Health, or, How to Live

CURE WITHOUT DRUGS

AMONG the common people, the wide distinction between Prevention and Cure has not been generally recognized. They are apt to think that all books relating to the laws of life and health, must of course be treatises on diseases and cures by drugs. They are, at least, often more eager to obtain reading matter in some contemptible quack-doctor book, which professes to teach them how to doctor themselves, than they are to get books to show how they destroy health and life, and how to prevent diseases, broken constitutions, and premature death. They regard CURE infinitely more important than PREVENTION. As a general rule, they more highly value a physician, who, instead of warning them against the evils of violated law, will let them go on unmolested till they have ruined themselves, and then will be on hand to drug them thoroughly, even unto death, than they will that man who has the moral courage, in the cause of humanity, to peril his reputation to prevent them from encountering needless suffering, and an early grave. HHTL 145.2

They want their false appetites and ruinous indulgences to be let alone; and when health is gone, as a consequence, they want a doctor, or doctor book, to prescribe drugs which promise to restore health, in spite of their continuing the indulgence which caused it. Or, if they set aside the cause for a short space, they want to be so thoroughly drugged that Nature may never dare to make such another outcry, so that they may turn to their sins with hopeful impunity. At all events, they consider health a secondary matter — a matter comparatively of small importance until it is ruined, and then mourn over their pains and sufferings, when it is too late to make amends. They practically consider the old proverb to be obsolete, “An ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure.” They go on with their unnatural indulgences, undermining their physical vitality, until Nature, unable to bear abuse any longer, gives signs of woe; then they resort, perhaps, to cures which only cure by death. The first step toward the cure of diseases is effected HHTL 146.1