The Great Visions of Ellen G. White

Contemporary Attitudes Toward Health

None of the above sounds very unusual to us today, until we take into account the attitudes toward health that prevailed in the mid-nineteenth century, when Ellen White first wrote upon the subject. GVEGW 97.6

Radio-TV commentator Paul Harvey, in a nationally syndicated United Features column, aptly characterized the age as “an era of medical ignorance bordering on barbarism,” when “doctors were still bloodletting and performing surgery with unwashed hands.” ⁷⁵ GVEGW 97.7

In 1974 Otto L. Bettmann, founder of the internationally famous archive in New York that bears his name, wrote an exceedingly fascinating book about conditions in the “Gay Nineties.” He entitled it The Good Old Days—They Were Terrible! Illustrated with photographs and line-drawing engravings of the period, the book gives a graphic look into this now-bygone day. ⁷⁶ GVEGW 98.1

Of particular interest in the context of the 1863 health reform vision are his chapters dealing with air, housing, food and drink, and health. GVEGW 98.2

In 1890 Dr. John Harvey Kellogg wrote the preface to Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene (the only book ever to be written jointly by James and Ellen White). In it the doctor offered “a few facts of interest” to readers: GVEGW 98.3

“1. At the time [these] writings ... first appeared, the subject of health was almost wholly ignored, not only by the people to whom they were addressed, but by the world at large. GVEGW 98.4

“2. The few advocating the necessity of a reform in physical habits propagated in connection with the advocacy of genuine reformatory principles the most patent and in some instances disgusting errors. GVEGW 98.5

“3. Nowhere, and by no one, was there presented a systematic and harmonious body of hygienic truths, free from patent errors, and consistent with the Bible and the principles of the Christian religion.” GVEGW 98.6

Several paragraphs later the good doctor returned to his main point: GVEGW 98.7

“It must certainly be regarded as a thing remarkable, and evincing unmistakable evidence of divine insight and direction, that in the midst of confused and conflicting teachings, claiming the authority of science and experience, but warped by ultra notions and rendered impotent for good by the great admixture of error—it must be admitted to be something extraordinary that a person making no claims to scientific knowledge or erudition should have been able to organize, from the confused and error-tainted mass of ideas advanced by a few writers and thinkers on health subjects, a body of hygienic principles so harmonious, so consistent, and so genuine that the discussions, the researches, the discoveries, and the experience of a quarter of a century have not resulted in the overthrow of a single principle, but have only served to establish the doctrines taught.” ⁷⁷ GVEGW 98.8

Seven years after he had penned these words, Dr. Kellogg addressed a General Conference in session, on March 3, 1897, upon the same subject. He added: “Every single statement with reference to healthful living, and the general principles that underlie the subject, have been verified by scientific discovery.... There is not a single principle in relation to the healthful development of our bodies and minds that is advocated in these writings from Sister White, which I am not prepared to demonstrate conclusively from scientific evidence.... The writings 30 years ago are fully substantiated by the scientific discoveries of today.” ⁷⁸ GVEGW 98.9

Even more remarkable, then, is the personal testimony of the late Dr. Clive M. McCay, who spent his entire 35-year teaching career (1927-1962) at Cornell University. He authored or coauthored more than 150 scientific papers on various aspects of nutrition. One of his areas of expertise was the history of nutrition. GVEGW 99.1

Dr. McCay’s contribution to that science was so significant that upon his death in 1967 the Journal of the American Dietetic Association published a comprehensive life sketch, ⁷⁹ and the Journal of Nutrition devoted 10 full pages to a retrospective survey of his life and work. ⁸⁰ GVEGW 99.2

Dr. McCay refused to date the beginning of modern nutritional science earlier than 1900 (by which time Ellen White had penned perhaps the majority of her writings on health and diet). Nearly all writings on nutrition before 1900 consisted mainly of arrant nonsense; yet, said Dr. McCay in a three-part series of articles written for the Review and Herald in 1959, Mrs. White’s “basic concepts about the relation between diet and health have been verified to an unusual degree by scientific advances of the past decades. Someone may attempt to explain this remarkable fact by saying: ‘Mrs. White simply borrowed her ideas from others.’ But how would she know which ideas to borrow and which to reject out of the bewildering array of theories and health teachings current in the nineteenth century? She would have had to be a most amazing person, with knowledge beyond her times, in order to do this successfully!” GVEGW 99.3

Dr. McCay concluded authoritatively, “In spite of the fact that the works of Mrs. White were written long before the advent of modern scientific nutrition, no better overall guide is available today.” ⁸¹ GVEGW 99.4