Witness
“For the short time I have been striving to live strictly in accordance with the laws of life, I have been greatly benefited.”
How much the ongoing knowledge of health reform he gained in 1848 stuck by him is reflected in what he then says:
With the short experience I have had, [the last two months] I would not, for any consideration go back to the meat, spice, pepper, sweet cake, pickles, mustard, headache, stomach ache and gloomy, and give up the good, wholesome fruit, grain, and vegetable diet, with pure cold water as a drink, no headaches, cheerfulness, happiness, vigor and health.—
“James White, who with his wife nursed two of their boys through an attack of diphtheria employing a hot bath, sitz bath and packs as recommended by Dr. J. C. Jackson, wrote in the Review of Feb. 17, 1863, of “having a good degree of confidence in his manner of treating diseases,”
RH, 25:14, Dec. 6, 1864
We do not profess to be pioneers in the general principles of the health reform. The facts on which this movement is based have been elaborated, in a great measure by reformers, physicians, and writers on physiology and hygiene, and so may be found scattered through the land. But we do claim that by the method of God’s choice it has been more clearly and powerfully unfolded, and is thereby producing an effect which we could not have looked for from any other means.
As mere physiological and hygienic truths, they might be studied by some at their leisure, and by others laid aside as of little consequence; but when placed on a level with the great truths of the third angel’s message by the sanction and authority of God’s Spirit, and so declared to be the means whereby a weak people may be made strong to overcome, and our diseased bodies cleansed and fitted for translation, then it comes to us as an essential part of present truth, to be received with the blessing of God, or rejected at our peril.—
RH, 28:77, Aug. 7, 1866.
“The little struggling health institution soon proved its worth as Professor Herbert Lacey, having contracted typhoid fever during a visit in school promotion in Tasmania, was nursed back to health. On Friday, February 28, a telegram was received by his wife, Lillian, at Cooranbong to the effect that Lacey, desperately ill, would arrive by train in Sydney that day. Lillian hastened to Sydney and arrived just as her husband was arriving from Melbourne. They went immediately to the Health Home, where his case was thought to be typhoid fever. He had lost twenty pounds in one week, and his wife wrote that he was “very poor, nothing but skin and bones.” At the Health Home Elders Haskell and Baker were joined by Mr. Semmens in praying for his recovery (Letter 189, 1897). Semmens began using hydrotherapy treatments. Lillian reported to her husband's father, who resided at Cooranbong, that “Brother Semmens was using ice on his bowels” (ibid.). His vitality was low, and when Ellen White learned of the ice remedy, she hastened off a telegram to Semmens, “Use no ice, but hot applications.”—Ibid. Of course there was a reason for this, as she explained in a letter to W. C. White: 4BIO 292
In several cases light had been given me that the ice remedy
was not as efficacious as the hot water. I was afraid. His vitality, I learned, was very low and to put ice on head and chest I knew was a mistake. It would tax his vitality. . . .” 4BIO 292
Hot fomentations in fever will kill the inflammation in nine cases out of ten where ice applications will, according to the light given me, tax the vitality unsafely. Here is where the danger comes in of not using judgment and reason in regard to the subject under treatment.—4BIO 293