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Enter the Health Reformers
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June 6 - Enter the Health Reformers

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You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free. John 8:32, RSV.

It was in the context of the ignorance about health that we find the rise of the American health reform movement during the 1830s. One of the most influential and representative reformers was Sylvester Graham. We can catch a glimpse of his ideas from an 1837 article in The Graham Journal. According to him, (1) "the chief food should be vegetables and fruit"; (2) bread should be made of unrefined flour; (3) "good cream may be used instead of butter"; (4) food should be thoroughly chewed; (5) "flesh-meat and fish. . .had better be omitted" ; (6) one should avoid fat, rich gravies, and spicy condiments; (7) "all stimulants, of every sort and kind, as tea, coffee, wine, tobaccoo (in all its forms), cider, beer, etc., are prohibited"; (8) "pure soft water" is the preferred drink; (9) "the last meal of the day should be light" and taken three or four hours before going to bed; (10) "not a particle of food should always be preferred to taking medicine"; (13) one should sleep about seven hours a day in "properly ventilated rooms"; (14) always svoid tight clothing; (15) "bathing [even daily] in warm or cold water is highly recommended"; (16) "exercise in the open air is very necessary"; and (17) "bread must not be eaten till 12 to 24 hours old."

To religious health reformers the laws of health were divine. Thus Theodore Dwight Weld could assert that "these are God's laws as really as 'Love the Lord with all thy heart' and 'Love thy neighbor as thyself.'" Obeying them meant a healthy body, while disobeying brought disease. The choide, Weld suggsted, was "between obeying God and resisting him, preserving life and destroying it, kieeping the sixth commandment and committing suicide."

Clearly related to the health reform movement and quite comparable with it was the rist of the forms of medical practice that opposed the drugging and bleeding techniques of the standard medicine of the day. One of them, hydrotherapy, recommended the internal and external applications of water as a therapeutic system. The water-cure physicians generally adopted the Graham health system.

Sometimes we Adventists think that the health reform program originated with us.

Not so! God loves all people, and He moves upon the heart of many to alleviate the woes of a sick planet. Praise God for the broadness of His mercy.

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Those who learn to love amusement for its own sake open the door to a flood of temptations(COL 55).
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