Deterioration of the Puritan stock : and its causes / by John Ellis.

  • John Ellis
Date:
1884
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Deterioration of the Puritan stock : and its causes / by John Ellis. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    weakness; and artificial support impairs and weakens the muscles; and the body which is not fully developed during] childhood and youth, can never reach the state of most per-1 feet development, although it may gain much. When physical transgressions are either too great or too 1 long persisted in, there comes a time when death therefrom 1 is inevitable and the sufferer dies; prayer cannot save hisf life, the physician cannot rescue him, and the inflowing of I life from the Lord through nourishing food, air, light and | heat do not revive him. He dies from his transgressions. The penalty for sin if man does not stop sinning, is death. | And more than this the penalty of transgression is death, to | whatever extent we carry our transgressions, for in youth| they prevent development and forever destroy the chance J for the highest development; and during both young and J adult age, they impair the vitality and cause deformity and ■ disease to the extent of the transgression, and the man can! never be what he might have been if he had lived an orderly A life; and even his children cannot be what they might have f been if he had lived a true life. It does seem that at this day, in the light of this new Age, j every intelligent man and woman cannot but see and under- i stand that it is wrong to use poisonous fluids like fermented j wine, beer and distilled liquors, which are causing so much | crime, poverty, unhappiness, drunkenness and insanity ; or \ tobacco, which, even in small quantities, will cause such j deadly nausea, irregularity in the heart’s action, disease of I the heart, stomach or brain ; or opium, which will cause J stupor and death, or if taken in moderate doses for any j length of time, will, like a demon, hold man in a grasp from which it is almost impossible for him to be rescued, j and never without great suffering; or, again, for a woman j by the use of stays, corsets or any other means, to strive to j contract her waist and thus destroy the symmetry of form! and gracefulness with which the Lord has endowed her. Such transgressions, as are named above, are violations j of natural laws of life, and will surely bring with them the ; penalties attached to them, even though we may transgress j ignorantly. And when,knowing such habits to be danger- ous and injurious, we deliberately commence indulging in .]
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