In the vision given me December 25, 1865, I saw that the health reform was a great enterprise, closely connected with the present truth, and that Seventh-day Adventists should have a home for the sick where they could be treated for their diseases and also learn how to take care of themselves so as to prevent sickness. I saw that our people should not remain indifferent upon this subject and leave the rich among us to go to the popular water cure institutions of the country for the recovery of health, where they would find opposition to, rather than sympathy with, their views of religious faith. Those who are reduced by disease suffer not only for want of physical but also of mental and moral strength; and afflicted, conscientious Sabbathkeepers cannot receive as much benefit where they feel that they must be constantly guarded lest they compromise their faith and dishonor their profession, as at an institution whose physicians and conductors are in sympathy with the truths connected with the third angel’s message.
(1T 553.1)
MC
VC
When persons who have suffered much from disease are relieved by an intelligent system of treatment, consisting of baths, healthful diet, proper periods of rest and exercise, and the beneficial effects of pure air, they are often led to conclude that those who successfully treat them are right in matters of religious faith, or, at least, cannot greatly err from the truth. Thus if our people are left to go to those institutions whose physicians are corrupt in religious faith, they are in danger of being ensnared. The institution at -----, I then saw (in 1865), was the best in the United States. So far as the treatment of the sick is concerned, they have been doing a great and good work; but they urge upon their patients dancing and card playing, and recommend attendance at theaters and such places of worldly amusement, which is in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ and the apostles.
(1T 553.2)
MC
VC