Footprints of the Pioneers

Chapter 21—Home on the Hillside

Horatio S. Lay, M.D.

IN THE winter of 1862-1863 two of the children of James and Ellen White, then living in Battle Creek, Michigan, were stricken with pneumonia. The medical practice of the time was to shut the patient away from all outside air, especially night air, to forbid the use of water internally or externally, and to dose with heavy mineral drugs. But James White happened to see in a newspaper an article by Dr. James C. Jackson, giving unorthodox but sensible directions for treatment of the disease, then epidemic: no drugs, but hot baths, cooling packs, liquid foods, plenty of water drinking, ventilation, rest, and care. The therapy appealed to the parents, and instead of calling a physician, they followed the directions of Dr. Jackson, and their children recovered. FOPI 176.3

Dr. Jackson was a pioneer in America in the use of natural curative agencies instead of drugs. He, Dr. R. T. Trall, of New jersey, and Sylvester Graham, of New York, are to be accounted chief of the reformers who set the feet of American medicine and hygiene upon a more rational course; but they cannot be said to have been popular in their day. ¹²⁸ FOPI 176.4

Dr. Jackson was unique in that he never, from the beginning of his medical practice, gave a single drug, “not so much as ... the homeopathic pellet of the seven-millionth dilution, and dissolving it in Lake Superior.” The son of a physician, he was attracted in his thirty-sixth year to the study of medicine because of his own failing health, but the experience of Priessnitz, of Austria, the founder of modern hydrotherapy, gripped his imagination, and he entered at once after graduation upon these methods of cure, modifying and adding according to his own and others’ experience. FOPI 177.1

In his prime he may have been a romantic figure, marked by the eccentricities of medical genius; in his old age, in which his only extant photograph portrays him, he was still striking in appearance, patriarchal rather than professional according to modern standards. The dome of his head was bald, but long flowing locks fell to his shoulders; his upper lip was shaven, but his white beard swept his bosom; his smiling face was marked in the middle by a very pug nose. FOPI 178.1

In 1858, after an initial experiment of three years, with another physician, at Glen Haven, on Lake Skaneateles, he purchased a small water-cure establishment in the outskirts of Dansville, New York, and developed there what was afterward known as the Dansville or Jackson Sanitarium, ¹²⁹ but which he at first modestly and comfortingly called, “Our Home on the Hillside.” He published a health journal called The Laws of Life, for which Dr. Trall and other reform-minded physicians wrote, as well as he and his co-worker and adopted daughter, Dr. Harriet Austin. His institution grew in size and public renown; and while assailed by many allopathic and even homeopathic practitioners, he was widely respected, as the success of his methods demanded. FOPI 178.2

In June, 1863, Mrs. White received in vision a prospectus of the program of health, hygiene, and curative agencies which has made the groundwork of the health movement among Seventh day Adventists. The disuse of drugs, the employment of all natural means of health and restoration to health, a vegetarian and simple diet, healthful dress, a balancing of useful labor with rational recreation, and a cheerful, buoyant state of mind, were the essential points. This regimen she and her husband, with others, sought to put into their own practice, and they succeeded except in the matter of work and recreation. The pressing needs of the cause which bore with funneled focus upon James White, seemed to forbid his letting up for even a moment, and to quite a degree this was also the experience of his principal colaborers. FOPI 178.3

In consequence, in the summer of 1865, after a strenuous campaign in the West, James White was stricken down at his home in Battle Creek, with a severe attack of paralysis, which prostrated him physically and mentally. It was his third stroke, and the doctors privately gave no hope of his recovery. Elder J. N. Loughborough, then in Iowa, was telegraphed to come immediately to Battle Creek. He came, but he too having been under a severe strain, was within twenty-four hours threatened with the same fate. Uriah Smith, editor of the Review and Herald, was likewise worn down by labor and close application to his work, and it seemed that almost the whole responsible force of the cause was about to be removed. FOPI 179.1

A Seventh-day Adventist physician, Dr. Horatio S. Lay, of Allegan, Michigan, had a year before taken his invalid wife to the Dansville institution, and after her recovery he had been persuaded to remain and join the staff. He was now sent for, and upon his examination he advised that all three men go to the Home on the Hillside for rest and treatment. This was decided upon, and Dr. Lay accompanied his patients and Mrs. White to the sanitarium. The work at Seventh-day Adventist headquarters was sadly disrupted, as younger and less experienced men filled in the places of those who had been stricken, but the immediate business of the invalids was to get well. FOPI 180.1

Dr. Jackson was less pessimistic as to James White than his former physicians had been, but he prescribed for him six or eight months’ rest and treatment, for John Loughborough five or six months, and for Uriah Smith five or six weeks. The last named remained a month, and went home restored. In the case of James White there developed a sharp though friendly difference of opinion and conviction between Dr. Jackson and Mrs. White as to treatment. FOPI 180.2

In the matter of diet they were nearly at one, as the Whites had for a year been on a meatless diet, and this was the teaching of Jackson; but he also carried his teaching to the extreme of a saltless diet. Mrs. White, experimenting with this, found it detrimental. This, however, was minor. But when it came to recreation, there was a very decided difference. Dr. Jackson was a believer in Christian principles and experience in religion; but in the case of James White he felt that his malady was due in no small degree to his intense devotion to a religious idea. He therefore advised that he completely forget all such matters, and “rest,” both physically and mentally. FOPI 180.3

Moreover, the doctor’s psychiatric practice involved diversion of the nature of games, card playing, theater-going, and dancing. And though he did not insist that Elder White must dance, he did think he would find help in attention to the other diversions of the institution, including theatrical plays and card playing. He could think of nothing else to divert the mind of his patient from his overindulgence in religion. And he insisted, also, that he have no physical exercise just rest. FOPI 180.4

But Mrs. White believed in the soothing influences of nature, and in graduated exercise. She believed further in prayer as a curative agency. Active as James White had always been, both physically and mentally, he sank in discouragement under the regimen at Dansville; and when they had been there three months, as he seemed no better, his wife determined to take him home. To this Dr. Jackson strenuously objected. Finally they effected a compromise, by which he might be taken as far as Rochester, fifty miles away, to the home of friends. If he should not grow better he might be brought back. FOPI 181.1

So, with Elder Loughborough accompanying them, they went to a quiet retreat near Rochester, the home of Bradley Lamson, whose daughter, Phoebe Lamson, later became the first woman physician at the Health Reform Institute, or Battle Creek Sanitarium. Elder J. N. Andrews by request joined them there, and earnest prayer was offered for Elder White’s recovery. He made some improvement, and a month later the party returned to Battle Creek. FOPI 181.2

But the way back to complete health was long and difficult. After nearly a year Mrs. White determined to take her husband’s case wholly into her hands, with the blessing of God. They bought a farm upstate, at Greenville, and there, with his wife for nurse, mental therapist, and careful prescriber and arranger of work, he made in another year a partial recovery, and in two or three years a complete comeback to health. FOPI 181.3

Dansville has always been an intriguing name to me; and so, without knowledge of its present state, We decided to look it up. We found it a pleasant little city, tree-shaded and speckless. When we inquired about the old Dansville Sanitarium, we were informed that it was still there, but under the name of the Physical Culture Hotel, and under the management of the Bernarr Macfadden Foundation. FOPI 181.4

This institution is on the outskirts of the town, on the forested side of a mountain, reached by a winding road. The old wooden sanitarium burned down in 1879, fourteen years after the Whites were there, and was replaced by the Jacksons (father and son) with a fireproof brick structure, which is the present main building. At that time also its name was changed from Home on the Hillside to Jackson Sanitarium. The family kept it until the early years of the twentieth century, when it was taken over by a banking group, who sold it in 1929 to Macfadden. Some of the original outlying cottages still remain: Clovernook, Villula, and Crown Hill. The old Liberty Hall, however, which was their auditorium and gymnasium, connected with the main building by a corridor, has disappeared, and other buildings occupy its probable site. FOPI 182.1

An interesting description of the old institution, by a former patient, was found in the hostess’ office: “It was a rambling old building, with low ceilings and narrow halls. The rooms were heated by box stoves, the beds were hard mattresses of sea grass and cotton on slats, and pillows of cotton. Small kerosene lamps furnished the little light required, and no window curtains obscured the sunshine and fresh air. In the dining room long rows of narrow tables were set, the patients drawing numbers from week to week for their seats, thus insuring a democratic mixing up of all classes, individually and collectively. A plate, cup,, saucer, spoon, knife, fork, and tumbler were at each place. There were no courses served in those days. The staples were unleavened graham crackers, graham mush and porridge, apple sauce, vegetables, and fresh fruits, with milk and eggs-no raised bread, no white flour concoctions, no meat, no butter, no tea nor coffee. Does this sound like bitter fare? Yet the writer can testify from experience and observation that never were meals taken with heartier relish than during that graham and vegetarian epoch. FOPI 183.1

“Eight o’clock p.m. was the retiring hour, and lights were out at half past eight. Six o’clock a.m. was the rising hour, and three or four times weekly the young man appointed to arouse the slumberers by vigorous raps on a Chinese gong, announced in loud tones through the hall that Dr. Jackson would lecture in the parlor at half past six, and everybody was expected to come promptly. The treatment was limited chiefly to half baths, packs, sitz baths, plunges, and dripping sheets.” FOPI 183.2

What influence did the Dansville Sanitarium have upon the Seventh-day Adventist institutions of health, now banding the world, unique in principles of living and methods of healing? Whatever the degree of that influence, it came through the first such medical institution of Seventh-day Adventists, the Western Health Reform Institute, later renamed the Battle Creek Sanitarium; for that was the parent institution from which all other Seventh-day Adventist sanitariums stem, and the Dansville institution touched none of them directly. FOPI 183.3

That the medical principles and practices of Dr. Jackson and Dr. Trall had considerable bearing upon the therapeutics of the Battle Creek institution is not to be denied. Dr. Trall for a short period was a visiting physician at the institution and a department editor of their magazine, The Health Reformer, while several of the early Seventh-day Adventist physicians received at least a part of their medical education at his Hygieo Therapeutic College at Florence Heights, New Jersey. Dr. Jackson’s institution made a pattern of water treatments and diet the reflection of which any early worker or patient at the Battle Creek Sanitarium could recognize. Furthermore, the Adventist physician, Dr. H. S. Lay, who was first called to head the Health Reform Institute, had spent over a year on the staff of Our Home on the ‘ ‘Hillside’, and naturally he was influenced by its theories and practices. His experience at Dansville was indeed fortunate, just as Florence Nightingale’s experience at Kaiserwerth and Paris was helpful to her in formulating her nursing education. FOPI 184.1

But if Battle Creek and its progeny of sanitariums had been merely the echoes of Dansville, they would never have discovered the vitality which has made the Seventh-day Adventist health work and institutions so potent a force both in healing and in evangelism. The revelation of Christian health principles which came through Mrs. White, and the divine principles which with patient and indefatigable effort she inculcated in some faithful believing medical workers, have made a platform and a system infinitely greater in physical, mental, and spiritual values than Dansville ever conceived. FOPI 184.2

The history of the first years of the Health Reform Institute is replete with the struggle to make those Christian health principles take root. Particularly was the influence of Dansville opposed to the health teachings of Mrs. White in mental therapy, the employment of useful, graduated labor, and the influence of Christian peace upon mind and body. The early experience of Dr. J. H. Kellogg, while he firmly believed and exemplified the teachings of Mrs. White, told for the swift up building of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. And the same influences have told in some of his associates, such as Dr. Kate Lindsay, Dr. O. G. Place, Dr. W. H. Riley, Dr. David Paulson, and other young men now grown older but still living, who have carried the gospel of health around the world, establishing public health services, treatment rooms, sanitariums, nurse-training schools, and a medical college. A debt of gratitude is due the pioneer Home on the Hillside for its early educational influence, but its contribution to the Christian medical ministry of this church is as that of a kindly neighbor tying up the cut finger of a boy who goes on to learn the science of a doctor of medicine. FOPI 184.3