest air that can be given to him. 3) When ready to come out of the pack, the windows are shut, the temperature of the room raised, and when well warmed, the envelopments are thrown off, the patient lying upon the bed, an attendant proceeds to rub him with dry towels, until all moisture is removed from the body, and then rubs with the dry hand over the entire body until the skin is dry and velvety. 4) I then wrap the patient's throat and chest in wet bandages. These are made so as to fit the parts well, and are covered by dry ones of the same shape as the wet. Thus enveloped, the patient is placed in bed, with a wet cap upon his head, and hot flat-irons, or a jug of hot water, or hot dry woolen blankets at the feet. An attendant is placed in charge of the room, which, if very much exposed to light, is shaded and perfect quiet, if possible, thereafter is insured. It gives me pleasure to say that, whether in my own Cure, or at the house of private families, I have never found this treatment to fail in mitigating the severities of the attack, no matter in what form it has appeared. The course pursued afterward has been nearly as follows, qualified somewhat, as I have before said, with reference to the age, sex and vital power of the subject: First, having induced, I have sought to keep up91thorough circulation on the entire surface. Second, to insure it in plentiful degree at the extremities, my object being two-fold—to relieve the overburdened internal blood vessels, and especially those of the mucous membrane; and second, to relieve the blood vessels of the lungs, throat and head. To do this, frequent application of warm cloths, wet or dry, to the extremities, or rubbing them with the dry warm hand has been practiced. Next, freedom from mental anxiety, to as perfect a degree as possible, and to this end no visitors in the room, and no change of attendants, except such as was originally provided for. The practice of having half a dozen different persons have charge of a patient suffering from diphtheric inflammation, is productive of such mental disturbance as, in many instances, to amount to anxiety of mind, and directly tends to, and not unfrequently produces cerebral congestion. Out of the family, therefore, two or three persons must be chosen to have the entire care of the case, until all danger is past, and no other members of the family must, on any pretence whatever, enter the room, unless desired to be seen by the patient. Next comes the giving of food. Whether infant, child, or adult, male or female, I never allow a particle of food to be given, until I am sure that nature has reached sufficiently to establish healthful circulation, and quite natural conditions to the nervous system. In some instances I have made my patients go three days, in others four days, without taking a particle of food, permitting them, however, in the meanwhile to drink freely of soft water. Until one tries it, he is not aware how well a person, whose organism is under inflammatory conditions, will find hunger assuaged by the free use of soft water taken internally. When the collective symptoms indicate such change as to relieve the patient from all danger, food may be given; but this should be of a fluid form, and should not be of a carbonaceous character. Connected with the treatment, the furnishing of pure air is of prime importance. The disease is essentially one derived from imperfect aeration of the blood, with imperfect elimination of waste matter. If then the treatment can be of such a nature as to set the eliminative organs, especially the skin, which is the structure generally at fault, at work, and thus secure the thorough removal of waste materials from the blood, and the solid tissues, while, at the same time, the blood is properly aerated, there can be no failure of recovery to the subject. I have no doubt that one of the best things that could be done, in the treatment of this disease, were it readily practicable, would be the inhalation of oxygen gas. In default, however, of means to do this, the next best thing as a curative, is to secure the free use of pure atmospheric air, which, by the way, would be, if freely used, a great preventive. I take it upon me therefore, always to secure thorough ventilation, even though I have to knock a pane of glass out of the room where the sick person lies, or punch a hole through the wall so as to let the air in. The attempt, on the part of the doctors and nurses, to have sick persons do well under their treatment in the absence of pure air, is characterized by such folly as to make one wonder why it is so persistently pursued. There are some other points connected with the treatment of diphtheria, to which it may be well for me to allude. One is, that many persons who are killed by the disease, die from suffocation, this resulting from what the doctors call a "false membrane" in the air passages. This false membrane is formed out of the thick mucous secreted from the mucous glands, and almost immediately thereupon forms into a thick imperfectly organized membranous shape, filling up the cavities of the air tubes and thus rendering it impossible for the patient to breathe. The method of treatment which I have pursued has had the effect, while increasing the flow, to render the expectoration of the mucous perfectly within the control of the patient, and it has been wonderful to myself and to others to observe the quantities that have thus been secreted and coughed up in the course of twelve hours. Some of my patients have raised a quart, others half a gallon; one man in the course of forty-eight hours raised not less than six quarts of this slippery-elmish substance, and lost nine pounds in weight. The man's tissues must have been as foul as corruption itself. No other treatment that I have ever been made acquainted with, has seemed to produce this effect, which I consider of great importance. Another consideration worthy of attention is the danger of relapse. It has been my practice therefore to keep my patients free from physical or mental fatigue for some days, and some of them for weeks, after all danger seems to have passed away. For many of them, upon convalescence, show nearly the same conditions that persons do who have been taken with congestive chills, or with typhoid fever, and recovered. There can be no doubt that in many instances of diphtheria attack, the cerebral disturbance is very great, the brain and lungs, and sometimes the liver and bowels being congested, and that by the rapidity with which these organs have been relieved by the determination of blood to the surface, has recovery to the patient been insured. Thus, my dear sir, have I tried, in common phrase, so that the most unlearned or unlettered person may understand me, to mark out the views which I cherish, and the course I pursue in the treatment of diphtheria. Besides the cases treated personally by myself and associates, Miss Dr. Austin and myself have received hundreds of letters from persons who have followed our directions in the main, and have succeeded in the recovery of their patients. Some of these patients have been men, others women, others children, and with slight modifications they all tell the same story as to the results produced. Whenever my method of treatment has been taken in the early stages, and has been the only treatment pursued, it has been successful. To apply it to scrofula children in the more advanced stages of the disease, and especially where these have been previously drugged, is to render the probability of success much less than it would otherwise be. But early attention to it, and a persistent following of it, I am satisfied will save a great majority of children, who may be so unfortunate as to be attacked. It is far better so to bring up their children as to reduce their liabilities to so low a point as practically to amount to nothing. You know my views on this subject, which are that the human body is intended by its Creator, casualties and accidents aside, to incorporate within itself such measure of resistance to disease as essentially to amount to a guarantee that sickness, if the laws of our organism were understood and obeyed, would necessarily be the incidental and exceptional phase of human existence, that health would be the ordinary condition, and that whereas now a majority of the human race die far inside of old age, then the majority of them would die from old age only. Assuring you, my dear sir, of my high personal esteem, and trusting that you may be spared many years to occupy a position of high usefulness, I beg you to believe that I sympathise with my fellows in all that causes them to suffer, and rejoice with them in all that produces their happiness, while I remain, To S. C. Cleveland, Esq., Editor of the Yates Co. Chronicle, Penn Yan, N. Y. HAVE you ever considered the effect of one wrong act? The thing may not seem wrong in itself; soon done and viewed alone, it may appear of no importance. But you must trace its ramifications, and follow up link by link its results. That single insignificant act done thoughtlessly, in an unguarded moment, must send forward an influence through your whole subsequent life. The historian of British India, speaking of the voyage of Warren Hastings to that country, says concerning a circumstance which occurred on that voyage: "It is doubtful whether this act did not exercise an unfavorable influence over his whole moral nature, and over his career." Of how many persons might the same remark be made? One wroug act brings the murderer to his ignominiuou end. One wrong act stamps, with indelible stains of dishonor, a character hitherto above reproach. One wrong act in youth has thrown mauy a youug person from under the controlling love of a kind Providence, and launched him on a sea of trouble and sorrow to a late old age. Of how much peace, of how much spiritual prosperity and holy joy, has a single siu at the outset robbed the child of God? Of how much deep sorrow and mortification has it been the inlet? It was an act, perhaps, so soon done as the turning of a key by the angel that opened the bottomlessless pit; but with a more distressing power for evil it has caused a darkness, as the smoke of a great furnace, to overcloud your prospects, and has let forth amid the wide-spread scenes of all your following years, memories and regrets with a keener power than scorpions, and leaving hardly a green thing in the waste of a life that opened with so much to animate and cheer. It has drawn down on you the displeasure of God. It has arrayed providence against you, and shut you off from the fullness of his love. An unadvised expression from the lips of Moses shut him out from the green pastures and still waters beyond Jordan. Never till we reach heaven, and there have all our secret history unrolled to our view, shall we know from how many scenes of earthly and of spiritual happiness a single wrong act has excluded us; how many sore afflictions it has drawn around our weary pilgrimage; and from what degree of advancement it has shut us off even amid the glories and blessedness of heaven.—Sel. Doings of the Iowa State Conference.
ThE Conference held its first session, first day, Jan. 25th, 1863. The meeting being opened it was found that delegates from the following churches were present: Bro. Wm. Jackson, Waterloo; Bro. D. T. Shireman, West Union; Bro. Stephen Ryder, Waukon; Brn. T. Hare, C. R. Ross, Marion; Brn. D. Andre, R. D. Tyson, Lisbon; Bro. J. I. Shurtz, Millersburg; Bro. Benn Auten, Knoxville; Brn. B. F. Curtis, Jacob Yates, Dayton; Brn. D. Weaver, W. V. Fields, Fairview. Ministers present: Brn. M. E. Cornell, B. F. Snook. The following Resolutions were adopted: Resolved, That the Churches of the Seventh-day Adventists here represented, organize into one Conference with the name of Iowa Conference of S. D. Adventists. Resolved, That this Conference be composed of the ministers and delegates from the churches. Resolved, That Elder M. E. Cornell be considered an honorary member of this Conference. Resolved, That the officers of this Conference be composed of a Chairman, Secretary and standing Committee of three. Resolved, That the present Chairman and Secretary act as officers the coming year. Resolved, That Elder B. F. Snook, Bro. D. Weaver and D. Andre, compose the Conference Committee. Resolved, That our minister's papers consist of a certificate of ordination and credentials to be signed by the Chairman and Secretary of the Conference; which credentials shall be renewed annually. Resolved, That this Conference grant Elder B. F. Snook the credentials above spoken of. Resolved, That the next session of the Iowa State Conference be held at some point to be determined by the Conference Committee, on Oct. 15-18, 1863. Resolved, That the churches of Waukon, West Union, Waterloo, Marion, Lisbon, Fairview, Dayton and Richmond and Knoxville here represented be received into this Conference. Resolved, That we invite churches of Seventh-day Adventists not here represented to be prepared to unite with this Conference at its next session by delegate representation. Resolved, That the ministers, of the Iowa State Conference should receive a liberal support. Resolved, That our ministers should make a report at the annual conference of their labor each week during the Conference year. Resolved, That our ministers should make a report at the annual Conference of the amount of their entire receipts and expenditures during the Conference year. Resolved, That the Iowa State Conference of Seventh-day Adventists appeal to the Michigan State Conference of Seventh-day Adventists to send a minister to labor with Elder B. F. Snook in Iowa the coming tent season. Resolved, That Bro. M. B. Smith act as corresponding treasurer of this Conference the coming year. Resolved, That the different Seventh-day treasurers be requested to send their remittances to the corresponding treasurer (M. B. Smith, Marion, Iowa) as often as once in three months. Resolved, That all Churches or individuals wishing to aid in running the Iowa tent be requested to send their pledges to the Conference Treasurer immediately. Resolved, That the Treasurer of the Iowa State Conference make a report at its next session of all money received and paid out. Resolved, That the minutes of this Conference be published in the Review. J. T. MITCHELL, Chairman
M. B. SMITH, Secretary. The Cause in the East.
By Editor
The prospect brightens. The old friends of the cause in the East are taking hold of organization, and there seems to be an interest awakening which we hope will be permanent. Without order and organization, nothing lasting can be done in the East. We have the highest regard for our eastern brethren. Their love for the cause has been constant and ardent. They first embraced the truth, and sent their preachers West with it, and supported them for a while in western fields. They have done more than their share in every enterprise connected with the cause. But there have been influences at work in the East which have stood directly in the way of the cause. Men have been encouraged to travel who should have been at home, or should have been more limited in their labors, and moved with greater caution. In the absence of order and organization, these men have moved out guided by their own impulses, looking to no ones for counsel and instruction, and in many cases their influence has been to run the cause into the ground. This is the great reason for the low state of the cause in New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. God has been raising up men in the East, of sound judgment, fine feelings, piety, and caution, who have received too little encouragement. We might here mention Brn. Bourdeaux and C. O. Taylor. It is because their influence has been felt, that there is a better state of things in Vermont than in other eastern States. The time is coming when their gifts and labors will be more highly prized than those of the more noisy and rash. When order can be fully established, the eastern States will be by far the richest fields of labor, for in those States second advent principles have taken a firm hold of many minds, and thousands are ready to embrace the third message when fully and properly set before them. We have no doubt but there are brethren in the East, who have not been ordained to the work, whose duty it may be to preach the message; but we do believe it wrong for them to start off to preach without consulting with their brethren, and without the watchcare of those of sound experience in the work. We are aware there has been a spirit in the East with many that would denounce the position here taken as oppressive, and this very thing has been the ruin of the cause in some portions of the East. But our faithful brethren in some portions of New England where our efficient preachers seldom labor, who are anxious to spread the truth, may encourage inexperienced men to teach the truth for want of no better. They may think this is better than to do nothing. How this may be we will not here attempt to decide, but will propose a plan which we regard far better than either. The few brethren in the East nobly acted their part in sending the truth into the West. One brother in Connecticut gave Bro. Bates fifty dollars to bear his expenses to Indiana and Michigan as early as 1849, at which time the brethren in Jackson received the Sabbath, and these brethren in Jackson have been the center of the great work in Michigan. New England has been ready to help in every enterprise to advance the cause. We propose that Western brethren now return the compliment in a Christian and liberal manner. Michigan can send two efficient ministers East, and meet their home expenses in their absence. Iowa can send one of her tents East, as she cannot run both, and the Association can donate publications to the enterprise. With the blessing of God much good can be done. In connection with tent labor something could be done in setting things in order that the labor be not finally lost. Should this plan meet the minds of the brethren in the East, in Michigan and Iowa, and should the enterprise be undertaken, it might be our duty to labor with the churches in New England a part of the time next summer.