Health Department by Dudley Marvin Canright

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Aug 26, 1875

Health Department.

By Dudley Marvin Canright

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

Work and Health Reform.

ONE of the chief objections which people have to the health reform is that it will not do to work hard upon, as they think. It is not at all strange that those who have not tried it should think so. Always accustomed to depend upon meat, tea, coffee, and three meals a day, it very naturally seems to them that without these they would have no strength to labor: hence they say that the reform will do very well for those who do not have to work hard, but not for those who do.

Now I know that this is not true. In the first place, it is not reasonable; for there is more nutriment by far in graham bread, beans, peas, rice, fruits, etc., than there is in meat. In the second place, in the last seven or eight years, I have seen as hard working men as I ever knew who have lived and flourished on the health reform. They have done as much or more work than their neighbors, have paid no doctors’ bills, and have had good health. I could name many instances of this among both farmers and mechanics. Though I am not a farmer or a mechanic, yet I claim to know what hard labor is. As an illustration, in looking over my diary, I find that in ninty-two days, I have held one hundred and eighteen meetings, at nearly all of which I have preached from an hour to an hour and a quarter. This is an average of nine meetings a week, all the way through. During the same time, I have every day visited from house to house, thus spending most of the day. When not doing this, I have been studying or writing. Nor is this an exceptional case, as I have worked about the same for years, and this on the health reform too. I am now stronger, healthier, and more able to work than when I began, years ago.

Contrast this with ministers who take their three meals a day, and live on tea, coffee, fine flour, pork, chicken, etc. Generally, they preach twice a week, about forty minutes each sermon, and attend a prayer-meeting one evening. Many of them become weakly, pale creatures, get the consumption, bronchitis, or something else, and have to take a vacation to rest up!

Suggest to these dear souls that a plain, vegetable diet, and two meals a day, would be good for them, and they have an answer ready, viz.: Men who have to perform such severe mental labor as they do, require a strong, nourishing diet!!

The Lord pity them and their flocks till they learn what a good, strong diet really is. D. M. CANRIGHT.