A Critique of the Book Prophetess of Health

Did Mrs. White Copy ³

In this setting, Prophetess of Health on pages 162-167 reverts to the question of Mrs. White’s borrowing’s from other health reformers. In order to understand the significance of the parallels which the book draws between certain passages in Ellen White’s writings and the writings of those of other health reformers, it is necessary to consider carefully the dates of all the exhibits presented and the claims she made for her writings on the subject of health, especially her initial writings on the topic. CBPH 76.10

Prophetess of Health says that Ellen White made “free” and “unacknowledged use” of Coles (page 161). Did Mrs. White really make “free use” of Coles’ writings? No, she did not. CBPH 76.11

What appears in two paragraphs of Testimonies for the Church 2:63, 64, parallels seven pages of Coles’ text. Notice that ellipses are used seven times in order to place Coles’ passage beside Ellen White’s (pages 162, 163). Is this “free” use? A close study of the two passages will also reveal that the sequence of the various thoughts is frequently shifted in Mrs. White’s version. CBPH 76.12

Furthermore, Ellen White rewords those scattered portions of Coles’ text which she does use. Given the standards of popular literature of her time, such “use” was not at all uncommon. Indeed, even today it is at times done, although most scholars would make a footnote reference. Prophetess of Health points out that the practice of borrowing was quite common among the health reformers (See Chapter Three). Ellen White’s failure to acknowledge her “debt” was certainly not unusual. See pp. 29-31 of this critique. For a comprehensive discussion of the use Ellen White made of the writings of others see “Mrs. White’s Literary Borrowings: The Charge of Plagiarism” in Ellen G. White and Her Critics, pages 403-428, 459-467. CBPH 76.13

Prophetess of Health charges further that Ellen White followed Coles in associating tea and coffee with alcoholic beverages. Coles’ influence is supposed to be “unmistakable” “throughout her writings” (page 165). Then follows a list of parallel columns in which Ellen White’s statements published in Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene in 1890 (page 34) are compared with Coles’ statement penned in 1853. It should be remembered that Ellen White was given a vision relating to tea, coffee, and tobacco in 1848. CBPH 76.14

As to the literary dependence between the two passages, it should be noted that very few words are the same, but such words as “stimulant,” “machinery,” “vivacity” and “languor and debility” do occur in both places. However, even if Ellen White did have Coles’ passage before her, when she wrote, she made the language her own. She did not slavishly follow Coles. CBPH 76.15

And yet, the fact of the matter is that the ideas expressed in this passage are found clear back in Ellen White’s very first major exposition of health principles, the article “Health” which appeared in Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 4, published in 1864, before she read Coles. There she said: “Tea and coffee are stimulating.” She went on to compare the effects of tea to those of tobacco, but later said, “The whole system under the influence of these stimulants often becomes intoxicated. And to just that degree that the nervous system is excited by false stimulants, will be the prostration which will follow after the influence of the exciting cause has abated” (4SGa 128, 129). Here we find the central ideas of the two “parallel” passages under study stated clearly and forcefully, but in language which shows no parallelism at all to Coles. CBPH 76.16

Prophetess of Health claims too much when it attributes Ellen White’s ideas published in 1890 to Coles, because they can be shown to have appeared in her 1864 writings, in her own words entirely before she had even read Coles. CBPH 77.1

We have pointed out on pages 53-55 that the idea of tea, coffee, tobacco, and alcohol all producing similar effects was so much the common property of those interested in health at the time that it would be virtually impossible to fix any direct line of descent for the idea. CBPH 77.2

In conclusion we can safely say that Mrs. White did borrow phraseology from Horace Mann and L. B. Coles, both of whom she would include among those health reformers whose views were “so nearly in harmony with what the Lord had revealed” to her, but these borrowings began to appear in her writings only after the time she freely admitted to having read these writers. She used their language on a few occasions to express in her own way what she had been shown in vision. CBPH 77.3