Those who take the lives of others in their hands must be men who have been marked as making life a success. They must be men of judgment and wisdom, men who can sympathize and feel to the depths, men whose whole being is stirred when they witness suffering. Some men who have been unsuccessful in every other enterprise in life take up the business of a physician. They take the lives of men and women in their hands, when they have had no experience. They read a plan which somebody has followed with success, and adopt it, and then practice upon those who have confidence in them, actually destroying the last spark of life; yet after all they do not learn anything, but will go on just as sanguine in the next case, observing the same rigid treatment. Some persons may have a power of constitution sufficient to withstand the terrible tax imposed upon them, and live. Then the novices take the glory to themselves, when none is due them. Everything is due to God and to a powerful constitution. (2T 385.1) MC VC

Brother C has been occupying an unworthy position in standing as a prop for B. He has been mind for him, and has stood by to sustain and back him up. These two men are fanatics on the subject of health reform. Brother C knows much less than he thinks he does. He is deceived in himself. He is selfish and bigoted in carrying out his views; he is not teachable. He has not had a subdued will. He is not a man of humble mind. Such a man has no business to be a physician. He may have gained some little knowledge by reading, but this is not enough. Experience is necessary. Our people are too few to be sacrificed so cheaply and ingloriously as to submit to being experimented upon by such men. Altogether too many precious ones would fall a sacrifice to their rigid views and notions before they would give up, confess their errors, and learn wisdom by experience. (2T 385.2) MC VC