Introduction
Shortly after the organization of the General Conference of
Seventh-day Adventists in May, 1863, at a time when the church
numbered 3,500 members, Ellen G. White received a vision calling
the attention of Adventists to the importance of good health and the
close relationship between physical well-being and spiritual experi-
ence. The light given touched a number of important phases of living,
including diet, value of fresh air, the use of water, healthful attire,
exercise, rest, et cetera. Prominent in this important revelation of June
6, 1863, was light concerning the harmful effects of the poisonous
drugs that physicians so freely prescribed
.
In the subsequent years the great basic health-reform vision was
followed by many visions opening up in more detail the principles and
the application of principles that should guide in matters of retaining
good health and the care of the sick, the call for medical institutions
and the manner in which Seventh-day Adventists should conduct such
institutions
.
On these matters Mrs. White wrote much. Her first comprehensive
presentation appeared in 1864 in Spiritual Gifts,[Currently available
in facsimile reprint
.] Volume 4, pages 120 to 151 in an article entitled
“Health.” Mrs. White then expanded this thirty-page statement into
six separate articles for publication under the general title of “Disease
and its Causes.” In 1865 these were embodied in the six numbered
pamphlets compiled by Elder and Mrs. White, entitled Health or How
to Live, one E. G. White article appearing in each number. [
The six
articles in their entirety appear as an appendix to this volume, see pp.
409-479
.] From time to time over the next several decades the various
journals of the denomination carried articles by Mrs. White on the
subject of health. In 1890 she presented A comprehensive picture of
the health message in the first half of the book Christian Temperance
and Bible Hygiene. In 1905 she published The Ministry of Healing,
her climaxing volume on the subject. This she intended for very wide
distribution in America and overseas.
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