Ellen G. White and Her Critics

The First Medical Witness Examined

We come now to the climactic evidence presented—what the critic describes as “the testimony of physicians who have personally examined Mrs. White.” EGWC 75.1

Who were these physicians? What did they actually say? How well qualified were they, either by training or by opportunity for observation, to offer a medical opinion in her case? The answers to these questions will enable us to evaluate their testimony. Let us examine them. EGWC 75.2

Canright quotes the following letter which he declares was written to him by a Dr. W. J. Fairfield, who “was for years a physician in their [the Seventh-day Adventists’] Sanitarium at Battle Creek.” EGWC 75.3

“Battle Creek, Mich., Dec. 28, 1887. EGWC 75.4

“Dear Sir:—You are undoubtedly right in ascribing Mrs. E. G. White’s so-called visions to disease, It has been my opportunity to observe her case a good deal, covering quite a period of years, which, with a full knowledge of her history from the beginning, gave me no chance to doubt her (‘divine’) attacks to be simply hysterical trances. Age itself has almost cured her. EGWC 75.5

“W. J. Fairfield, M.D.” EGWC 75.6

Here are the facts about Dr. Fairfield that bear on his qualifications as a witness against Mrs. White: EGWC 75.7

1. In an editorial note in The Health Reformer, March, 1878, page 94, Dr. J. H. Kellogg announces that Dr. Fairfield has “just graduated” from “medical school.” He returned to the Battle Creek Sanitarium as a qualified physician. ^* EGWC 75.8

2. The best evidence available indicates that he left the sanitarium in 1881, or shortly thereafter. EGWC 75.9

3. A little later he opened a rival medical institution in Battle Creek. EGWC 75.10

4. A letter from Dr. J. H. Kellogg to Mrs. White, December 19, 1885, refers to Dr. Fairfield’s rival institution. Says Dr. Kellogg: EGWC 76.1

“I have some most cutting things to bear, the details of which I must not trouble you with, but they arise out of the miserable persecution from Fairfield, whose malignancy knows no bounds.... EGWC 76.2

“Through Fairfield’s influence, I expect to be expelled from the society of regular physicians, of which I am a member, on the charge that I teach in my writings things which are not in harmony with the views of the regular profession.” EGWC 76.3

Canright, who presents Dr. Fairfield and also Dr. Kellogg as witnesses against Mrs. White, describes Dr. Kellogg as having “a world-wide reputation as a physician and a scientist.” According to that, what kind of person must Dr. Fairfield have been! EGWC 76.4

5. Dr. Fairfield, in his letter to Canright, does not claim that he had ever examined Mrs. White while she was in vision. How could he have done so, as a physician, when he did not graduate from medical school until 1878? ^* EGWC 76.5

6. Dr. Fairfield does not claim that Mrs. White was even his patient at any time at the sanitarium. He simply makes the general statement: “It has been my opportunity to observe her case a good deal, covering quite a period of years.” But just what does he mean by “observe her case”? The only claim that critics make as to Mrs. White’s being a “case” in the medical sense of the word, was when she was in vision. But her public visions had ended by the time he was a qualified physician. When she was not in vision she was a most matter-of-fact mother in her home, a reserved and decorous speaker in the pulpit, and a quietly sociable person in Christian homes that she visited in her constant traveling. EGWC 76.6

In the proper medical sense of the word Dr. Fairfield patently did not have a “case” to “observe.” We would take the matter one step further and declare that Dr. Fairfield had little opportunity to focus his medically trained eyes upon her even in casual neighborly contacts in the community. He became a physician in 1878 and wrote his letter in 1887. Where was Mrs. White during this period of time? Living regularly in Battle Creek that she might be observed? No. She traveled much and wrote much, and the file of her letters enables us to know within a small margin of error where she was and when. From the beginning of 1878 to the end of 1887 she was in Battle Creek a total of approximately eighteen months, or an average of less than eight weeks out of each year! ^* And while she was at home in Battle Creek she spent little time out in public for anyone to “observe her.” Most of the time she was in her home, occupied with her housewifely duties, and with her writing. In 1881, when she was in Battle Creek the longest, five months, she was confined at home for three of those months from “lameness,” on account of an accident she suffered on New Year’s Day. EGWC 76.7

We think the reader will not wish us to carry the matter further. Dr. Fairfield, just coming out of medical school in 1878, who, as a physician, had never seen Mrs. White in vision, who had little opportunity even to see her as a fellow citizen in Battle Creek, and whose setting up of a rival medical institution would presumably make him critical of everyone who sponsored the Battle Creek Sanitarium, is presented as an impressive medical authority who is competent to pass judgment on her state in vision! EGWC 77.1