Health Department by J. E. White

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Jun 17, 1875

Health Department.

By J. E. White

"Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth." 3 John 2.

Flesh as Food.

THE greatest argument I can imagine against the use of animal food is the frightful disease and mortality existing among all classes of animals.

There was a good old time when man lived to nearly one thousand years of age. Then disease was hardly known, either among men or animals. But as man drew away from God, the curse fell again and again, heavier and heavier, upon man and upon everything on which he depended; not only upon the ground but upon the beasts of the field and the domestic animals. As far back as Moses' time we find a record of disease and blemishes among the domestic animals, from the fact that the priests were forbidden to offer any such as a sacrifice to God.

Now the life of man seldom reaches above eighty years, and the average is about thirty, and the amount of disease and suffering is truly appalling. A perfectly healthy person I have never seen; and among the nearly 1,300,000,000 inhabitants of this globe such a person would be a rare curiosity.

When we look at our domestic animals which we have been in the habit of using for food, we see among them the same declension from their original state, and the same universality of disease, as among man. In the terrible cattle plague which raged a few years since across the Atlantic we have one example. Indeed the ravages of the disease were so great that all Europe was startled. In our own country about two years ago the epizooty threatened to deprive us of that most useful animal, the horse. Then the foot-rot and scab among the sheep have frequently destroyed whole flocks.

Not only does this disease and mortality exist among our larger and more useful animals, but we frequently hear of epidemics among the fowls, in which whole barn yards were cleared of their feathery inmates; and we frequently read of plagues among the fishes, in which, in some localities, the whole finney tribe have perished and rose a stinking mass on the surface of the water.

In a recent number of the Voice of Truth we find the following extract which is to the point :—

"Turkey is at this time a deeply afflicted country. Besides the ravages of famine, a deadly disease is raging among the flocks and herds throughout the empire, from Bagdad to the Adriatic. In the province of Smyrna a kind of small-pox has broken out among the sheep, while there is a pulmonary disease among the cattle that is rapidly thinning the herds. On the plains of Troy, the skeletons of thousands and thousands of sheep cover the ground. Shepherds, stripped of their entire herds in many cases, have gone insane over the calamity. In the country about Adrianope fully thirty per cent of the horses and horned cattle have already died of disease. The entire pastoral regions of the empire seem smitten with the disorder which is said to greatly resemble the murrain spoken of in the Bible."

But to come nearer home, there is hardly an animal butchered for market without a degenerated or ulcerated liver, or some other organic disease. Just think of it. If we look the ground over carefully we will see sufficient disgusting evidence that disease is the rule, and health the exception, even among the animals that are daily bought and consumed by the million from our markets.

I have the testimony of butchers of experience, that they have seldom killed an animal for market which did not bear prominent marks of disease, which, of course, they were careful to remove before it should meet the eyes of the consumers.

A few years ago an epidemic prevailed among nearly all the sheep of Michigan. Immediately the owners began to forestall nature by a few days by killing the animals before they should die, and selling the carcasses for food. For days, at Detroit, Michigan, I have seen wagon after wagon take its stand on the street, loaded with dressed carcasses of sheep which were sold at twenty-five cents a carcass. Incidents of this kind could be obtained by the score, but these facts are so evident that more incidents are unnecessary.

All will agree that our bodies are made up of what we eat; therefore, in order to have a clean system, composed of healthy tissue, we must eat clean food and that which the system can take to the very best advantage. It is a fallacy to suppose that the system can take a heterogenous mass of whatever we may choose to send it, whether good or bad, and manufacture it in some way into good blood which will build up the system and keep it in the best kind of repair. If into the fountain which gives rise to numerous streams we cast mire, filth, and dirt, the streams issuing from the fountain will be discolored and filthy. If the material which we supply to the system is unhealthy, measly, scrofulous, the blood which pulsates throughout every minutest tissue of the body will carry the feverish mass to build up measly, scrofulous tissue, laying the foundation for disease and premature death.

The vegetable kingdom has not been subject to the same degeneracy as the animal. Among the grains and fruits which abound everywhere we find sufficient elements for food without preying upon the carcasses of unhealthy animals. Indeed, we prefer the bill of fare which God gave to Adam, to anything we have ever heard proposed since :—

"And God said; Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." Gen. 1:29.

J. E. WHITE.

Oakland, Cal., June 10, 1875.