ClaimRace, women and healthverified1930sExplicit statement

Race, women and health · Claim record

Despite the hostility to organised medicine, the magazine did not teach that medicine was forbidden: in January 1936 it stated that 'There is nothing in the scriptures of God's Word that forbids the taking of medicine that is known to be curative', and rejected faith healing.

Claim ID claim-attitudes-ga-medicine-not-forbiddenConcerns 15 January 1936Explicit statement

The claim and its evidence

Explicit statement · 15 January 1936 Verified

Despite the hostility to organised medicine, the magazine did not teach that medicine was forbidden: in January 1936 it stated that 'There is nothing in the scriptures of God's Word that forbids the taking of medicine that is known to be curative', and rejected faith healing. Source: The Golden Age, 15 January 1936

Show the evidence (1 source)
Primary JW publication Verified

The Golden Age, “Is Taking Medicine Unscriptural?”

15 January 1936 · pp.230-231 · Golden Age Publishing Company, Brooklyn, New York

“There is nothing in the scriptures of God's Word that forbids the taking of medicine that is known to be curative and not really injurious to the bodily health of Christians whose lives and bodies are truly devoted to Jehovah God and His service.”

An article answering readers who asked whether Christians should take medicine at all. It cites 1 Timothy 5:23, argues that the first-century gifts of healing were not meant to continue, and rejects faith healing.

Provenance and verification note for The Golden Age, Is Taking Medicine Unscriptural?

Confidence note. Read in the OCR text layer of the archive.org scan on 19 September 2026 on the leaf mapped to printed page 230. Scanner hyphenation closed up.

Scan provenance. Internet Archive item '1936-1937TheGoldenAgeMagazine'; page numbers from the _djvu.xml leaf mapping joined to _page_numbers.json, cross-checked against the running head 'January 15, 1936'.

Notes. Printed four pages from the anti-serum material in the same issue.

Accessed. 19 September 2026 · Source ID. src-hlth-ga-1936-0115-taking-medicine

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