Last week, I stumbled upon a video on YouTube of a presentation David Barton made at a Citizens for Community Values banquet earlier this year and decided to watch it. But by now, I have seen Barton’s standard presentation so many times that I could almost recite it by heart and this one was no different from any of the dozens of other such presentations I have watched him deliver … with one exception.
In this presentation, Barton made an aside to recommend a book called “None Of These Diseases” by S.I. McMillen, calling it “one of the best healthcare books you’ll ever read.” So I decided to order a copy – not one of the updated and whitewashed versions being sold today, but the original 1963 version that read just as McMillen intended it – and, once I received it, it became obvious as why Barton would recommend it since it is basically a medical version of the sort of political propaganda that Barton peddles professionally.
Most of the book is dedicated to explaining how all medical advances were first foretold in the Bible and declaring that people would be so much happier and healthier if they just followed the health advice set forth in Scripture … and how it would protect them from schizophrenia:
The individual who has Christ in his heart and the Bible in his hand has splendid fortifications against man’s greatest mental disturbance – schizophrenia. Why do I make that statement? It is medically recognized that schizophrenia is the result of anxiety stemming from an inability to meet the adjustments of adulthood. In highly predisposed individuals even a little anxiety can tip the scales. Furthermore, it is felt that any individual, if subjected to sufficient stress, could experience the schizophrenic reaction.
Naturally, anything that lessens anxiety is important in the prevention of schizophrenia. In reduction of anxiety, nothing is more important than spiritual conversion and Christian living. Anyone who ever truly repented his sins and asked God to forgive him can never forget the miraculous way in which his mind was immediately freed of “the guilt complex.”
Elsewhere, McMillen states that promiscuity is the cause of arthritis and insanity and that it is not necessary for women to experience orgasm:
Many a young girl has dampened my desk with her tears. The shame, the disgrace, and the ostracism brand her, and the pain often lasts through many years. A great variety of resulting neurotic manifestations can produce any of the many psychosomatic diseases. The community does not know, but the physician knows, that breaking through God’s fences around sex is the basic cause of Kathy’s toxic goiter, or Helen’s arthritis, or Suzanne’s commitment to the insane asylum.
…
Some authorities state that less than half of married women have ever experienced sexual orgasm. However, the emotions they derive from the sexual act are beautiful and completely gratifying without the need for any physical climax. Their emotions are diffused throughout their bodies. To them the glowing embers of hardwood are just as satisfying as the quick bright flash of a little gunpowder.
Finally, McMillen recommended to a woman whose husband had punched her in the face that the key to a happy marriage was her submission:
Then, as Yvonne held an ice bag over her left eye and looked at me with the other, I gave her a little marriage counseling, somewhat belated to be sure. I ended my lecture with words something like these: “Yvonne, in every marriage, situations are bound to arise in which one of the partners must give in, out of consideration and love for the other partner. Don’t feel sorry for yourself if you discover that you are the one who has to give in most of the time. I have strange but good news for you: when you give in to Mike, you are losing your life in the one and only way to find life and worthwhile happiness. The secret to happiness in married life depends on each partner making small sacrifices, readily and cheerfully.”
