Reformers Arise

So great, indeed, was the folly of it all—in diet, in medicine, and in dress—that reformers here and there were beginning to speak out against it, each one with his own distinctive idea, some focusing on reform in dress, some on medical care, some on diet. It was in those days that hydrotherapy (water) treatments began to be used in somewhat organized fashion by certain who rebelled against the dreadful methods of drugging that were killing rather than curing people.WBEGW 42.1

Various ideas of reform in diet were abroad. And what variant ideas they were! For example, there was Graham, who gave his name to graham bread. Some, for example, thought that no salt should be used in the diet—they declared it to be poison. That was certainly a tasteless approach to better diet.WBEGW 42.2

Who was right and who was wrong in all the divergent thinking? Indeed, were any of them right in opposing accepted medical practices, and current dietary habits? Here was a question difficult, if not impossible, to answer. In this kind of world the Advent Movement began, its own leadership suffering physical affliction in marked degree, with James White among those who thus suffered.WBEGW 42.3

With these disturbing questions before us we come to a farmhouse, the home of Aaron Hilliard in Otsego, Michigan. It was Friday, June 5, 1863. James and Ellen White, with others, were kneeling in a circle of prayer, for the opening of the Sabbath. She was praying, and very particularly for her husband’s health, when she was taken off in vision. After she came out of vision she declared that there had been revealed to her certain principles of healthful living. This was followed by a vision on December 25, 1865, at Rochester, New York, which gave additional light on the whole matter of health. This vision also revealed that Adventists should have a health institution of their own in which to give practical expression to these right health principles. Out of these two visions came the primary, distinctive health teachings that have marked the Advent Movement from that day to this. Out of these visions came our chain of sanitariums, the first of which was opened at Battle Creek on September 5, 1866.WBEGW 42.4

Now if Mrs. White were only an emotionally unstable, simple sort of woman, rather easily moved by anything strange or unusual, we would expect her to have incorporated in her narration of her visions endless oddities in the matter of diet and of medical care, for many oddities were being set forth by different reformers. Furthermore, seeing she had only about three grades of formal education, and, as some have charged, she reflected only the dominant thinking of her day, we might expect her visions to endorse the accepted methods of healing, for did they not express the dominant view of the day, the view of the learned medical profession?WBEGW 43.1