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Ronald L. Numbers
PROPHETESS OF HEALTH: A STUDY OF ELLEN G. WHITE Grand Rapids. Eerdmans. 1976, 1992, 2008 (3rd Edition) xxxiv. 417 pp. paper. ISBN-13: 9780802803955 Reviewed by Patrick Killough I. biblio.com Recommended to others? YES * * * * * Ellen Gould White (nee Harmon, 1827 - 1784) was a religious visionary and prophet. She fits well and creditably within a line that includes Roman Catholic Joan of Arc, Shakers foundress Mother Ann Lee, Mormon prophet Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science). White, Smith and Eddy were American contemporaries. But Ellen White's prophetic career took off in 1844, the year Joseph Smith was killed. Ellen G. White, along with her husband James White and one-time sea captain Joseph Bates, were early organizers of the Seventh-day Adventist reaction to the collapse in October 1844 of general belief in William Miller's prediction that Christ was to reappear on a day certain in that month. Professor Ronald L. Numbers, raised in an elite Adventist leadership family, though no longer active in that denomination, concentrates in PROPHETESS OF HEALTH: A STUDY OF ELLEN G. WHITE, on the health dimension of White's writings and historical impact. None of her ideas on health originated with her. But, somewhat like Cicero with Greek culture, Ellen White made her own synthesis of views in the air and persuaded others to experiment with and adopt them. For some time Mrs White looked keenly into the women's dress reforms of Amelia Bloomer and others. She found women's contemporary clothing unhealthy: too heavy, too confining of the waist, with skirts dragging in the mire. She raised hemlines and for a time wore pants beneath them. (See the several contemporary photographs of reformed dresses included by Professor Numbers.) Mrs White also promoted fresh air and a healthy diet -- moving herself by fits and starts into vegetarianism and steady opposition to alcohol, tea and other stimulants. On the medical front, Mrs White opposed "poisonous" remedies. She also advocated and established Adventist sanitaria in Battle Creek, Loma Linda and elsewhere. During a decade spent in New Zealand and Australia as a missionary, Ellen G. White developed fresh sympathy for animals raised and slaughtered for human consumption. This empathy for animals has since motivated numerous one-time meat eaters to try vegetarian diets. Mrs White rooted her beliefs about health in visions given her by God. God positively wants people to be healthy (something Mrs White rarely was) and to seek the best common-sense supports for sound health. The mid-19th Century was an age of visions in America and visionaries were lining up behind every cure and health idea: from mesmerism/hypnotism, to water cures, clothing reforms, dieting and so on. Professor Ronald Numbers published his first edition of PROPHETESS OF HEALTH in 1976, with later editions in 1992 and 2008. The 1976 edition was something of a bomb thrown into orthodox Adventist circles, what with its naturalistic explanations of the many visions of the denomination's foundress. What endures, however, is the memory of Ellen G. White, sickly, courageous, passionate Christian, a lifelong learner, keen to help alleviate human misery wherever found. Her monuments today include far-flung hospitals, clinics, universities and schools across many lands. She is a woman worth studying, although not as widely known to this day outside Seventh-day Adventism as she deserves to be. -OOO- http://www.biblio.com/books/203460589.html ==-=-=-=-=-=-=- II. bn.com Title of this review: "We believed her." Reviewer's rating of PROPHETESS OF HEALTH: * * * * * Posted 11/22/09: Ellen Gould White (nee Harmon, 1827 - 1915) was a founding member of Seventh-day Adventism. In her lifetime and for some time afterward, not a few Adventists took many of her voluminous writings to be Divinely inspired. Some took her works to be infallible. A few saw them as more authoritative than Scripture. She herself was more modest. She had her visions and trusted them. And she felt that she knew how to separate them from both ordinary imaginings and diabolic temptations. Ellen also distinguished God's personally revealed truth from her imperfect way of expressing those visions. She accepted help as a writer amd researcher where she found help: from her husband James White, from secretaries and from her own wide readings of contemporary specialists in mesmerism, water cures, vegetarianism, women's health and dress reform and other topics. Mid-19th Century America abounded with other enthusiastic religious prophets like Mormon Joseph Smith and Christian Scientist Mary Baker Eddy. They are included in the social milieu sketched and illustrated by Professor Ronald L. Numbers in PROPHETESS OF HEALTH: A STUDY OF ELLEN G. WHITE. When first published in 1976, the book fell like a bombshell in conservative Adventist circles. For it recapitulated the then state of increasingly sceptical research into eye witnesses, early press coverage and White's own writings. This research found unacknowledged borrowing of ideas from other contemporaries, evolving views on topics such as women's dress, vegetarianism and, especially, butter. For not a few Adventist faithful brought up to regard Mrs White as an infallible oracle, Numbers's book created something of a crisis of faith. Disappointed, some left Adventism. Others pondered out new personal syntheses in which Ellen G. White was gratefully credited with being an authoritative guide to Adventism's founding years, but not necessarily a Divine oracle. Professor Numbers argues that Mrs White had an "histrionic" personality. She craved attention and got it from an early age by lying on the floor at church meetings, going into trancelike states, then emerging to accuse persons present of various concrete failings attached to a warning from God to be baptized that very evening or die. One such meeting is described by multiple witnesses in the proceedings of a February 1845 civil trial in Piscataquis County, Maine. Ellen Harmon was then 17, and she and another slightly older prophetess are described at length, if in passing, in Numbers's Appendix 3, "The Trial of Elder I. Dammon." In the third edition this appendix takes up pages 326 - 343. It is illustrative of the author's painstaking research into hard to find materials. Numbers focuses on White's contributions to health. On this as in theology, "We believed her" was repeated over and over by enthusiastic followers. Her contributions endure today: sanitaria in Battle Creek and Loma Linda, John Kellogg's pioneering breakfast cereals, an elaborate worldwide Adventist network of hospitals, schools, universities and conference centers. Vegetarians invoke her insights. Women are grateful to her, to Amelia Bloomer and other reformers for skirts that no longer drag in mire and waists happily uncorseted. Ellen G. White, by contrast with Joseph Smith and Mary Baker Eddy, is, alas, even today not widely known outside her own denomination, which now has between 14 and 17 million adherents. Pity. -OOO- Other related books recommended: --Ronald A. Knox, ENTHUSIASM. -- Fawn M. Brodie, NO MAN KNOWS MY HISTORY. -- Frank M. Turner, JOHN HENRY NEWMAN. http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Prophetess-of-Health/Ronald-L-Numbers /e/9780802803955/?itm=1&usri=prophetess+of+health ===-=-=-=- III. amazon.com title of this review: Why Seventh-day Adventism has enduring concern for human health. reviewer's rating of PROPHETESS OF HEALTH * * * * * Unless you are a Seventh-day Adventist, you may never have heard of Helen Gould White, nee Harmon. She lived from 1827 - 1915 in bad, often wretchedly bad, health most of her long life. In the mid and later 1840s she co-founded with her husband James White and retired sea captain Joseph Bates the Seventh-day Adventist movement. With support from her husband and private secretaries, Ellen went on to write a small library of books on religion, health, women's dress and other topics. She also inspired and built hospitals, clinics and schools in several continents. All these accomplishments and the American environment from whence Ellen Harmon White drew her practices of religion, inspirations and ideas are laid out in leisurely, lucid detail in PROPHETESS OF HEALTH: A STUDY OF ELLEN G. WHITE. This book first came out in 1976 and was reissued with revisions in 1992 and 2008. It was written by University of Wisconsin Professor of History Ronald L. Numbers. He had been raised a member of an elite Adventist family and for a time enjoyed access to hitherto closely guarded documents of the White Estate. In this book, Professor Numbers is not writing hagiogaphy, i.e., a life of saint. He methodically samples Mrs White's writings and identifies her likeliest literary sources (which she herself often did not). But he also describes her as others saw her, including friends and foes. Even in 2009 Ellen G. White is less well known outside her own denomination than other prophets outside theirs, such as the Mormon Joseph Smith and the Christian Scientist Mary Baker Eddy. In 1976 there were many Adventists who regarded Ellen G. White as an oracle of God, infallible, utterly trustworthy. Then along came Numbers's biographic study, and it was a great shock to many believers. Since then many former Adventists and still faithful Adventists have revisited the critical road that Numbers pioneered. But, with updates, his 2008 third edition still reads very well to non-experts and non-Adventists such as me. It is quite a good introduction to an important and still growing Protestant Evangelical movement. There is nothing mean-spirited in its telling. Professor Numbers tells Ellen's White's story, warts and all, her fainting spells, comas, visions, prophesying and criticism allegedly from God of people around her. With wife Janet S., Professor Ronald Numbers wrote an Afterword analysis, from the prophetess's own words, of her mind and personality, described by the Numberses as "histrionic" and responding positively and thirstily to attention and public praise. The 2008 text begins with the prefaces to the editions of 2008, 1998 and 1976 -- in that order. Thereafter the next 266 pages are essentially biography, illustration and commentary -- in loosely chronological order. There are several appendices of which three deserve showcasing. Appendix I is a chronological review (pp. 291 - 319) of Ellen's life from 1827 to 1915, drawing upon her own words. Its focus is the subject's physical and mental health. Appendix 3 is the transcript of a February 17, 1845 public trial in Maine of Millerite/proto-Adventist charismatic leader, Israel Dammon for disturbing the peace and for having no visible means of support. At trial's end, Dammon affirmed "that the end of the world would come within a week" (p. 341). Seventeen year old Ellen Harmon and a second somewhat older prophetess are portrayed as they were seen in raptures at church assemblies by a number of witnesses for both prosecution and defense. Especially fascinating is Appendix 4 (pp. 344 - 401). It is the transcript of a hitherto unpublished 1919 conference in Maryland in which top Adventist administrators, teachers and pastors, among other things, assessed the role that Ellen G. White should henceforth play not only in progressive Adventist inner circles but also in the churches among the more conservative laity. It is a sensible discussion, but ends with a consensus not to trouble ordinary Adventists with the issues that Professor Numbers would raise in 1976. Against this rich backdrop, Professor Numbers focuses on and details with many a photograph Ellen White's contributions as a popularizer of other people's ideas about health: against hypnotism, for water cures, against poisonous medicines, for fresh air, simple foods and healthier clothing for women -- including shortened skirts that did not drag the ground and styles that did not require corsets. She traveled widely inside and outside the USA, including a long missionary stint with others in New Zealand and Australia. In the latter country a woman attending one of her lectures made a huge impression on the prophetess by urging her to consider the suffering imposed on animals raised and slaughtered for human consumption. Ellen White's thinking about health evolved, and in some cases, went back and forth on stimulants, food and drink. Butter? Meat? Tobacco? Spirits? Some were rejected from the beginning, notably tobacco. Her thinking and practice on meat eating wavered but eventually came down vegetarian. By book's end, a fair-minded reader, I think, regards Mrs White as a woman with a lot of common sense, believing strongly that God wants people to be healthy and that they are therefore obliged to adopt a life style promoting health. Before 1870 she was moving to create Adventist-run health centers, based on water cures, healthy meals and exercises. She will also be forever remembered for boosting Dr John Kellogg at Battle Creek, Michigan, the pioneer of granola and corn flakes. And the Adventist learning and medical centers at Loma Linda, California are among her lasting monuments. Ellen G. White's impact was confined for decades within the small but growing inward-looking Adventist movement. Adventists, by and large, accepted her ideas because she claimed they came directly from God and they believed her. It was once that simple. -OOO- Your Tags: seventh-day adventism, religion-based health, vegetarianism, teetotalism, adventist hospitals http://www.amazon.com/Prophetess-Health-Library-Religious-Biography /dp/0802803954/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258490506&sr=1-1 =-=-=-=-=-=-= IV. epinions.com Title of this review: God wants us to be healthy. by aohcapablanca, Nov 23 '09 You may never have heard of long-lived Ellen Gould White, nee Harmon (1827 - 1915). But she, her husband James White and former sea captain Joseph Bates together launched and guided the Seventh-Day Adventist movement in America and spread it worldwide. She also boosted the work of Dr John Kellogg at their water-cure sanitorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. And from the work of John and the Kellogg family came granola and other health foods known to us all. Largely self-educated, Ellen White, often without giving due credit, took up the ideas and practices of others, experimented with them, changed her mind now and then, sifted out the best of others' insights and then commended the results with marked success to her growing number of followers around the world. Her views included forceful recommendations about what to eat and drink and about uncorseting herself and other women, and lifting the hemlines of their dresses inches above the often filthy, unhealthy ground and even wearing trousers. During a lengthy missionary stay in New Zealand and Australia in the 1890s, Mrs White set in motion "Down Under" developments leading to today's far-flung Adventist networks of hospitals, churches, and institutions for health and for all levels of education. She came to accept that it is not right to raise and slaughter animals so that people can eat meat. She made Loma Linda, California a religion-based seedbed of health and higher education. Loma Linda's remarkably long-lived, health-dedicated Adventists make up one of four very diverse communities worldwide recently studied for tips on healthy living in Dan Buettner's best selling THE BLUE ZONES. Yet even now, after all this, Ellen G. White is not widely known outside her own denomination. But who among us has done nearly as much as she? The life and times of this remarkable American woman, with special attention to her writings and practices in health and wellness, are the subject of ELLEN G. WHITE: PROPHETESS OF HEALTH by Ronald L. Numbers (University of Wisconsin Professor of History). The book fell like a bomb in conservative Adventist circles when it first appeared in 1976. It has since morphed into revised second and third editions in 1992 and 2008. It is, in my opinion, a gem of careful, detached historical yet popularly written scholarship. Ellen Harmon White takes credible, generally attractive, three-dimensional shape in Numbers's pages through her own words, in those of admirers and debunkers, and through many black and white photographs of herself, her twin sister, her husband and literary and health luminaries of the 19th and early 20th Centuries. She endured dreadful health almost all her life. But in an 1863 vision God convinced her that he wanted all men to be healthy and he told Mrs White precisely what they had to do to become healthy. Ellen Harmon and her twin sister Elizabeth grew up in a devout family of evangelical Christians. Early on the family was swept into "Millerism," William Miller's belief that it was possible to calculate to the day when Christ would come a second time to launch the millennium. Thousands of people sold all they had and waited for Jesus on October 24, 1844. When Jesus did not appear, there was "Great Disappointment." The Millerite movement partially vanished, partially morphed into new forms. Of these splinter movements Seventh-Day Adventism proved to have the longest legs. Whatever university-educated Adventist theologians, preachers, doctors and intellectuals may have thought of Mrs White's visions (and often kept quietly to themselves), the simple man and woman in the pews generally took Ellen G. White to be an inspired prophet of God, according to Professor Numbers. Her words were but reformulations of what she had seen and heard directly from God. She was infallible. She was the best interpreter of Scripture and church history. Ellen White's undisputed status as Prophetess disposed her followers to believe everything that she taught, even when she changed her mind, as she did regarding eating butter and meat. Professor Numbers gives close attention to Ellen White's claims to be a prophet and how serious Adventists variously sorted out those claims. And this makes great reading. But his main focus is on her views on health and wellness. He presents Mrs White as one of America's foremost and successful popularizers of other people's sometimes good, sometimes debatable health ideas. Those notions caused White to tailor views about pants and skirts taken from Amelia Bloomer, and views about water cures and health foods from any number of sources -- as pulled together in 1976 for the first time by Professor Ronald L. Numbers. Ellen White was not a lone genius, full of self-generated ideas. Rather she chose what she considered the best ideas of others, concluding, however, that God had put those ideas into her head even before she had read human books. And then she persuaded fervent Adventist believers, for various lengths of time, to dress as she dressed, scorn alcohol and tobacco as she did, and on and on. Her prescriptions touched upon bodily health, including passionate opposition to masturbation, especially by women, advocacy of the importance of fresh air, refusal to use "poisonous" medicines and metals, abstinence from coffee, tea, intoxicating spirits, meat, butter (sometimes) and many other detailed bits of advice. White's proposed ways of healthy living were not directly picked up outside her own denomination. But Ellen White was not alone. She stood with other health pioneers such as Sylvester Graham (Graham flour, crackers, etc.). As mutually influencing American health reformers, they launched a movement which gathers momentum to this day. It matters to many (but not all) Adventists whether God spoke infallibly through Ellen White about vegetarianism, shorter skirts, uncorseted waists and other reforms. What should be clear, I think, to all of us is that Ellen White left her mark, made and continues to make a difference in our thinking about health. I find her, as presented in Ronald Numbers' pages, to be a brave, troubled, spunky, generally common-sensical woman worth knowing better. Charismatic? Improbable? Yes. But so was Saint Joan of Arc. -OOO- Pros: Seventh-Day Adventism and the enthusiastic American Protestant milieu that birthed it. God prescribes good health. Cons: More appealing to scholars than to general publics. Had disturbing impact among Adventists in 1976. The Bottom Line: Adventists trusted advice of their co-foundress Ellen White because her views came from God. She successfully popularized others' more original ideas about religion, women's fashions and, most especially, health. Overall Product Rating: * * * * * Recommended to a Friend? Yes. http://www.epinions.com/reviews/Book_Prophetess_of_Health_Ellen _G_White_and_the_Origins_of_the_Seventh_day_Adventist_Hearl _Reform_30th_Anniversary_Edition_Ronald_L_Numbers =-=-=-=-=-=- V. lunch.com title of this review: Ellen G. White (1827-1915): From Shouting Methodist to Seventh-day Adventist Prophetess to Health Guru On October 22, 1844 Jesus failed to appear in America and elsewhere, as the Millerites (followers of prophet William Miller) fervently expected him to do. Months later 17-year old Ellen Gould Harmon fell into a trance at a Millerite meeting in a private house. As others before her, she re-interpreted the meaning of Jesus's non-appearance. It was the end of a phase of Jesus's ministry, not the Second Coming itself. To those who did not accepted this interpretation, there was suddenly a "shut door" upon personal salvation. Years later, Ellen, now married and a mother, moved away from the ecstatic "shouting Methodist" religion in which she had been raised and its post-Millerite manifestations during her frequent trances and revelations from God. She organized a church. She became a prolific writer. After a major 1863 revelation from God, she devoted much of the rest of her very long life, including nearly a decade in Australia and New Zealand, both to preparing for Christ's Second Coming and to passing on God's detailed prescriptions for healthy living. With some wavering down the decades, as Mrs White recalled her seminal visions and then rejected some of her first verbal formulations of God's message, Helen Gould Harmon White wrote to her Seventh-day Adventists along the following lines. -- God positively wants all people to be
healthy, (and this although Helen herself had wretched health all her
life).
-- This means among other things: women should give up wearing corsets and wear short skirts over trousers. -- Everyone should stop using tobacco and alcohol, stop going to doctors who prescribe drugs, and should avoid meat and possibly butter. -- Everyone should get lots of fresh air, water and, when ailing, rely on water cures. Ellen was as good as her word. She patronized the Kelloggs of Battle Creek in their work at her sanitarium and their creation of dry cereal breakfast foods. She inspired one of the most impressive of all Protestant health and education networks. The Seventh-day Adventists around Adventist-dense Loma Linda, California were singled out in his best-selling THE BLUE ZONES by Dan Buettner for their clean-living longevity and the number of happy 100-year olds. Today there are perhaps 20 million Adventists world-wide and most were taught to believe that Mrs White's writings were at least on a par with those of the New Testament. History of Science Professor Ronald L. Numbers, raised from cradle through early academic career among family members who were paramount chiefs of Seventh-day Adventism, but no longer practicing his inherited faith, produced in 1976 PROPHETESS OF HEALTH: A STUDY OF ELLEN G. WHITE. This exciting book has gone through three editions. It burst like a bombshell among Adventists in 1976. Numbers was soon followed by other young "renegade" academically trained Adventists in subjecting the hitherto untouchable supernatural dimension of Helen White to naturalistic scrutiny. Whatever Adventists or non-Adventists may think of Helen White as a God-chosen special channel of revelation, the fact remains that millions of people have led long, healthy lives following her advice on health. Some
excerpts from PROPHETESS OF HEALTH (3rd edition, 2008)
-- From court transcripts of an 1845 trial of someone else in Maine. "The
trial record shows seventeen-year old Ellen Harmon, accompanied by
James White (her future husband) caught up in the very 'fanaticism'
that she would later denounce: kissing, touching, crawling, and shouting" (xiii).
-- From Preface to the First Edition (1976) "Ellen G. White, Seventh-day Adventist
prophetess, ranks with the Mormon Joseph Smith, the Christian Scientist
Mary Baker Eddy, and Charles Taze Russell of the Jehovah's Witnesses as
one of four nineteenth-century founders of a major American religious
sect. ... By her death in 1915 she had founded one of the nation's
largest indigenous denominations, created a string of sanitariums and
hospitals stretching from Scandinavia to the South Pacific, and
inspired an educational system without peer in the Protestant world
today. She had traveled widely, lectured extensively, and written
dozens of books on a variety of subjects. Few contemporaries, male or
famale, accomplished more" (xxx).
COMMENT: Presbyterians might dispute their implied runner-up status vis-a-vis Adventists in the world of Protestant educational work. Professor Numbers writes clearly and forcefully. His footnotes and index amply document his argument. This is a book well worth reading and rereading. -OOO- http://www.lunch.com/reviews/UserReview-Ronald_L_Numbers_Prophetess _of_Health_A_Study_of_Ellen_G_White-1436734-17782-Ellen_G_White _1827_1915_From_Shouting.html http://www.patrickkillough/books/numbers_ellengwhite.html |