Providential Plants

The germ theory of disease is a modern understanding. Consequently there is little to go on in the scriptures to help us understand the illnesses that afflicted the people. The Book of Mormon has one statement on this topic that I've noticed.

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Alma 46:40

And there were some who died with fevers, which at some seasons of the year were very frequent in the land—but not so much so with fevers, because of the excellent qualities of the many plants and roots which God had prepared to remove the cause of diseases, to which men were subject by the nature of the climate—

The description of the fevers as seasonal suggests something like a mosquito-borne virus to me. And evidently there was a folk medicine industry that produced (real, perceived, or a mix) results. And there we hit a dead end.

So I want to turn to another aspect of this verse--the providence of God in providing treatments. There are other scriptures that carry a similar message. A prominent one is D&C 59:16-21 [1]. In the broader theological context this seems somewhat contradictory to me: we are in a fallen world (where the ground is cursed) yet we are in a providental and designed world (where God has given us solutions for our problems--in this case treatment for illnesses).

Now consider the following passage from Origin of Species:

Natural selection cannot possibly produce any modification in any one species exclusively for the good of another species... If it could be proved that any part of the structure of any one species had been formed for the exclusive good of another species, it would annihilate my theory, for such could not have been produced through natural selection. Although many statements may be found in works on natural history to this effect, I cannot find even one which seems to me of any weight. It is admitted that the rattlesnake has a poison-fang for its own defence and for the destruction of its prey; but some authors suppose that at the same time this snake is furnished with a rattle for its own injury, namely, to warn its prey to escape. I would almost as soon believe that the cat curls the end of its tail when preparing to spring, in order to warn the doomed mouse.

I think that these competing ways of seeing the world each have their place, and each have their excesses. On the one hand, we understand that in the natural world organisms do not expend energy to produce things merely as a favor to other organisms. Antibiotics are produced by fungi for their own fight against bacteria, not for our medical use. And plants produce flowers and fruit to get their pollen and seeds spread, not just to give us something nice to look at or eat. In the rich biological diversity of this planet it seems like a natural coincidence that some organisms will make substances useful to our health, just as some make substances harmful to our health. Taken to excess, these principles might lead us to be ungrateful toward God (if we believe in him at all)--we've solved our own problems without his help, thank you very much.

On the other hand God tells us that the earth is here to be inhabited and that we should be grateful for it and the potential that its materials offer us--something I think holds whether or not he intervened to ensure that medicinal plants exist. Furthermore, we should be grateful to live in a prosperous environment that makes scientific research possible, and for any direct inspiration of scientists.

But I am framing things from my point of view. There are those who take Alma 46:40 at it's word--that God did prepare plants for medical use--and I want to discuss this some more in a separate post.

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1. It is interesting to me that the Word of Wisdom was given 2 years later, which put qualifiers on these verses.