"No woman should become a mother unless she is capable of being physician to her offspring. How can mothers turn over their tender children to the care of a strange physician, for him to dose them with drugs, the nature of which she has no knowledge. Such a course is a sin in the sight of Heaven. Ignorance is no excuse for parents. Why do not those who take such responsibilities, educate themselves? They should read and investigate with a prayerful heart, until they can understand the wants of their children, and watch with jealous care, least these little sunbeams, which are given them to lighten their pathway, be shrouded in darkness by disease and death. No stranger's hand should be trusted to perform those services for dear ones, which a mother's affection alone can understand. Parents and children should educate themselves in all that concerns their life and health. When children understand the science of human life, then, and not till then, are they prepared to attend to the sciences as taught in the common schools.
"Parents have frequently told me that they knew nothing of the nature of disease, and were their children sick, they should not know what to do for them,--that they had always trusted a physician. Mothers ought to know what to do in any common case of sickness of their children. It is a sin for them not to know. Who should better understand the wants of a sick child than its parents, especially the mother? And yet parents plead ignorance, and if their dear children are slightly indisposed, they do not know what to do, and send for the doctor, who deals out his concentrated poison with a lavish hand. These lessen the child's hold on life, and if they do not actually cause it death, they obstruct nature's efforts, and break down some part of her fine machinery, which can never be repaired, and the victim is a sufferer as long as life lasts.
"In nine cases out of ten, the indisposition of children can be traced to some indulgence of the perverted appetites. Perhaps it is an exposure to cold, want of fresh air, irregularity in eating, or improper clothing; and all the parents need do, is to remove the cause, and secure for their children a period of quiet and rest, or abstain for a short period of time from food. An agreeable bath of a proper temperature, will remove impurities from the skin, and then unpleasant symptoms may soon disappear; and all of this, too, without poisonous drugs, or having a doctor's fee to pay.
"Many parents, rather than to take the trouble to thoroughly investigate the cause of their children's indisposition, turn them over to the doctor, and administer anything he may choose to prescribe. If the anxious parent ventures to make an inquiry in regard to the drug, she is told it is 'perfectly harmless;' that if it does them no special good, 'it will not injure them.' Concentrated poisons are dealt out, the names of which are concealed in some technical terms, which the parents know nothing of; and because of their inexcusable ignorance, the lives of their children are sacrificed, and the parents too frequently charge their afflictions to Providence.
"In such cases perhaps, if nature had been left to herself, she would have recovered the abuse the system had suffered, but she was not allowed the privilege. A poisonous drug is introduced into the system, binding down the effects of nature, until she is compelled to give up the struggle. Do the parents then see their folly, and awake and investigate for themselves, feeling that their children are too dear to be trusted in a stranger's hands to receive any mixture he may please to deal out? No, they seem blinded, and infatuated; habits and customs, like iron bands, gird them about, and they make no effort to break them." The Health Reformer, Volume 1, Number 3, October, 1866.
"When Moses presented before the Lord the sad difficulties of the children of Israel, He did not present some new remedy, but called their attention to that which was at hand; for there was a bush or shrub which He had created that was to be cast into the water to make the fountain sweet and pure. . . . God has provided a balm for every wound. There is a balm in Gilead, there is a physician there." 1BC 1102.
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