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Roman Catechism
Our Chief Hope Of Deliverance Should Be In God
The faithful should be encouraged to use this salutary manner of praying and to imitate the example of the Prophet. And at the same time their attention should be called to the marked difference that exists between the prayers of the infidel and those of the Christian.
The infidel, too, begs of God to cure his diseases and to heal his wounds, to deliver him from approaching or impending evils; but he places his principal hope of deliverance in the remedies provided by nature, or prepared by man. He makes no scruple of using medicine no matter by whom prepared, no matter if accompanied by charms, spells or other diabolical arts, provided he can promise himself some hope of recovery. Not so the Christian. When visited by sickness, or other adversity, he flies to God as his supreme refuge and defence. Acknowledging and revering God alone as the author of all his good and his deliverer he ascribes to Him whatever healing virtue resides in medicines, convinced that they help the sick only in so far as God wills it. For it is God who has given medicines to man to heal his corporal infirmities; and hence these words of Ecclesiasticus: The most High hath created medicines out of the earth, and a wise man will not abhor them. He, therefore, who has pledged his fidelity to Jesus Christ, does not place his principal hope of recovery in such remedies; he places it in God, the author of these medicines.
Hence the Sacred Scriptures condemn the conduct of those who, confiding in the power of medicine, seek no assistance from God. Nay more, those who regulate their lives by the laws of God, abstain from the use of all medicines which are not evidently intended by God to be medicinal; and, were there even a certain hope of recovery by using any other, they abstain from them as so many charms and diabolical artifices.