MH page 373

But if the mother unswervingly adheres to right principles, if she is temperate and self-denying, if she is kind, gentle, and unselfish, she may give her child these same precious traits of character. Very explicit was the command prohibiting the use of wine by the mother. Every drop of strong drink taken by her to gratify appetite endangers the physical, mental, and moral health of her child, and is a direct sin against her Creator.

Maternal temperance and avoidance of alcohol protect the physical, mental, and moral health of the child. The paragraph asserts a direct medical and developmental consequence of maternal alcohol consumption on the unborn child.

Many advisers urge that every wish of the mother should be gratified; that if she desires any article of food, however harmful, she should freely indulge her appetite. Such advice is false and mischievous. The mother's physical needs should in no case be neglected. Two lives are depending upon her, and her wishes should be tenderly regarded, her needs generously supplied. But at this time above all others she should avoid, in diet and in every other line, whatever would lessen physical or mental strength. By the command of God Himself she is placed under the most solemn obligation to exercise self-control.

Maternal diet and self-control directly impact the physical and mental strength of both mother and child. The paragraph mixes spiritual obligations regarding self-control with specific empirical assertions about maternal diet and physical strength during pregnancy.

The strength of the mother should be tenderly cherished. Instead of spending her precious strength in exhausting labor, her care and burdens should be lessened. Often the husband and father is unacquainted with the physical laws which the well-being of his family requires him to understand. Absorbed in the struggle for a livelihood, or bent on acquiring wealth and pressed with cares and perplexities, he allows to rest upon the wife and mother burdens that overtax her strength at the most critical period and cause feebleness and disease.

Over-taxing a mother with exhausting labor during pregnancy causes feebleness and disease. It combines domestic guidance for husbands with a direct causal claim relating physical overload during pregnancy to disease.