III. The Missing Exhibits
The reader of Prophetess of Health, from the first chapter with the introduction of the shut door matter of the 1840’s to its closing sentences regarding Seventh-day Adventists in 1970 operating a world-wide chain of 329 medical institutions, is short changed. The exhibits which would tell the whole story are just not there.CBPH 19.12
The reader of such a volume, prepared as it is by a scholar well trained in historical research, has every right to expect that what he peruses under such a title is the whole story and that the image in which Ellen White emerges in each chapter is the true image.CBPH 20.1
1. Influence on the Longevity and Health of Seventh-day Adventists
Reserved to a few pages in the heart of the last chapter of Prophetess of Health and the last three paragraphs appearing on the last two pages is mention of the positive enduring contributions of Ellen G. White made in the field of health ministry in the Seventh-day Adventist church. If the volume Prophetess of Health were true to its title these are the points which should have been developed and expanded to fill most of the pages between its two covers. Here it is stated that “although consumed with making preparation for the next world, she nevertheless devoted much of her energy to improving life and health in this one.” (page 200). One would judge from the wording that she succeeded in this, but where is this story told in the book?CBPH 20.2
Why is not the reader introduced to a representative cross-section of the published testimonies of many who down through the years witnessed to the often lifesaving blessing which they experienced as they brought their lives into harmony with the principles expounded in Ellen White’s writings in the field of health from 1864 and onward. Only one is cited and Health Reformer references given to two others. Dr. J. H. Kellogg back in 1890 would put those who benefited at “thousands”—“thousands have testified to physical, mental and moral benefits received” (Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, 114). These are a matter of easily obtained records, many of them going back to the years 1864, 65 and 66. Why is not the positive and repeated testimony of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg included? He was perhaps the most competent of all the witnesses, but his is one of the missing exhibits.CBPH 20.3
Grudgingly, it seems, the reader is told in the closing sentences of the book of Seventh-day Adventists who, following the principles of health advocated by Ellen White “enjoy better health for it,” if “we are to believe recent scientific reports.” Would it not be fair to Ellen White and the readers to present the mounting weight of evidence from many witnesses in more recent years, particularly in the detailed reports of the carefully conducted scientific studies? Are these not needed to fairly portray Ellen White as a Prophetess of Health?CBPH 20.4
Pages can be devoted to dress and the discussion of its length in inches, a matter which Ellen White declared was never revealed to her, but there is almost no room for a presentation of what Ellen White’s health reform teachings meant to thousands who put them into practice. Two lines are devoted to mention of scientific reports of the fruitage of Ellen White’s health reform teachings. Not one scientific confirmation is named, although there are many. These are among the most significant incontrovertible evidences of the integrity of what she claims God revealed to her. But the story is not told. These are among the missing exhibits.CBPH 20.5
2. Sanitariums and Treatment Rooms
The reader in fewer than ten lines in the closing paragraphs is told that “despite the Battle Creek tragedy she left behind at the time of her death thirty-three sanitariums and countless treatment rooms on six continents” (page 200), and that “As of 1970, Seventh-day Adventists were operating a world-wide chain of 329 medical institutions stretching from Kingston to Karachi, from Bangkok to Belem—each a memorial to the life and work of Ellen G. White, Prophetess of Health” (page 201). Earlier in the chapter a page is devoted to recounting what is said to be Mrs. White’s sanitarium building campaign.CBPH 20.6
Isn’t this a success story in itself which should fill a sizable portion of a book titled Prophetess of Health? Why only a few paragraphs in the closing chapter, when pages are given to the problems and seeming conflicts in starting the first medical institution, the Western Health Reform institute. Why is the reader not informed of the reasons for the success of these institutions—the employment of rational methods, discarding as far as possible “poisonous drugs” as they were so freely administered a hundred years ago, and eminently successful use of hydrotherapy and physical therapy, which relieved pain and fostered recovery, and saved many a life; the adoption of a “well balanced, nutritious and appetizing diet,” free from the use of flesh foods; and the staffing by self-sacrificing physicians and nurses, and a retinue of other employees dedicated to bringing spiritual and physical blessing to the sick?CBPH 20.7
And where did the basic elements come from? From the counsels of Ellen G. White. And today administrators, physicians, department heads, and nurses are found perusing Ministry of Healing, Counsels on Health, Medical Ministry, Counsels on Diet and Foods, etc., to reaffirm the guidelines. And leaders in this work unabashedly and concertedly search the pages of compilations of E. G. White materials on the objectives of Seventh-day Adventist institutions. These writings are, as a whole, often cited in policy making meetings. This is what portrays Ellen White in her true image, but these are among the missing exhibits.CBPH 20.8
3. The College of Medical Evangelists and Loma Linda University
Mention is made on pages 200, 201, that Mrs. White determined in 1906 to turn the Loma Linda Sanitarium into an educational center and in due time called for a medical school which opened in 1910. It is correctly stated that “during the last few years of her life Ellen White labored incessantly to insure that the College of Medical Evangelists fulfilled its divinely appointed mission” (page 199). Allusion is also made to the Ellen G. White Memorial Hospital in Los Angeles which served for years as the principal clinical facility of the College of Medical Evangelists.CBPH 20.9
No well informed person will deny that without Ellen White’s initiative and counsel Seventh-day Adventists would not today be in possession of Loma Linda and would not be operating a highly recognized medical and dental school. The story is a thrilling one, and in it Ellen White emerges in her true image as a Prophetess of Health. This is so from her first counsels to purchase the Loma Linda property, with J. A. Burden risking his finances and reputation in following Ellen White’s directions which she based on the visions God gave to her. It is so to the final decisions made in January, 1910, based on her two paragraph statement opening with the words, “The light given me is, we must provide that which is essential to qualify our youth who desire to be physicians” and in obtaining this training whatever is “required by the laws of all those who practice as regularly qualified physicians, we are to supply whatever may be required” (Pacific Union Recorder, February 3, 1910, p. 9; The Story of Our Health Message, 386). But we were to go a step further in maintaining at Loma Linda a school of “the highest order.” The call was breathtaking and faith-taxing, but the response was “the Lord has spoken, and we will obey” (The Story of Our Health Message, 387).CBPH 20.10
Shouldn’t this dramatic story with such miracles as to how money was received to make the purchase and carrying through to the gaining of the “A Grade” recognition as a medical school really be a part of Prophetess of Health? But it is untold in the book. These are among the missing exhibits needed to tell the full story.CBPH 21.1
4. The Memory Lives On
The last paragraph of Prophetess of Health admits that “the memory of Ellen G. White lives on in the lives of nearly two and one half million Seventh-day Adventists, many of whom continue to believe ‘that she wrote under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.’”CBPH 21.2
Reasons for this continued confidence are not given. If Ellen White is to emerge in her true image, and if the whole story were to be told, several exhibits should have been presented. To name a few:CBPH 21.3
A. It was “a systematic and harmonious body of hygienic truths” which came to Seventh-day Adventists through Ellen White. This led to the adoption of a system of nutrition supplying all the body’s needs with attractive, appetizing foods, utilizing dairy products, but eliminating all meat, condiments, stimulants as tea and coffee. In an endeavor to popularize this regimen, especially for non-Adventist guests at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, Dr. J. H. Kellogg led out in the development of the cereal breakfast foods, cereal coffee, peanut butter and vegetable meat substitutes. This resulted in Battle Creek becoming the cereal capital of the world. This is freely acknowledged by those in the know to be the result, first of Adventists moving to Battle Creek, second to the vision given to Ellen G. White, and third to a response among Adventists to this counsel. (See “The Cereal Story,” Collier’s, April, 1952.)CBPH 21.4
The story of this train of events favorably effecting eating habits in all parts of the world, and leading to the establishment of food industries in many countries, is barely mentioned in the book.CBPH 21.5
B. Adventists have been impressed with fine points in dietetic guidance which were unlikely to have come from any human source. Take the use of milk as an illustration. Some of those who were said to be the source of Ellen White’s knowledge of nutrition, while discarding meat and condiments and refined flour, condemned the use of milk except for infants. Salt was labeled a poison (A. T. Trall, The Health Reformer, October, 1869, 4:76). Ellen White on the basis of the 1863 vision condemned meat and condiments, but when it came to milk called only for obtaining milk from sanitary sources and its moderate use. When extreme voices were loudly heard in 1870 on this point, James White wrote significantly:CBPH 21.6
In reference to the use of tobacco, tea, coffee, flesh meats, also to dress, there is general agreement, but at the present she is not prepared to take the extreme position relative to salt, sugar, and milk.... While she does not regard milk, taken in large quantities as customarily eaten with bread, the best article of food, her mind, as yet, has only been called to the importance of the best and most healthy condition of the cow, whose milk is used as an article of food. She cannot unite in circulating publications broadcast which take an extreme position on the important question of milk with her present light upon the subject.—The Adventist Home, November 8, 1870, p. 36; quoted in CDF p. 496-7.CBPH 21.7
Knowing as we do today the value of milk in the nutrition of the family, here is an exhibit of prime importance. Ponder well the significance of Ellen White’s moderate counsel on this point. What deprivation, what malnutrition, what suffering might have resulted had Ellen White, as portrayed in Prophetess of Health, adopted and passed on as of heavenly origin the extreme positions of those from whom it is said she gained her information. Even when at the turn of the century, before dairy herds were tested or pasteurization of milk was a common practice, she wrote of a time yet future when dairy products might have to be eliminated from the diet because of the increase of disease in the animal kingdom. But even then she cautioned that the time had not yet come and we were to wait until the Lord made it plain to us. Her last statement on the point in 1909 was that “The time will come when we may have to” (Testimonies for the Church 9:162).CBPH 21.8
The importance of Vitamin B12, recognized only in recent years, makes Ellen White’s moderate counsels on milk even more impressive. And to what may these cautions be attributed? According to James White, “Her mind ... has only been called to the importance” of the “healthy condition” “of the cow” and to her position based on her present light on the subject. (The Review and Herald, November 8, 1870, 36:165; CDF p. 497.)CBPH 21.9
The Whites, from the time of Mrs. White’s 1863 vision until the close of her life, always kept a cow or two whenever they owned their own home.CBPH 21.10
Certainly such an exhibit, if Ellen White is to emerge in her true image, should be included in a portrayal of Ellen G. White as Prophetess of Health. Or was the author unaware of these facts?CBPH 21.11
5. Counsel to Dr. Kress
Adventists have been impressed with the Daniel H. Kress experience, and the part one vision had in saving his life. Kress, an Adventist physician inclined to extreme views on the use of dairy products, while heading the medical work of the church in England and Australia, developed pernicious anemia.CBPH 21.12
The doctor, in Australia, was totally incapacitated and at death’s door. Ellen White, who was in California at the time, was shown his condition, his hands as white as in death, and she wrote:CBPH 22.1
“Do not remove milk from the table or forbid its being used in the cooking of food.... I have told you what I have because I have received light that you are injuring your body by a poverty stricken diet.... Put into your diet something you have left out. It is your duty to do this. Get eggs of healthy fowls. Use these eggs cooked or raw. Drop them uncooked into the best unfermented wine you can find.... Do not for a moment suppose that it will not be right to do this.... I say that milk and eggs should be included in your diet.... Eggs contain properties which are remedial agencies in counter acting poisons.”—Letter 37, 1901; quoted in CDF p 203-4.CBPH 22.2
The dying doctor reluctantly followed the counsel. It saved his life. He gave forty more years to medical service in the church, where if the counsel from Ellen White had not been hastened across the Pacific he probably would have died. Thirty years after the vision-inspired letter was written, science discovered remedial properties in eggs in the form of certain vitamins. More recently the recognition of the presence of iron in grape juice and the discovery that eggs are a rich source of Vitamin B12 gives particular meaning to the counsels to the physician dying of pernicious anemia. From whom did she get the knowledge essential to save life? From Trall? From Jackson? Or Graham? She declares it was from the Lord, and her claim would be hard to gainsay. Should not a book carrying the title Prophetess of Health feature such an exhibit? But this is one of the missing exhibits.CBPH 22.3
6. The So-Called Daniel’s-Kellogg Controversy
Reference is made in the closing chapter to what might be called “The Battle Creek Tragedy.” Earlier in the manuscript mention is several times made of what is said to be a conflict between Elder A. G. Daniells, president of the General Conference, and Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the leader of the medical work of the church. And the reader is left to believe that this controversy was largely a personality clash between the two leading men. There is no mention made of the pantheistic teachings of Dr. John Harvey Kellogg which blossomed at the turn of the century, teachings which as Ellen White declared would “do away with God.” Nor is there any mention made of the Kellogg financial policies which led him to encourage the development and opening of sanitariums here and there, largely on borrowed money, and then persuading the General Conference to take over the indebtedness to the point that the denomination at the time Elder Daniells became its leader was virtually bankrupt. The two men soon clashed on both the matter of sound financial policies and erroneous theological teachings. These are part of the missing exhibits.CBPH 22.4
7. J. H. Kellogg’s 1938 Statement
It is unfortunate that Prophetess of Health does not include some of the kind remarks made by Dr. Kellogg late in his life as those which appeared in his October 21, 1938 statement referred to in the footnotes on pages 230, 238, and 241. This would present a balance to some of his other late remarks. In the 1938 document Kellogg also says the following:CBPH 22.5
“I had heard it stated that the Institute [at Battle Creek] was built because Sister White had stated that this should be done, but nothing further. On inquiry I found that she had stated that the Lord had shown her that such an institution should be established, and I have never for a moment doubted that a kind Providence planted the work.CBPH 22.6
“The standards established in those early days I have endeavored to maintain not only while I was a member of the denomination but since. I found Mrs. White a wise counselor and a friend to whom I constantly appealed for advice which I followed to the best of my ability. I had the utmost confidence that the Lord was leading Mrs. White’s mind and I have this same confidence still. She was a godly woman who sought divine guidance and received it. I had many evidences of this, probably more than any other living man ever had.CBPH 22.7
“I do not for a moment doubt that kind Providence led Mrs. White to recognize the principles on which the Battle Creek Sanitarium is based as divine truth and that this recognition was the motivating impulse which led J. N. Loughborough, Joseph Aldrich, my father and a few others to invest in the enterprise every dollar they could spare from their scanty means.CBPH 22.8
“I have always entertained the greatest respect and regard for Mrs. White. Aside from my parents she was the best friend I ever had. She treated me as a son. As a young man I was a member of her family for months at a time.”—John Harvey Kellogg, autobiographical memoir, October 21, 1938, pp. 5, 6, 11, 15.CBPH 22.9
Wouldn’t it have been fair to have given these remarks made by Kellogg 31 years after his break with the denomination some recognition in Prophetess of Health? Is not this one of the missing exhibits?CBPH 22.10
8. In the Field of Medical Science
But there is another area of Ellen White’s writing as prophetess of health conspicuous because of its missing exhibits. This is in the field of medical science, particularly physiology. We hasten past such commonly discussed matters as tobacco, tea and coffee, etc., to mention three which further well illustrate the point:CBPH 22.11
A. Birth defects resulting from the use of drugs and alcohol. Only in the last fifteen or twenty years have the Ellen G. White statements concerning birth defects become of particular significance, and this was underlined by the thalidomide tragedy of the early 1960’s which left thousands of babies without arms or legs or otherwise badly deformed because the mother took what seemed to be a harmless tranquilizer during the early months of pregnancy.CBPH 22.12
What is common knowledge today did not exist fifteen or twenty years ago, and today it is recognized and repeatedly emphasized that during the early months of pregnancy the prospective mother needs to exercise great care in avoiding all drugs.CBPH 22.13
Can any reader suggest where Ellen White would have gained a knowledge of what she wrote on this subject back in 1865, unless God had revealed to her that many cases of deformity are the result of birth defects that could be traced to “drug poisons administered at the hand of the doctor” (Healthful Living, 51#3; Selected Messages 2:442). And in 1890 she spoke of the heavy use of alcohol as responsible for the “thousands of children born deaf, blind, diseased and idiotic” (Patriarchs and Prophets, 561). Did she gain this from Coles, or Trall, or Jackson? It was something which was unimagined at the time, and yet in the early 1960’s medical science came over and stood by her side in regard to birth defects.CBPH 23.1
B. And then there is prenatal influence. True, prenatal influence was being advocated by some of the health writers prior to Ellen White’s work, and then as the years progressed their work was discounted. Nonetheless, what Ellen White wrote in 1865 concerning prenatal influence and repeated in 1905 in Ministry of Healing is attested to today by the best authorities in the field. It was in 1954 that the breakthrough came. In the twenty years since then authoritative, well-documented reports give the strongest support. But prenatal influence is discredited in Prophetess of Health and what might have been a very effective exhibit is not there. It is one more of the missing exhibits.CBPH 23.2
C. Causative factors in cancer. A point which has been of deep interest for many years among medical men is the Ellen G. White statement published in Ministry of Healing in 1905 in which she mentions cancerous germs. For a time the statement was not challenged because no careful study was being made into the causes of cancer, but thirty years later as intensive study was undertaken it was declared that cancer is not an infectious disease. It was declared that there is no infectious agent in connection with cancer. Some at this point ridiculed Ellen White’s statements or tried to interpret them in some satisfactory way. But in the 1950’s the tide began to turn.CBPH 23.3
Now the viral etiology of cancer has been quite well substantiated by the best research work done in the causative factors in cancer. In 1961 Dr. Robert J. Huebner of the National Institutes of Health at Bethesda, Maryland, declared that “there is not the slightest doubt in our minds that human cancers are caused by viruses. To this extent they are simply infectious diseases.”CBPH 23.4
Is it not significant that Ellen White fifty years ahead of medical science linked cancer with a germ? Yet this is not mentioned in Prophetess of Health. This, again, is one of the missing exhibits.CBPH 23.5
Other exhibits might have been cited in the fields of physiology and nutrition. A number are presented in the booklet Medical Science and the Spirit of Prophecy. These, however, are sufficient to illustrate the point of how Prophetess of Health totally ignores a great body of significant and interesting data that would allow Ellen White to emerge in her true image and which certainly should have its place in a book of this kind. But they are missing exhibits.CBPH 23.6