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    Nineteenth-Century Health Notions

    To better appreciate the distinctiveness of Ellen White’s philosophy of health, let us review some of the prevailing health notions of the nineteenth century. At the beginning of the century, a remarkably standardized pattern for the treatment of disease relied “mostly on bleeding, purging, and polypharmacy.” 7George W. Reid, A Sound of Trumpets (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1982), p. 21.MOL 278.7

    The cause of disease was a matter of widely diverse conjecture. The Christian world generally believed that illness and suffering were divinely inflicted because of sin. Healing, if possible, was the result of prayer and faith.MOL 279.1

    But new ideas were surfacing in the early 1800s. Horace Mann, in his famous 1842 report to the Massachusetts school authorities, wrote that suffering was “no part of the ordination of a merciful Providence, but to be directly chargeable to human ignorance and error.” Further, if people would obey “the physical laws of God, they would no more suffer pain than they would suffer remorse, or moral pain, if in all things they would obey the moral laws of God.” 8Horace Mann, “The Study of Physiology in the Schools,” Educational Annual Report for 1842, Annual Reports on Education, ed. Mary Tyler Mann, vol. 3, Life and Works of Horace Mann (Boston: Horace B. Fuller, 1868), p. 227, cited in Reid, A Sound of Trumpets, p. 25.MOL 279.2

    But changing the source of disease from heaven to earth did not automatically explain its cause. Mann, for example, rejected the idea of an invading, foreign body. Contemporaries blamed various causes, including variations in body fluids, filth and odors as found in garbage and sewage, and stimuli, either too much or too little. For many medical specialists, health was an intermediate state of excitement, and the physician’s task was to adjust the excitement level. Whenever people occasionally raised the possibility that nature itself contained healing powers, as Hippocrates long before had believed, they were “confronted with the almost uniform opposition of the regular medical practitioners, who labeled them as empiric rustics attempting to restore a discredited element of primitive medicine.” 9Reid, A Sound of Trumpets, pp. 25-28.MOL 279.3

    The “stimuli” theory, probably the prevailing treatment of disease, became known as “heroic” medicine. Benjamin Rush (1745?-1813), dean of American physicians, actively promoted this popular treatment wherein the sick had to resign themselves to “massive bloodletting, considered a panacea for almost every problem, and to submit to the violent purgatives and emetics which the medical doctors administered.” The physician’s task was to “conquer nature” with a special drug, the more violent the better, for each disease. George Washington became a well-known victim of deadly conventional medicine during the first half of the nineteenth century. 10Testimonies for the Church 3:29-31; D. E. Robinson, The Story of Our Health Message, 13-27, (Nashville, Tenn.: Southern Publishing Association, 1965).MOL 279.4

    In 1860 Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, professor of anatomy at Harvard University, wrote that “if the whole materia medica, as now used, could be sunk to the bottom of the sea, it would be all the better for mankind—and all the worse for the fishes.” 11Ronald L. Numbers, Prophetess of Health (New York: Harper & Row, Publishers, 1976), p. 49.MOL 279.5

    The second quarter of the nineteenth century, often known as the Jacksonian era, was swamped with innovation and change in most all areas of American life. Emotional, human-centered ideas overtook the rational, classical order of the preceding century. Fresh optimism and the sense of equality of all human beings inspired “reforms” in such areas as education, prisons, abolition of slavery, women’s rights, politics, and health. 12Reid, A Sound of Trumpets, pp. 31-48.MOL 279.6

    This new focus on the individual and away from traditional theories was thoroughly evident in the remarkably fresh concern for personal health. 13Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, Seeking a Sanctuary, p. 128. Distrust of traditional medicine with its “heroic” treatments and pitiful results turned the minds of many in all classes to what could be done with common sense. 14Rennie B. Schoepflin, “Health and Health Care,” Land, World of E. G. White, pp. 143-158.MOL 279.7

    In this exhilarating era of optimism and its new focus on the “common man,” such health reform movements as the following sprang up everywhere: The temperance movement, 15Jerome L. Clark, “The Crusade Against Alcohol,” Land, World of E. G. White, pp. 131-140; Stephen Nissenbaum, Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America (Chicago: The Dorsey Press, 1980), pp. 69-85; Robinson, Our Health Message, pp. 38-42. promotion of vegetarianism, 16Nissenbaum, Sex. Diet, and Debility, pp. 39-52; Reid, A Sound of Trumpets, p. 85; Robinson, Our Health Message, pp. 42-47. public renunciation of “all evil habits,” (tobacco, alcoholic beverages, tea, coffee, etc.), 17Reid, A Sound of Trumpets, pp. 42, 43. development of “physiological” societies, 18Ibid., p. 37; Robinson, The Story of Our Health Message, 47, 48. emphasis on public health, including sanitation and hospitals, 19Schoepflin, in Land, World of E. G. White, pp. 151-157. new attention to fashion, 20Ibid., p. 155. and the emergence of “water” treatments. 21Ibid., pp. 146-148; Reid, A Sound of Trumpets, pp. 79-81; Robinson, The Story of Our Health Message, 28-37. See also Ronald L. Numbers, Prophetess of Health, pp. 48-76.MOL 279.8

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