Many principles of health were pointed out in the Testimonies years before science could explain them. What science had demonstrated that whole-wheat bread was more wholesome than white bread as early as the sixties, when this instruction first appeared? It was not until scientific research had shown that minerals and vitamins are of vital importance in nutrition that the real reasons became known. And this was not until fifty years later.
Because Sylvester Graham and others advocated whole-wheat bread thirty years before it was pointed out in the Testimonies, some are inclined to think these principles were not distinctively matters of divine revelation. But of all the things advocated by men, how many there are which have proved to be false! And, contrariwise, of all the principles of health pointed out in the Testimonies, how many have been repudiated by science, or have failed of corroboration and explanation by later scientific research? Not one has' been shown to be untrue to science, and practically none of these great principles yet remain undemonstrated by scientific research.
Simple, but Complex
Some of these principles, so simply stated that they thereby fail to attract attention, are nevertheless so highly technical that it has required a vast amount of experimentation to unearth the explanation of them. It is noteworthy also that these researches have been done by men having no knowledge of health matters through the channel of divine revelation, so highly prized by our denomination.
One of these messages is of special interest to me personally. I have the statement underlined in "Counsels on Health," and also in "Testimonies," Volume IX, where it first appeared in print. I had long been looking for some scientific explanation of this statement, but without success, In "Medical Ministry," page 287, this same statement is copied from the original manuscript sent to a physician in the year 1901. The statement reads: "And eggs contain properties which are remedial agencies in counteracting poisons." At the time this was written, no scientist on earth, and certainly not the individual who was the channel of its giving, could have given the slightest clue to its scientific explanation.
In September, 1931, Edward Mellanby, of England, published a paper entitled, "The Experimental Production and Prevention of Degeneration in the Spinal Cord," in which he showed that "diets containing a large amount of cereals, and deficient in vitamin A or carotin, when fed to young puppies, caused degeneration of the spinal cord in the form of demyelination of the nerve fibers (loss of the insulating sheath). Moreover, it was definitely established experimentally that the effect of the neurotoxin (nerve poison) of ergot and cereals is neutralized by this vitamin."
Vitamin A controls the growth, structure, and function of a greater number of tissues of the body than probably any other nutritional element. Investigators have found that a shortage of this vitamin in the refined foods, or unbalanced diet of civilized man, will produce in animals under experiment, lack of physical stamina, susceptibility to infections, stunting and lack of growth, ten different diseases of the eyes, eleven of the respiratory tract, seven of the alimentary tract, seven of the genito-urinary tract, nine of the skin, two of the blood; and the end is not yet. But not until Mellanby's researches in 1931, was it known to have any control over the growth and structure of nerve tissue, and here apparently it behaves in a different way than with other tissues—it counteracts the effects of a poison.
One of the prominent vitamins of egg yolk is vitamin A, though it is by no means confined to the egg. Milk and butter fat, also avoided by some because of extreme ideas in diet, are good sources of vitamin A. Green and yellow vegetables, especially raw carrots, often disliked by vegetarians, are excellent sources of this most important vitamin. Thus twenty-two years before it attained any scientific explanation, this statement was read before our General Conference in Washington (1909) ; and thirty years before its experimental demonstration, it was written to a physician in distress because of extremes in diet. Such was the highly technical knowledge imparted, and such is its recent scientific explanation.
Too Easily Satisfied
I was well satisfied with the explanation as meeting the technicalities of the statement for which I had so long been looking for a scientific elucidation. But a few months later, when rereading a treatise on the present knowledge of vitamins, I came across another startling research throwing further light upon this same statement in the Testimonies. And here I must acknowledge having had to learn something backward. The summary of this research reads:
"Soon after Mellanby's original announcement of the discovery of the dietary cause of rickets, he made a second startling statement to the effect that cereals, especially oatmeal, not only do not contain vitamin D, but do contain some definite anticalcifying substance. Continuing his work on dogs, he found that on a diet which was deficient in vitamin D, when other dietary and environmental factors remained the same, doubling the amount of cereal made the rickets distinctly worse." He was "able to extract a substance from oatmeal which, when added to a diet that would otherwise produce slight rickets, intensifies the symptoms considerably." "Recently Mirvish, by methods similar to those used by Mellanby, has obtained from oatmeal an extract which will lower the blood calcium of rabbits thirty per cent in twenty-four to forty-eight hours, . . . with a return to normal in approximately seventy-two hours." "Mellanby himself was the first to show that the anticalcifying effect of cereals or cereal extracts may be completely nullified by supplementing the diet with adequate amounts of vitamin D in the form of cod-liver oil, egg yolk, or irradiated fats, or by irradiating the animal, or even the cereal itself."
Vitamin D is the sunshine vitamin, with the function of appropriating lime and phosphorus from the food, keeping the proper amount in the blood and body fluids, and building these into the structure of bone. Its lack gives rise to rickets—soft bones. It is found in foods largely in proportion to their exposure to the ultraviolet of sunlight, and especially do fats under such exposure or irradiation become excellent sources. It has been shown that the sun bath activates a peculiar substance (ergosterol) in the oily secretion of the skin, which is thereby changed to vitamin D, and so supplies this essential to health. The animal body stores this in the liver. Fish obtain it also from the green plants of the water in which they live, and hence its abundance in the oil of the liver of fishes.
Egg yolks are an excellent source of vitamin D. Even severe rickets has been cured by adding one or two egg yolks daily to the milk formula. Here, then, is another property of eggs which counteracts a poison, and the poison is again present in a diet excessive in grain products, which have been stressed so much in a vegetarian diet.
And this is how I learned something backward. On rereading the statement concerning the dietary properties of eggs which neutralize poisons ("Counsels on Health," page 136, and "Medical Ministry," page 287) I found what I had overlooked,—that the words "properties," "agencies," and "poisons" are all in the plural, not in the singular. I had been gratified and satisfied with the explanation regarding one property neutralizing one poison, overlooking the fact that these words are in the plural, and hence must mean that eggs contain at least two properties that counteract at least two poisons.
Scientific, Technical, Exact
This statement regarding eggs does not, of course, explain other factors in pernicious anemia, which was supposed to be the disease in the case where this instruction was given. It does throw light on one of the most serious results of the disease, viz., spinal cord degeneration; and also upon another disease-producing effect of an unbalanced diet excessive in cereals and lacking in milk, butter, eggs, and certain vegetables.
The language of the statement in the Testimonies is not haphazard, nor careless, nor inexact. It is scientific, technical, and exact to the last letter. It was given thirty years before a single human being on earth could have explained it. Whence did it come, if not from the Designer of the vitamins, the Maker of foods and the Creator of the human body, the One from whom emanate all the powers of the universe, the minutiae as well as the magnuti, whose power made the chemical elements and their smallest component parts, ordained their properties and hence their relationships; that is, the laws of biochemistry and physiology? There is no other possible explanation of this strangely simple yet intricately complex and highly technical statement, exact in its scientific accuracy and far-reaching in its relation to health and disease, as any physician must concede who knows the circumstances of its first promulgation.
It is never within our province to ignore or to question the messages of God's Spirit, but to study diligently that we may discover their meaning and application. God gives no instruction too idealistic to be applied to human circumstances and relations. When rightly understood and simply and faithfully followed, the Testimonies of God's Spirit are always the best for us.
Glendale, Calif.
