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Why I Believe in Mrs. E. G. White

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    Chapter Six—Visions on Healthful Living

    Perhaps on no subject has Mrs. White written more than on the subject of healthful living. If we are to appreciate the singular force of those writings we need to carry ourselves back to the mid-nineteenth century to look at how men lived, how they ate, and how they sought to cure themselves of various maladies. In the mid-1850’s the American diet was appallingly far from healthful. With this statement any present-day public health worker or authority in nutrition would agree. Overeating, even gluttony, was common, and so was drunkenness. The record of those times is a witness to the great durability of the stomachs of our forebears. Their digestive tracts must have been made of iron. Indeed, their very constitutions must have been made of something like unto iron. How else would they ever have survived the drugs they swallowed to “cure” them of their illnesses?WBEGW 41.1

    The common medicines then employed, though sometimes bearing an innocent-sounding name like calomel, often had as their active ingredients such lethal substances as opium, strychnine, and mercury. A writer of those times, with some realization of the dangers of the popular medicines, ironically remarked that “Saul has slain his thousands, but calomel its tens of thousands.” Tight-fitting dresses enveloped and constricted women. Corsets were drawn so tight that they gave a wasplike appearance to the body and made breathing difficult. Long, trailing skirts gathered up the dust of the street, thus adding to the folly of women’s dress.WBEGW 41.2

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