Counsels on Health

Refinement and Delicacy

Among Christian physicians there should ever be a striving for the maintenance of the highest order of true refinement and delicacy, a preservation of those barriers of reserve that should exist between men and women. CH 363.1

We are living in a time when the world is represented as Noah's time, and as in the time of Sodom. I am constantly shown the great dangers to which youth, and men and women who have just reached manhood and womanhood, and also men and women of mature years, are exposed, and I dare not hold my peace. There is need of greater refinement, both in thought and association. There is need of Christians’ being more elevated and delicate in words and deportment. CH 363.2

The work of the physician is of a character that if there is a coarseness in his nature, it will be revealed. Therefore, the physician should guard carefully his speech and avoid all commonness in his conversation. Every patient he treats is reading the traits of his character and the tone of his morals by his actions and conversation. CH 363.3

The light given me of the Lord regarding this matter is that as far as possible lady physicians should care for lady patients, and gentlemen physicians have the care of gentlemen patients. Every physician should respect the delicacy of the patients. Any unnecessary exposure of ladies before male physicians is wrong. Its influence is detrimental. CH 363.4

Delicate treatments should not be given by male physicians to women in our institutions. Never should a lady patient be alone with a gentleman physician, either for special examination or for treatment. Let the physicians be faithful in preserving delicacy and modesty under all circumstances. CH 364.1

In our medical institutions there ought always to be women of mature age and good experience who have been trained to give treatments to the lady patients. Women should be educated and qualified just as thoroughly as possible to become practitioners in the delicate diseases which afflict women, that their secret parts should not be exposed to the notice of men. There should be a much larger number of lady physicians, educated not only to act as trained nurses, but also as physicians. It is a most horrible practice, this revealing the secret parts of women to men, or men being treated by women. CH 364.2

Women physicians should utterly refuse to look upon the secret parts of men. Women should be thoroughly educated to work for women, and men to work for men. Let men know that they must go to their own sex and not apply to lady physicians. It is an insult to women, and God looks upon these things of commonness with abhorrence. CH 364.3

While physicians are called upon to teach social purity, let them practice that delicacy which is a constant lesson in practical purity. Women may do a noble work as practicing physicians; but when men ask a lady physician to give them examinations and treatments which demand the exposure of private parts, let her refuse decidedly to do this work. CH 364.4

In the medical work there are dangers which the physician should understand and constantly guard against. Truly converted men are the ones who should be employed as physicians in our sanitariums. Some physicians are self-sufficient and consider themselves able to guard their own ways; whereas if they but knew themselves, they would feel their great need of help from above, a higher intelligence. CH 364.5

Some medical men are unfit to act as physicians to women because of the attitude they assume toward them. They take liberties until it becomes a common thing with them to transgress the laws of chastity. Our physicians should have the highest regard for the direction given by God to His church when they were delivered from Egypt. This will keep them from becoming loose in manners and careless in regard to the laws of chastity. All who live by the laws given by God from Sinai may be safely trusted. CH 365.1