Messenger of the Lord

Healing of Herbert Lacey

Practical counsel was often needed in the treatment of the sick. Professor Herbert Lacey, leading out in the school program at Avondale early in 1897, was quickly devastated by typhoid fever. He lost twenty pounds in one week; his vitality was low and his fever high. Convinced of Dr. Kellogg’s success with hydro-therapy, the medical team applied ice to reduce the fever and to restore circulation in “his bowels.” Hearing of this, Ellen White dashed off a telegram to the medical workers: “Use no ice, but hot applications.” MOL 98.5

Why did she do this, and do it with dispatch? She saw too many dying of typhoid, largely because of conventional drugs that wasted the patient’s ability to overcome the enervation brought on by the drugs. But she also knew that hydrotherapy should be used wisely. With Lacey’s low vitality, ice on his head and body would further weaken him. MOL 98.6

Mrs. White later wrote of this serious event: “I was not going to be so delicate in regard to the physician as to permit Herbert Lacey’s life to be put out.... There might be cases where the ice applications would work well. But books with prescriptions that are followed to the letter in regard to ice applications should have further explanations, that persons with low vitality should use hot in the place of cold.... To go just as the book of Dr. Kellogg shall direct without considering the subject is simply wild.” ⁴² MOL 98.7

Of Ellen White’s practicality, as well as her common sense, her granddaughter Grace White Jacques once said: “I recall a young nurse who had only a few clothes, and so Grandmother gave her three dress lengths of material, one of red, one blue, one a golden color. She told this young lady, as she did several young women, that she should have at least one red dress.” ⁴³ Ellen White never lost her ability to relate to people in practical ways. MOL 98.8