A Century of Health

Richard J B Willis

BUC Health Ministries Director

If you had opened your daily paper 100 years ago, you would have been introduced to the amazing properties of Keen's 'One Night' Cold Cure, Tuberculozyne, Curic Wafers, Bell's Fairy Cure, Munyonis Blood Cure, Zox, Oquit, Pistoia Gout Powders, Vin Urané Pesqui, Capsulated Haemoglobin ovals for the Hair, and similar other such substances to cure all diseases from cancer to baldness.

There were so many of these quack nostrums and, in particular, an anti-tuberculosis preparation by a certain Mr Stevens, which caused the British Medical Association to publish a book in 1909 called Secret Remedies to expose them. A public analyst was hired to list the ingredients and the cost of a variety of patent medicines.

The introduction to the listing notes: 'Judging from the relative number of secret remedies advertised for different complaints, it would seem that the most attractive fields for exploitation by the "patent" medicine man are afforded by those diseases which are widely prevalent, and sufficiently serious to cause considerable suffering and incapacity, insomuch as such disorders lend themselves to sensational descriptions of the dire consequences which will follow if the one and only real and certain cure is not purchased.'

The authors also pointed out that it was not only the poorer classes who had a weakness for quacks but that the well-to-do took a curious pleasure in experimenting with mysterious compounds. Against this background the Seventh-day Adventist health message with its emphasis on natural remedies must literally have been a breath of fresh air, and was part of the earliest work. Dr and Mrs A B Olsen published the Good Health journal in 1901 and started a Sanitarium in Caterham, Surrey in 1903; In 1902 Dr J J Bell opened a 10 bed Sanitarium in Belfast (moved to Rostrevor in 1906); and Dr F C Richards ran a Sanitarium in rented premises in Leicester in 1903.

Most of these initiatives had a short life and the health work became centralised in the Stanborough Sanitarium or Hydro on Stanborough Park in 1911. Other self-supporting health work continued around the country. With the coming of the NHS, interest in private medicine waned and eventually the 'San' closed. Drs Gertrude and Ted Brown continued with the health work in Scotland which culminated with the purchase and development of Roundelwood at Crieff which continues as the sole Adventist health Institute in the British Union.

The passing years of the century has seen a swing from quackery to highly sophisticated medicine; from private ventures, to NHS to private medicine once more; the one single constant has been the natural remedies taught by the Seventh-day Adventist Church. These simple remedies given by divine providence are as valid now as they have ever been. In fact more so as the present Age has shown an interest in wholism in health.

It may be a source of regret that we have so few flagships to promote the healthy living espoused by Adventists, but we do have a message to be proud of. Let us reexcite the citizens of the UK with the message at the turn of our BUC century for the disorders that allowed quackery to flourish are still with us.