Members of the popular churches often ask, Why did God create drugs if he did not intend sick people to use them? To the Christian Scientist, the answer to this question is plain and goes without saying; but since there are others who pause at this inquiry, it may be well briefly to discuss some of the suppositions involved from standpoints within the reach of those who honestly consider this to be an open question. The initial arguments of this paper will be addressed to those who revere the authority of the Scriptures and the research of Christian scholars.
If God created drugs with the intention that sick people should use them, we might reasonably expect to find a complete statement of materia medica forming a part of our divine revelation and it would also remain for us to explain why the Hebrew Prophets utterly ignored drugs in their divine system of healing.
Oriental research has unearthed the Papyrus Ebers, an Egyptian work on medicine (Sunday School Times vol 32 page 114). It contains formulas for hair tonics, eye-salves, stomach bitters, purgatives and so on which compare very favorably with medical prescriptions of modern times. Now special attention is called to the fact that this work was compiled from prescriptions already formulated by the experience of learned Egyptian physicians at least a hundred years before Moses was born.
