its benefactors. I hope you will not grow weary in the honorable
fight which still remains before you.” It was this Semmelweiss who
wrestled with the dread monster of puerperal fever, and through whose
brain there throbbed the queries: “Why do these mothers die? What is
childbirth fever?” His efforts cost his life, but he conquered the fearful
malady.
And I might continue to tell of the blessings the world has received
at the hands of many others, from Koch, Ehrlich, Nicolaier, Kitasato,
Von Behring, Flexner, Ronald Ross, and many another. But to Ellen G.
White a different role was given. While her lifework and teaching were
in harmony with truly scientific medicine, it was in the realm of the
spiritual side of the healing art that she shone with a brilliance of holy
luster. In the matter of appealing to men and women to regard their
bodies as a sacred trust from the Highest One, and to obey the laws of
nature and of nature’s God, she stands without a peer. She it was who
exalted the sacredness of the body and the necessity of bringing all the
appetites and passions under the control of an enlightened conscience.
Others emphasized science in health; to her it was left to impress the
spiritual in the treatment of the temple of the body.
No other one of modern day has entered this field of spiritual
endeavor to anything like the extent she did. Her efforts were tireless
from the days of her young womanhood to the hour of her death at
a very advanced age. In books, in magazine articles, in papers,
[3]
in tracts and pamphlets, she constantly and unswervingly called men
and women, old and young, in clarion tones, to a more rational, a
higher, purer plane of spiritual living. From the platform in churches
and lecture halls, at convocations and conferences, her voice was
continually heard urging the need of consecrated, Christian living
in things relating to the body and its care. Others brought to light
scientific facts concerning disease, its cause, and its cure; Ellen G.
White drove home those facts on the spiritual side to the innermost
citadel of the souls of men and women.
It is fitting, therefore, that though she sleeps in her quiet grave, her
tired hands folded across the sainted breast, her works should follow
her. It is meet that in this volume her “Counsels” should live, to bless,
to fortify, and to direct the lives of those who seek to point their fellow
beings to that blest One who alone has healing in His wings.