A Problem for The Health Reformer

After a time it became evident that much of Dr. Trail’s department was devoted to a defense of certain personal hobbies, or theories, in which he was at variance with members of the medical profession. Arguments pro and con were inserted, relating to matters of minor importance, or in which the majority of the readers took but little interest. And so the readers were given occasion to assert that, according to The Health Reformer, such extreme positions as the absolute discontinuance of salt, sugar, milk, butter, and eggs were the principal reforms to be effected.SHM 195.1

With this background the reader can better understand a situation described by Mrs. White in the latter part of 1870, when, after returning from western camp meetings, she and her husband found the editor of The Health Reformer—referred to as Bro. B—sick. She reported:SHM 195.2

“The Reformer was about dead. Bro. B had urged the extreme positions of Dr. Trail. This had influenced the doctor to come out in The Reformer stronger than he otherwise would have done, in discarding milk, sugar, and salt. The position to entirely discontinue the use of these things may be right in its order; but the time had not come to take a general stand upon these points.”—Testimonies for the Church 3:19.SHM 195.3

The situation was indeed desperate. Every day’s mail brought to the office of The Health Reformer demands from subscribers that their subscriptions be discontinued. Especially vigorous protests were received from the western states, where the country was new and fruit scarce. Inquiries were raised asking whether the church members at Battle Creek were living entirely without salt or milk or eggs. “We can get but little fruit, and we have left off the use of meat, tea, coffee, and tobacco,” some declared, “but we must have something to sustain life.”—Ibid., 20.SHM 195.4

Mrs. White wrote: “We sympathized with our brethren who were conscientiously seeking to be in harmony with the body of Sabbathkeeping Adventists. They were becoming discouraged, and some were backsliding upon the health reform, fearing that at Battle Creek they were radical and fanatical.We could not raise an interest anywhere in the West to obtain subscribers for The Health Reformer. We saw that the writers in The Reformer were going away from the people and leaving them behind.”—Ibid.SHM 196.1