Chapter 30—Ellen G. White’s Use of Remedial
Agencies
[
Ellen G. White speaks repeatedly of simple remedies. She tells
us specifically what she means when she thus speaks, naming pure air,
sunlight, abstemiousness, rest, exercise, proper diet, the use of water,
and trust in divine power. See pages 287-291 and
The Ministry of
Healing, 127
. In addition to these, Mrs. White on a few occasions, in
her personal correspondence, made reference to certain simple medi-
cations she knew and used; any such remedy was usually mentioned in
a single instance only. She also refers in her correspondence to a few
rare emergency situations that led her to employ remedies she would
not use except in a crisis.
In evaluating these references to certain medications, four points
should be observed by the reader
:
1. The following pages list the significant statements in which Mrs.
White mentions specific medications of a simple character, insofar as
such statements were known at the time this compilation was made
.
2. A very few pages are required to place these statements in
print, some eleven pages as compared with the more than 2,000 pages
devoted to the comprehensive presentation of the health counsels as
found in the E.G. White books
.
3. For fifty years Mrs. White wrote extensively, for publication, on
the subject of health and the care of the sick. But it is an interesting
and significant fact that, except for the brief mention of the “lump of
figs” for Hezekiah’s boils, and a fleeting allusion to the ineffectual
use of “simple herbs” in the illness of one of her sons (see Spiritual
Gifts, Volume II
,
p. 104), she made no reference to the medicinal
[293]
use of herbs or to other specific simple medications in any of her
published statements. To say the least, this fact does not permit the
conclusion that the use of herbs is of prime importance in the whole
health program that she set forth in such completeness
.
266