A Significant Omission
Prophetess of Health, on pages 150 and 152 discusses Ellen White’s writing in 1864 on masturbation which appeared in Appeal to Mothers. The book on page 152 quotes only a portion of one key statement:CBPH 71.11
Her angel guide had directed her attention to the present corrupt state of the world. “Everywhere I looked” she recalled with obvious horror, “I saw imbecility, dwarfed forms, crippled limbs, misshapen heads, and deformity of every description.” Sickened by the sight before her, she learned that it had resulted from the practice of solitary vice, so widespread that “a large share of the youth now living are worthless.”CBPH 71.12
But in a sentence omitted from the quotation cited, Ellen White attributes the deplorable situation of “imbecility,” “dwarfed forms,” “crippled limbs,” etc. to a broader spectrum of causes. “Sins and crimes and the violation of nature’s laws, were shown me as the causes of this accumulation of human woe and suffering,” Appeal to Mothers, p. 17.CBPH 71.13
Here is the full statement in its context. Ellen White introduces a particular scene opened up to her in the Health Reform vision and one she was on different occasions to come back to.CBPH 71.14
The state of our world was presented before me, and my attention was especially called to the youth of our time. Everywhere I looked, I saw imbecility, dwarfed forms, crippled limbs, misshapen heads, and deformity of every description. Sins and crimes, and the violation of nature’s laws, were shown me as the causes of this accumulation of human woe and suffering. I saw such degradation and vile practices, such defiance of God, and I heard such words of blasphemy, that my soul sickened. From what was shown me, a large share of the youth now living are worthless. Corrupt habits are wasting their energies, and bringing upon them loathsome and complicated diseases.—See Appendix C.CBPH 71.15
Writing in Spiritual Gifts, Vol. 4, a few months later, and reporting the same scene in the health reform vision, she included intemperance in eating and drinking as causes for the deplorable state she had seen:CBPH 72.1
The present corrupt state of the world was presented before me. The sight was terrible. I have wondered that the inhabitants of the earth were not destroyed, like the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. I have seen reason enough for the present state of degeneracy and mortality in the world. Blind passion controls reason, and every high consideration with many is sacrificed to lust.CBPH 72.2
The first great evil was intemperance in eating and drinking. Men and women have made themselves slaves to appetite. They are intemperate in labor.CBPH 72.3
A reform in eating would be a saving of expense and labor. The wants of a family can be easily supplied that is satisfied with plain, wholesome diet. Rich food breaks down the healthy organs of the body and mind. And how many labor so very hard to accomplish this.CBPH 72.4
Children who eat improperly are often feeble, pale and dwarfed, and are nervous, excitable and irritable. Everything noble is sacrificed to the appetite, and the animal passions predominate. The lives of many children from five to ten and fifteen years of age seem marked with depravity.—4SG, 131-132.CBPH 72.5
In early 1865 she published the Health: or How to Live pamphlets, and again discussed the causes of the deformities she had witnessed, this time pointing to the effects of drugs:CBPH 72.6
Physicians, by administering their drug-poisons, have done very much to increase the depreciation of the race, physically, mentally, and morally. Everywhere you may go you will see deformity, disease and imbecility, which in very many cases can be traced directly back to the drug-poisons, administered by the hand of a doctor, as a remedy for some of life’s ills.—How to Live #3, p. 51.CBPH 72.7
In 1890 Ellen White in Patriarchs and Prophets, 561, broadened the statement regarding the cause of deformities in children to include the excessive use of alcohol on the part of parents:CBPH 72.8
As the result of parental intemperance, children often lack physical strength and mental and moral power.... To a great degree, parents are responsible, not only for the violent passions and perverted appetites of their children, but for the infirmities of thousands born deaf, blind, diseased, or idiotic.CBPH 72.9
It is unfair to Ellen White, because she dropped into An Appeal to Mothers an impressive scene of the results of the violation of nature’s laws, be it “intemperance in eating and drinking,” taking poisonous drugs into the system, or corrupt or vile practice, to maintain that all the woes she viewed in the vision were traceable to masturbation.CBPH 72.10
Scientific studies of the last twenty years pin much in birth defects on alcohol and drugs as does Ellen White.CBPH 72.11