Chapter 99—The Health Institute
In the vision given me December 25, 1865, I saw that the health
reform was a great enterprise, closely connected with the present truth,
and that Seventh-day Adventists should have a home for the sick where
they could be treated for their diseases and also learn how to take care
of themselves so as to prevent sickness. I saw that our people should
not remain indifferent upon this subject and leave the rich among
us to go to the popular water cure institutions of the country for the
recovery of health, where they would find opposition to, rather than
sympathy with, their views of religious faith. Those who are reduced
by disease suffer not only for want of physical but also of mental and
moral strength; and afflicted, conscientious Sabbathkeepers cannot
receive as much benefit where they feel that they must be constantly
guarded lest they compromise their faith and dishonor their profession,
as at an institution whose physicians and conductors are in sympathy
with the truths connected with the third angel’s message.
When persons who have suffered much from disease are relieved
by an intelligent system of treatment, consisting of baths, healthful
diet, proper periods of rest and exercise, and the beneficial effects of
pure air, they are often led to conclude that those who successfully
treat them are right in matters of religious faith, or, at least, cannot
greatly err from the truth. Thus if our people are left to go to those
institutions whose physicians are corrupt in religious faith, they are in
danger of being ensnared. The institution at-----, I then saw (in 1865),
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was the best in the United States. So far as the treatment of the sick
is concerned, they have been doing a great and good work; but they
urge upon their patients dancing and card playing, and recommend
attendance at theaters and such places of worldly amusement, which
is in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ and the apostles.
Those connected with the Health Institute now located at Battle
Creek should feel that they are engaged in an important and solemn
work, and in no way should they pattern after the physicians at the
institution at-----in matters of religion and amusements. Yet I saw that
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