A Critique of the Book Prophetess of Health

An Absence of Incontrovertible Evidence

There are, of course, other diseases which Ellen White says are caused by masturbation and we note that this is one of the few areas of her teachings which has not yet been sustained by scientific studies. CBPH 72.12

An experienced psychologist, Dr. Elden Chalmers of Andrews University, who has done a great deal of careful study in this field reports that as he has made inquiry of recognized authorities in this field, the authors who have made mention of masturbation in their writings on the subject when pressed, have admitted that sound evidence is not available. No longitudinal studies have been conducted in this area. On the other hand, he declares that there has not yet been found evidence which would disprove Ellen White’s teachings on masturbation or sex, popular thinking to the contrary. Notwithstanding, ministers and counselors will testify that they have interviewed people who in their youth in all innocence were masturbating, but did not connect it at all with distressing symptoms of illness. After they broke with the habit—some of them after reading Ellen White—they found lasting relief. Scientific tables would be meaningless to such, but they know some things from experience. CBPH 72.13

In his scholarly study on “Masturbatory Insanity; The History of an Idea,” (Journal of Mental Science 108:1, Jan., 1962), E. H. Hare refers to a study of 500 patients admitted consecutively to the Iowa State Psychopathic Hospital. He states that the authors of the study (Malamud, W., and Palmer, G., “The Role Played by Masturbation in the Causation of Mental Disturbances,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders, 76:220, 1932) found that in twenty-two cases masturbation was “apparently the most important cause of disorder.” CBPH 72.14

He then continues; CBPH 72.15

The authors concluded that it was the mental conflict engendered by masturbation rather than the habit itself which led to the illness, and they believed this conclusion to be supported by the efficacy of psychotherapy directed towards readjusting the patient’s ideas about masturbation. Yet the fact that fifteen of the twenty-two patients suffered from depression must raise doubts about the validity even of this temperate conclusion, for the depressed patient is not only prone to blame himself for neglect of what he believes to be the rules of health, but also tends to recover from his illness whether treated by psychotherapy or not.—Ibid. p. 22. CBPH 72.16

Thus Hare questions the conclusions of Malamud and Palmer, but says, significantly, that their study is “one of the very few attempts (indeed, as far as my reading goes, the only real attempt) at a scientific study of the masturbatory hypothesis [the hypothesis that masturbation can cause insanity].” CBPH 72.17

After acknowledging that “there is no way of disproving the masturbatory hypothesis,” Hare offers his final conclusion: “All we can say, from the evidence, is that the association between masturbation and mental disorder is weak and inconstant and that therefore, if masturbation is a causal factor, it is probably not a very important one.”—Ibid. p. 19. So although this authority minimizes the possibility that masturbation and insanity might be linked, he does not dismiss it altogether. Even more significantly, he has discovered that there has been only one real attempt to test the hypothesis scientifically. CBPH 72.18

Writing of masturbation in their Adolescent Development and Adjustment (McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1965) Lester C. and Alice Crow conclude: “The effects of this form of sex perversion are not yet fully known.” CBPH 73.1

Ellen White in her Appeal to Mothers uses the term “I have been shown” (page 18). See full 32 page pamphlet as Appendix C. CBPH 73.2

In the case of masturbation, we believe that it could well be that in time her statement will be supported. Who knows what the investigations of another decade or two may yield? But even if it were not, those who believe that Ellen White did not lie, when she said she “saw” will be content to maintain suspended judgment. CBPH 73.3

Twenty-five years ago science seemed to indicate that Ellen White’s teachings regarding a “cancer germ” were the fruit of her imagination and had no basis in fact. In 1956 the breakthrough came in the discovery of cancer producing viruses, and since then there has been ever-mounting evidence in support of this thesis. CBPH 73.4

Twenty years ago many scientists would have questioned Ellen White’s statement that tobacco is a “slow, insidious, but most malignant poison.” But not today. Scientific studies overwhelmingly agree that tobacco is exactly what more than one hundred years ago Ellen White declared it to be. The Ellen G. White statements linking a large percentage of birth defects with the excessive use of alcohol (1890) or the use of drugs (1865) would have seemed unscientific even twenty years ago. But increasing knowledge concerning DNA since 1958 has shown that many drugs, among them alcohol, are responsible for tragic birth defects. The thalidomide tragedy of the early 1960’s bears strong evidence of this. Prenatal influence, stressed by Ellen White from 1865 on, was until 1954 held to be but a myth. Not so now. Is it possible that scientists in the future could reverse their pronouncements on masturbation, as they have done in so many other areas during recent decades? With the paucity of research in this field, is it not too early to declare Ellen White’s statements unreliable? CBPH 73.5