1870-1875
Glass photonegative
Adelaide Montgomery’s father died when she was three years old. Raised by her dressmaker mother Grace, Adelaide had an unfortunate end in 1892 from an untreated illness, as she belonged to a sect that forbad medical intervention. Her mother thought she was ‘only sleeping till the Lord should awaken her’.
There exists... a small sect of religionists who have carried the Protestant principle of private judgment to the rather suicidal extent of absolutely surrendering all exercise of their own judgment on matters where they suppose the letter of Scripture to be explicit. On what particular texts their treatment of the various ills which flesh is heir to, whether in infancy or in mature age, is based we are not informed. A literal interpretation of the command to take no thought for the morrow would prove more than they seem prepared to accept, and where the precise line is to be drawn between a lawful supply of bodily wants and an unlawful remedy of bodily ailments' does not clearly appear. There is a censure pronounced no doubt on a King of Judah who sought the physicians instead of seeking the Lord in his sickness; but the context of the history has generally been understood to imply that his fault lay rather in what he left undone, than in what he did. Be the reason, however, what it may, the Peculiar People consider the medical art, like the black art, a wicked and diabolical invention, entirely repugnant to the word of God, and forbidden to the faithful under all circumstances. [Rockhampton Bulletin, 4 March 1874]
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