Article October 25, 1900 Issue

Physical and Spiritual Health

Edward E. Norwood

Chattanooga (Tenn.) News

Physical and Spiritual Health, is a subject that vitally concerns all mankind. The word "health" is from the Anglo-Saxon "health" or "wholth," and means wholeness, that state in which all the natural functions perform freely without pain or disease. The definition of the word is somewhat limited in the dictionary, as it implies that health is simply a condition of the physical organism, whereas it is not that alone, but relates to the mental or spiritual organization as well—a person with a healthy physical body and a diseased mind is not healthy in the true sense of the term.

When we look around on every side and see the sick, the lame, the deaf, the blind, the dumb, all seeking relief from their woes, generally from a material basis, and as a rule, unsuccessfully, we are constrained to think there is something radically wrong with the medical practice of the day. In the "History of Medicine," we see a graphic picture of a system of guesswork that has held sway with the amen of press, pulpit, and people, for over forty centuries. While we entertain a deep respect for the better (and we might say larger) class of physicians, those who are educated, conscientious, and go to the bedside of their patients with hearts filled with love and sympathy, living up to their highest sense of good, yet we can but condemn their system.

If drugs are good, why are they not efficacious? Men have by their aid searched for health all these centuries. Nearly every conceivable product of the three great kingdoms, mineral, animal, and vegetable, has been swallowed in the vain hope of health. Climate, air, exercise, travel, rubbing, pounding, freezing, heating, electricity, and rest cures, have been tried, and their results have been, to say the least, far short of their promise. Have they not had sufficient time to prove their efficacy? If drugs are good, why is there not some infallible remedy for each and every disease, which permanently cures it? Why has mankind suffered so long under their regime if they are, as many claim, divinely ordered? Does God send sickness on man, and then approve of material means to cure it? Does the same fountain send forth both sweet and bitter waters? Is there no balm in Gilead? Let us see.

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