Article May 13, 1905 Issue

Disease Unfashionable

Salem (Ore.) Capital Journal

There is a wonderful change coming over society. The world is increasing in happiness and hopefulness. Epidemics are waning and good sanitary conditions are increasing. It is no longer in good taste to let it be known that you have a chronic ailment, or are a defective in any respect. Good sound physical health is become almost a moral requisite. It must be admitted that this is a "healthy" tendency. It may be the time will come when men or women will no more admit that they are a chronic this or that, than they would lie or steal.

The dictates of fashion decreed in the eighteenth century that ladies should carry smelling-bottles, appear to be delicate, and at certain prescribed times faint and remain unconscious. In George Washington's day few persons expected to live to mature age without smallpox. Two generations ago cupping and bleeding were common remedies, and the use of calomel was only limited by salivation.

There is no real necessity for sickness. It serves no good purpose of reformation or development of the individual. Without sin and violation of divine laws there would be little or no sickness in the world. While not all sickness is the result of sin, the inevitable harvest of wrong living, wrong doing, and wrong thinking is sickness, disease, and death. The Pharisees and doctors of the law accused Christ of blasphemy, because he healed a man of the palsy by saying, "Thy sins be forgiven thee." His reply was, that it was no harder to say, "Thy sins be forgiven thee," than to say, "Arise, take up thy bed, and walk." But he branded disease as the result of sin.

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