Missionary Physician
217
words and actions, you make impressions that will kindle in their
hearts a hungering and thirsting after righteousness and truth, you are
a co-laborer with Christ.... Enlighten their minds by means of talks
and lectures, in regard to the effects of tea, coffee, and flesh meats,
and thus lead them to a voluntary correction of their habits.—
Ibid
.
1126. When he has gained the confidence of the afflicted by
relieving their sufferings and bringing them back from the verge of the
grave, he may teach them that disease is the result of sin; and that it is
the fallen foe who seeks to allure them to health-and-soul-destroying
practises. He may impress their minds with the necessity of denying
self, and obeying the laws of life and health. In the minds of the young
especially he may instil right principles.—
Testimonies for the Church
5:444
.
1127. It seldom does any good to talk in a censuring manner
to patients who are diseased in body and mind. But few who have
moved in the society of the world, and who view things from the
worldling’s standpoint, are prepared to have a statement of facts in
regard to themselves presented before them. The truth even is not to
be spoken at all times. There is a fit time and opportunity to speak,
when words will not offend.—
Testimonies for the Church 3:182
.
[269]
1128. The physician should be a strictly temperate man.... He
knows that much of the suffering he seeks to relieve is the result of
intemperance and other forms of selfish indulgence. He is called to
attend young men, and men in the prime of life and in mature age,
who have brought disease upon themselves by the use of tobacco. If
he is an intelligent physician, he will be able to trace disease to its
cause; but unless he is free from the use of tobacco himself, he will
hesitate to put his finger upon the plague-spot, and faithfully unfold to
his patients the cause of their sickness. He will fail to urge upon the
young the necessity of overcoming the habit before it becomes fixed....
If he uses the weed himself, how can he present to the inexperienced
youth its injurious effects, not only upon themselves, but upon those
around them?—
Testimonies for the Church 5:439
.
1129. How can he place the feet of others on the ladder of progress,
while he himself is treading the downward way?—
Ibid., 197
.
1130. The practising physician will instruct those who do not
understand how to preserve the strength and health they already have,