Tobacco is a Poison

Early in her public life Mrs. White began to speak against tobacco. In 1864 she wrote: “Tobacco is a poison of the most deceitful and malignant kind, having an exciting, then a paralyzing influence upon the nerves of the body. It is all the more dangerous because its effects upon the system are so slow, and at first scarcely perceivable.”—Spiritual Gifts 4a:128.WBEGW 51.3

Or take another, and much later statement, typical of the constant pattern of her concern regarding the dangers of tobacco. In 1905 she wrote:WBEGW 51.4

“Tobacco is a slow, insidious, but most malignant poison. In whatever form it is used, it tells upon the constitution; it is all the more dangerous because its effects are slow and at first hardly perceptible.”—The Ministry of Healing, 327, 328.WBEGW 52.1

Who, in 1905, much less 1864, among learned scientific men would have described the dangers of tobacco in such startling language? Who was using the terms “insidious,” “malignant”? Who was saying that tobacco’s “effects upon the system are so slow, and at first scarcely perceivable”?WBEGW 52.2

True, research in recent years indicates that cigarette smoking is much more likely to produce cancer of the lungs than pipe smoking, for example. But the difference seems to be in degree, not in kind; that is, in terms of the amount of tobacco actually inhaled. Besides, cancer of the lungs is only one of three grave dangers from tobacco smoking. There are maladies of the heart and blood vessels, which investigation has disclosed are much more frequent in smokers. Then there is emphysema, a malady that affects the air sacs in the lungs, and ultimately produces death. This malady is receiving increasing attention by medical men, who are alarmed by the ever-rising total of its victims.WBEGW 52.3

Why did Mrs. White feel prepared to speak so forth-rightly and specifically about tobacco before medical men saw grave dangers in it? We leave the reader to answer.WBEGW 52.4

We spoke, a little earlier, of the variant ideas abroad in mid-nineteenth century regarding salt, and that some reformers emphatically declared it was a poison. What if she had concurred? In 1884 she said: “Do not eat largely of salt.”—The Review and Herald, July 29, 1884. See also The Ministry of Healing, 305 (1905). In 1901, Letter 37, she enlarged on the matter, thus: “I use some salt, and always have, because from the light given me by God, this article, in the place of being deleterious, is actually essential for the blood. The whys and wherefores of this I know not, but I give you the instruction as it is given me.”—Quoted in Counsels on Diet and Foods, 344 (1938).WBEGW 52.5

Nothing could better describe the present-day medical appraisal of salt, which is so vital to the body, but which should be sparingly used.WBEGW 53.1

And so we might go on describing various matters in the realm of health on which Mrs. White spoke out clearly at a time when the whole scientific world about her gave no support to her statements. In fact, in some instances, they considered them unworthy of any consideration. We invite some mathematician skilled in the operation of the law of probability to tell us what chance there was—one in a thousand or one in a million, whatever it might be—that Mrs. White by sheer accident or guesswork could have made the right statement in this and that and the other area of health when there was no current evidence to aid her in that guess. Is it not more reasonable and credible to explain her remarkable statements in terms of her own explanation, that God gave to her revelations?WBEGW 53.2