General Conference Bulletin: Dr. J. H. Kellogg & The Vaccination Crisis

1. Upon the conference reassembling, Dr. J. H. Kellogg, of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, was asked to address the delegates on medical missionary work, which he did as follows:-

The subject of medical missionary work has never occupied a great amount of time in the councils of our General Conference, and I presume it will not be proper to occupy a great amount of your time here to-day. The subject is a very large one, and I want briefly to outline the work that is being done, and needs to be done. To do this fully would occupy more time than you could well afford to devote to it here, where there are so many other subjects that need careful attention.
The principles of health reform, or what we call our health principles, have been before this people for thirty-five years, and the more I have studied them, the more I am amazed at their magnitude, and their beauty. During the last three years especially, these principles have grown with wonderful rapidity. The length, and breadth, and depth of these, which God gave us a third of a century ago, are becoming more and more clearly defined, and more and more thoroughly established on scientific facts.
We find that almost every new discovery in science having any bearing upon health goes to confirm these great principles, and not a single word can be found – not a single fact can be presented – by anybody that in the slightest degree weakens, or in any sense overthrows, a single one of the principles that have been practised all these years. It is a thing that ought to give us faith and hope and confidence, not only in the principles, but in the way in which the Lord brought them to us, as well as in all the other truths they accompany. If there is anything in the world that ought to strengthen one’s faith in the Lord’s work, it is just to take up these health principles, and see in what a plain, clear, simple way they were first presented, unaccompanied by scientific facts, and note how they have won their way in the world.

2. Not only among this people, but all over the world we find these principles growing. Elder Conradi could tell you how the principles of hygiene are received in Germany and in Hungaria. Brother Holser could tell you how they are developing in Switzerland, and from Australia we have letters from Sister White, Dr. Caro, and Elder Daniells, telling how these same principles are agitating the minds of the people there. Dr. Waggoner and Professor Prescott can tell how they are growing upon the minds of the people in England; and I might spend several hours telling how the principles are developing in this country, and moving the hearts of the people. I remember that sixteen or eighteen years ago a canvasser in Ohio was introducing Good Health, and he called at a house, and introduced himself as a sanitarium missionary, and said to the lady who opened the door, “I came to talk with you about sanitarium methods.” She said, “We have not such a thing in the house, and we don’t want any.” But the time has come when the people begin to see the need of these sanitarium principles, and they want them in their houses, too. There is one thing to which I would call your attention. I do not remember whether or not I spoke about it two years ago; but it is a very fearful thing, and stares the world in the face, and they can not get away from it.

3. There is a class of people in the world who try to make us believe that we are getting healthier; that human life is getting longer; that we are making such wonderful discoveries of how to prevent disease, and how to antagonize plagues, etc.; and that we are gradually getting the victory over these evils, and by and by, if we can not exterminate smallpox, we shall be able, at any rate, to deprive it of its power by vaccination, and in other ways. Now we have to look this matter squarely in the face. Less than a month ago I found some statistical evidence in one of our scientific journals stating that at the present time there is in the United States one idiot for every five hundred persons, and other statistics I have gathered show that there are now, in every million of people, 3,400 idiots, lunatics, and imbeciles; and that this number has increased three hundred per cent. in fifty years. Thirty years ago the proportion in England was just what it is in this country at the present time. At this rate we can look ahead, and easily tell what it will be in fifty years more. Fifty years ago there were about one thousand idiots, lunatics, and imbeciles to the million. At the present time we have 3,400 to the million. That is over three times as many. In fifty years more, increasing at the same rate, we would have ten thousand to the million, or three times 3,400. Then fifty years further on, there would be ten thousand to the million, or one per cent. of all. Fifty years more, we would have three per hundred, or three per cent.

4. In fifty years more, there would be nine to the hundred; and in another fifty years, twenty-seven to the hundred. In another fifty years we would have eighty-one to the hundred; and in fifty years more, two hundred and forty-three to the hundred. But the world could not go so far as that, even though it be but three hundred years. Two hundred and sixty-five years would be the farthest point that could be reached, before the whole world would be made up of lunatics, imbeciles, and idiots. But society could not hold together, even to that point, judging of its condition at the present time. Let some political question come up, and it seems to seize half the population with some phase of lunacy. It is the same in many social reforms. People in the world get an idea, and it carries them away off. So we have anarchists, socialists, and various classes of people who are insane in various ways. This is likely to keep going on until we have so many imbeciles that it will be impossible for society to hold together. When we get to going down, our speed will be accelerated, as when you start a ball rolling down hill. That will go faster and faster, until it gets to the bottom, when it is dashed to pieces.

5. Mrs. S. M. I. Henry: Is not that a very strong demonstration of the fact that the Lord is soon to come?
Dr. Kellogg: That is the very thing I wanted to bring to your minds. We have statistical proof of the fact that this world is soon coming to an end. The Lord is not coming to destroy the world, but to save it; he is coming to save the world from what would come to it if it went on. We are coming down to a time of absolute confusion and destruction. Men are getting more and more subject to disease all the time. There are fewer old people than formerly. The last fifty years the bottom seems to have dropped out of the constitution of the human race. The Lord made man the toughest animal on the face of the earth. Even to-day you take a man who is in good training, and there is not another beast that can compete with him. A man can travel farther in six days than a horse. A well-trained man can tire out two or three horses in the course of a week. There is no question about it. Man, however, has greatly deteriorated, but no other animal would stand the abuse that he endures, even now. How long could a horse or a cow endure such treatment as human beings give themselves? A man would not dare feed his horse what he himself eats, or his cow either. He would not even feed his dog the same. A woman eats, and feeds things to her child, that she would not give her bird; she takes better care of her cat than of herself, or her child. The world is coming to see that there is a tremendous catastrophe before the race if something is not done. The hearts of the people, the world over, are wonderfully open to receive these principles. Two things are a constant wonder to me. The first is the beauty of these principles, and the other thing is that we do not appreciate them more. How can it be? Just see what these principles can do for this people! Let me call your attention to what the world is trying to do. Just as soon as small-pox gets into a community, what do the doctors do? They say everybody has to be vaccinated. Over in India they vaccinate from arm to arm, and people get leprosy and consumption through it. In this country that method is not tolerated. You would not allow your children to be vaccinated from your neighbor’s child’s arm; but you allow them to be vaccinated from a calf, because you know the calf has a great deal better blood than your neighbor’s child has. You are afraid of your neighbor, and you have reason to be afraid of him. In India not long ago there was a case where one hundred and sixty students in a school were vaccinated from arm to arm, and sixty of those boys and girls came down with leprosy in three years. Think of that. You see vaccination is not a thing that is entirely safe; but there is some reason in it. But if you are vaccinated from a calf that has tuberculosis, then you get consumption. So you see that is not altogether safe. I believe there is something better on principle than that, and I am going to try to show you some disease with disease, and the man who is vaccinated is a little lower in vitality after he has been vaccinated than before. It is like a boy who becomes immune to the use of tobacco. At first it makes him sick, but afterward he becomes used to it, and it does not affect him; yet it is doing the boy harm all the time. It is thought by some scientists that the time will soon come when vaccination will be employed for all maladies in the earth. It has been said by Dr. Lancaster, of London, that the time will come when a young man taking a course in a medical school would, before he finished, be vaccinated for all diseases that were prevalent in the country. I do not think there would be very much left of that man after he had gone through all that. It has been proved that when a man has had small-pox, he is more subject to consumption than before.
The Chair: Has that been proved, doctor?
J. H. Kellogg: Yes, it has been proved within the last three months by statistics that have been collected that a man is not so good after he has had smallpox as he was before. That is also true of typhoid fever. Very often consumption is fastened upon the victim of typhoid fever. As I said before, this method of obtaining immunity against disease is the method of fighting disease with disease, meeting evil with evil, antidoting poison with poison. It is wonderful to see to what an extent this can be carried. In Chicago a few weeks ago a woman appeared before our medical class; and she had with her a rattlesnake, which she took out of its cage. She held him in her hand and irritated him. She beat him, and stirred him up until he became angry, and then as she bared her arm, the reptile struck it time and again, and fastened his fangs into her arm, until the flesh was all covered with the virus. Then she said, “Take that virus, and inject it into a mouse, and see how quickly it will die.” But yet it did not affect her in the least. The fact is, she has become so accustomed to the virus of the snake’s bite that her body is perfectly immune to it, and it apparently does her no harm whatever. I remember a woman at the
sanitarium, who in one day took eight hundred full doses of morphia, – enough to kill forty men. Apparently it did not hurt her, though in fact it was all the time undermining her constitution. This method of fighting disease with disease is the human way of meeting disease, just as we fight fire with fire. But God has given us a truth that has in it power to lift a man above the power of disease. He has given us principles which, if we obey and follow, will change our bodies so that we shall not have to be vaccinated; that will lift the body above the power of disease, and above the power of sin; for sin and disease go along together. Disease is the consequence of sin, and sin induces a moral disease.

Did you ever hear of such a thing as, when there was to be a fight between pugilists like Fitzsimmons and Corbett the battle was called off because one of the men had a cold, or was down with the grip, or fever, smallpox, or anything of the kind? – Why, nobody ever heard of such a thing. The reason for it is that these men have followed the laws of health so rigorously that they are proof against any disease. When Fitzsimmons met Corbett, he was just as ready to meet smallpox or any other condition that could come to him. He was just as ready to fight germs as he was to fight Corbett, and that fact is worth considering. I met a gentleman the other day who told me that he was sick; that because he had to do a little extra work, he had broken down. I said: “That is not what broke you down; you are like a man who had a hole in his boot. As long as he went on dry land, he was all right; but as soon as he stepped his foot into water, it got wet. You have been making holes in your constitution by bad habits, and these habits have let you down; then when a little strain like this came, you broke down altogether. But it is not this little work you have just done that did the mischief; it was your tobacco-smoking and gormandizing at the dinner-table, that did the work.” Thirty years ago God gave us principles which, if they had been followed, might have made us the healthiest people in the world, – a power wherever we are, and an example to all the world. The time will come when there will be some people on this earth whom nothing can kill, not even cyclones nor earthquakes nor disease of any kind, – men whom the plagues can not kill, who can stand anything. God has given us a chance to be some of these men; and why can we not lay hold of the principles that will enable us to be this? It seems to me as if we, of all people, ought hardly to be able to contain ourselves when we have such an opportunity presented before us.

A. F. Ballenger: Could Corbett, with all his training and careful work, be kept from these things without faith?
Dr. Kellogg: No; because he is not absolutely obedient. I was speaking of what exists at the present time. This man is only measurably obedient; but there will come a time when these diseases will come with such power and intensity that they will strike down everybody that has not yielded to God. There is a point here. It is not faith alone that avails the man, but that which faith leads the man to do. It is not the holding of faith but the obedience that comes from faith. The man who has complete faith in God believes everything that God says; and when God tells him to do a thing, he will implicitly obey him. {February 21, 1899 N/A, GCDB 45.3}

• 1. February 21, 1899 N/A, GCDB 45.3