Ellen G. White [born November 26, 1827; died July 16, 1915] was prominent for many years in the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and a writer whose counsel has guided the church on many matters, including that of healthful living. Her counsels on healthful living constitute the subject of the three articles by Dr. McCay, here reprinted from The Review and Herald.NADEGW 5.2

Her first publication on healthful living appeared in the year 1864 as a rather lengthy chapter in the book Spiritual Gifts, vol. 4. In the years that followed she wrote scores of articles and several books on the subject. In 1865 she contributed one article to each of six pamphlets bearing the general title Health, or How to Live. These were later bound into a small book, and are now available in Selected Messages 2:409-479. In 1890 she contributed to the book Christian Temperance and Bible Hygiene, her portion of which was amplified and published as The Ministry of Healing in 1905. Posthumous compilations from her many articles and books have been published in book form, such as Counsels on Health, in 1923, Medical Ministry, in 1932, Counsels on Diet and Foods, in 1938.NADEGW 5.3

To understand rightly the great need for dietary reform that existed at the time Mrs. White began to write, let us note the kind of foods available to the average family during the first part of her life—that is, from 1827 to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. During that period the typical farm family—and most families lived on a farm, from Maine to Indiana had some chickens, swine, sheep, and a few cows. The housewife looked after the garden and the chickens while the husband labored in the field. The diet was reasonably satisfactory from the time rhubarb checked latent scurvy in April until most of the fresh foods had disappeared by Thanksgiving.NADEGW 5.4

From Thanksgiving until Easter the diet grew progressively worse, with outbreaks of disease in February and March. Although the French scientist Appert patented methods for canning food in 1810, housewives had no containers for doing this until more than a half century later. Therefore, they had to depend upon drying apples, sweet corn, peas, and beans over the kitchen stove. Vinegar was available because the common fruit was apples. Salt was the other common preservative. Most meat was salted and smoked, although pork was often fried and stored in earthenware jars with the meat sealed and sterilized by pouring hot lard over it. Pickles could be preserved, and families of Germanic origin made sauerkraut.NADEGW 5.5

Walnuts, hickory nuts, and in some areas, chestnuts, were available. Salted fish was commonplace. Eggs were plentiful in summer and scarce in winter because there was no good way to preserve them, except by storage in lime or sawdust.NADEGW 5.6

Cellars preserved the potatoes and apples, although the potatoes were often nearly exhausted by spring.NADEGW 5.7

The Indiana children took corn bread for their lunch at school until well after the middle of the century. At home they had much corn-meal mush and hominy. Highly refined white flour did not become common until after the middle of the century, because the roller mills that could take out the germ and the vitamins from wheat flour were invented only about the middle of the nineteenth century.NADEGW 5.8

Butter could be stored in crocks, but was usually quite rancid.NADEGW 5.9

Foods bought at the country stores usually consisted of salt fish or salt meat, some coffee or tea, some sugar, and a jug of thick molasses. Since the molasses came north from New Orleans, the supply was cut off during the sixties, and areas like Indiana developed a taste for the sour sorghum molasses.NADEGW 5.10

Well before the birth of Mrs. White there were a few Americans protesting the bad diet, the smoking, and the drinking. Even from early antiquity there had been groups outside the Jewish traditions that subscribed to vegetarianism. Sylvester Graham, who was born in 1794, stirred the young American nation with his lectures advocating vegetarianism, the improvement of bread, the abolishment of alcoholic beverages, and more healthful living. He had much influence during the first half of the nineteenth century, but left no permanent group of followers. The vegetarian church was founded in Philadelphia in 1817, but it soon disbanded.NADEGW 6.1

About 1840 the Shakers stopped the use of pork, strong drink, and tobacco. Many turned to vegetarianism. Their rules of health included the following:NADEGW 6.2

1. Supply at least one kind of coarse-grain bread per meal. Avoid cathartics.

2. Have the sickly and weakly cease using animal foods, especially fats.

3. Keep the skin clean by regular bathing. But the Shakers reached their peak about 1850 and have now—thanks to their celibate views—almost perished.

In Mrs. White’s Life Sketches one learns much about both the bad food served in most homes and the toll of diseases that resulted. It is no wonder that the relationships between food and diseased people were deeply impressed upon the Whites as they traveled in New England and the Middle West a hundred years ago. The diet was a monotonous one of fat, salted meats, bread, potatoes, and butter. No wonder that Elder White developed dyspepsia. Poverty, then common, served to make the fare even more meager.NADEGW 6.3

When foods were available the Whites were plagued by poverty, yet they kept their determination to remain free from debts. In 1847 Mrs. White wrote, “I allowed myself and child one pint of milk each day. One morning before my husband went to his work, he left me nine cents to buy milk for three mornings. It was a study with me whether to buy the milk for myself and babe or get an apron for him. I gave up the milk, and purchased the cloth for an apron to cover the bare arms of my child.”—Testimonies for the Church 1:83.NADEGW 6.4

In 1852, when the Whites lived in Rochester, they had so little money that they could not afford potatoes and butter, but ate turnips and sauce.NADEGW 6.5

At this time meals at hotels cost twenty-five cents. Hard liquor was five cents extra. Many men paid the extra, although it is doubtful that the per capita consumption of alcoholic beverages was equal to that of today, since few women drank. Although cigarettes were not to become accepted until much later, there was much smoking and chewing of tobacco on the steamers and in the public waiting rooms.NADEGW 6.6

The Whites in their travels must often have thought, in the words of Pascal, that “nothing more astonishes me than to see that men are not astonished at their own weakness.”NADEGW 6.7

An Explanatory Note

Specific Illustrations