EGW Investigation

Ellen White Versus Genetic Science

By Dirk Anderson, April, 2025

"Those who wear flowing dresses, hanging from their shoulders, confined only by a loose belt, look incomparably more 'interesting,' maternal, and womanly, and every way more taking, than those with confined, wasp-like waists."

(O.S. Fowler, Sexual Science (1870), 773)

The 19th century, a time of burgeoning industrialization and scientific curiosity, was also a breeding ground for bizarre and often dangerous health fads. From "cures" involving electric belts to the gospel of "Fletcherism"—the art of meticulous chewing—the era was ripe with quackery. While some eccentric practices seem comical today, they reveal a fascinating and unsettling chapter in medical history, where desperate hope mingled with a profound lack of scientific understanding, leaving a trail of misled and sometimes harmed individuals. In the midst of this chaos, Ellen White inserted herself as a divinely inspired health reformer for the Seventh-day Adventist [SDA] people.

Ellen White on Lamarkism

© Creator: The Freaks of Fashion

Woman Wearing a Corset

In the 19th century, fashion and medicine collided over the use of corsets. A number of strong claims were made about the health effects of tight-lacing for women. Some argued it led to deformity, illness, and even harmed future generations. But how much of this holds up under modern scientific scrutiny?

In 1844, health reformer O.S. Fowler published an entire book discussisng both real and imagined dangers of tight lacing. One of his concerns was that if pregnant women wore tight lacing, their children, if they survived, would be born sickly, feeble, and invalid.1 Dr. Caleb Jackson, from whom Mrs. White received her "health message," regarded tight-lacing as unhealthy, causing "unnatural excitement."2

Some individuals believed that acquired characteristics, including narrow waists caused by tight-lacing, could be passed down genetically to a woman's descendants. This belief was rooted in a now-discredited theory known as Lamarckism.

The Rise and Fall of Lamarckism

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a French naturalist, proposed his theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics in the early 19th century. It suggested that organisms could pass on traits that they acquired during during their lifetime to their offspring. For example, if a giraffe stretched its neck to reach high branches, its offspring would inherit longer necks.3

Some health reformers applied Lamarckism to the practice of tight-lacing. They believed that if a woman consistently wore a tightly laced corset, her body would permanently adapt, resulting in a narrower waist. They further believed that this acquired narrow waist would then be passed on to her daughters, creating a lineage of women with naturally small waists.

Lamarckism was eventually discredited by the development of Mendelian genetics and Darwin's theory of natural selection. These theories demonstrated that inheritance is based on the transmission of genes, not acquired characteristics. Therefore, tight-lacing would not alter a woman's genetic makeup or be passed on to her descendants. Thus, this belief was based on a flawed understanding of genetics.

Ellen White's Adoption of Lamarckism

Mrs. White informed her followers in her "heaven-sent" messages that acquired physical characteristics would be passed down genetically to the next generation. Imagine how this "truth" terrified her followers! In October of 1871, she endorsed a statement advocating Lamarckism:

The following excellent remarks are from The Household: ... "'But my waist is naturally slender,' says one woman. She means that she has inherited small lungs. Her ancestors, more or less of them, compressed their lungs in the same way that we do, and it has become in her case a congenital deformity."4

The following month, she continued advocating Lamarckism to her followers:

By lacing, the internal organs of women are crowded out of their positions. ... These fashionably dressed women cannot transmit good constitutions to their children. Some women have naturally small waists. But rather than regard such forms as beautiful, they should be viewed as defective. These wasp waists may have been transmitted to them from their mothers, as the result of their indulgence in the sinful practice of tight-lacing, and in consequence of imperfect breathing. Poor children born of these miserable slaves of fashion have diminished vitality, and are predisposed to take on disease. The impurities retained in the system in consequence of imperfect breathing are transmitted to their offspring. 5

Thus, Ellen White endorsed and advocated the false teachings of Larmarckism, deceiving her followers into believing falsehoods. Below, Ellen White's statements will be examined more fully to determine whether they are scientifically valid.

Scientific Review of Ellen White's Larmarckian Statements

Statement 1: "By lacing, the internal organs of women are crowded out of their positions."

Scientific Verdict: Mostly Valid

Modern autopsies and medical observations confirm that tight corseting can compress and displace internal organs such as the liver and intestines. Prolonged tight-lacing could also deform the ribcage and reduce lung capacity. However, not all corset use was extreme, and moderate wear typically did not cause severe health issues.

Statement 2: "These fashionably dressed women cannot transmit good constitutions to their children."

Scientific Verdict: Invalid

This statement falsely assumes that physical practices like corset-wearing change a woman's genetic ability to produce healthy offspring. While maternal health during pregnancy can affect fetal development, wearing a corset before pregnancy does not prevent a woman from passing on a "strong constitution" (a vague, unscientific term). This reflects outdated ideas of heredity and health.

Statement 3: "Some women have naturally small waists. But... they should be viewed as defective."

Scientific Verdict: Invalid and Ethically Reprehensible

This statement is neither scientific nor ethical. Body diversity is normal, and a naturally small waist is not a "defect." This reflects reprehensible moral judgment disguised as health advice and is not grounded in any biological or medical truth.

Statement 4: "Wasp waists may have been transmitted ... as the result of tight-lacing ... and imperfect breathing."

Scientific Verdict: Invalid

This echoes Lamarckian inheritance—that traits acquired during life (like compressed waists) can be passed on genetically. Modern genetics has disproven this. Acquired traits like lung compression from corsets do not become hereditary deformities.

Statement 5: "Poor children born of these miserable slaves of fashion have diminished vitality and are predisposed to take on disease."

Scientific Verdict: Unsubstantiated

There is no scientific evidence that children of corseted mothers are inherently weaker unless the mother's health during pregnancy is severely compromised. Occasional or even regular corset use prior to conception would not directly affect a child's vitality.

Statement 6: "The impurities retained in the system in consequence of imperfect breathing are transmitted to their offspring."

Scientific Verdict: Invalid

This is based on miasma theory, a now-obsolete belief that "bad air" or retained bodily impurities cause disease. Today science understands disease through germ theory, and there is no mechanism by which "impurities" from shallow breathing are passed on to children.

Statement 7: "She means that she has inherited small lungs. Her ancestors ... compressed their lungs ... and it has become ... a congenital deformity."

Scientific Verdict: Invalid

This is another Lamarckian idea—that lung compression from corsets somehow altered the genetic makeup of future generations. Modern biology explains that genes are not altered by how individuals shape their bodies during life. Lung size can be hereditary, but not because of ancestral corset use.

Final Verdict

While Mrs. White can be given credit for copying other health reformers who warned that corsets, especially when used excessively, could cause physical harm, her 19th-century arguments against them were based on outdated science, sickening moral judgments, and misunderstandings of heredity. The idea that acquired physical characteristics such as a "wasp waist" are passed genetically to the next generation is nothing more than a myth. Genetic science confirms that these types of acquired physical characteristics cannot be passed down to the next generation. Thus, Ellen White unintentionally deceived and misled her followers with her false and uninspired statements.

Ellen White on Passing Scrofula to Children

Young man with a typical case of scrofula Wellcome L0076911
Young man with a typical case of scrofula (WikiCommons)

Ellen White believed that the disease "scrofula" could be passed from mother to child. In 1870, she wrote this blistering testimony:

In the first place, —— —— should not have committed so great a crime as to bring into being offspring who, reason must teach him, would be diseased, because they must receive a miserable legacy from their parents. They have transmitted to them a bad inheritance. The blood of the children must be filled with scrofulous humors, from both parents, especially the father, whose habits have been such as to corrupt the blood, and enervate his whole system. Not only must these poor children take the scrofula taint in a double sense, but what is worse, they will bear the mental and moral deficiencies of the father, and the lack of noble independence, moral courage and force, in the mother. The world is already cursed by the increase of beings of this stamp, who must fall lower in the scale than their parents, in physical, mental, and moral strength, for then condition and surroundings are not even as favorable as were those of their parents.6

In the same year, in her infamous book about solitary vice, she wrote:

Many women never should have become mothers. Their blood was filled with scrofula, transmitted to them from their parents, and increased by their gross manner of living.7

In 1871, in the SDA sect's paper, she wrote the following:

Very many children are born with their blood tainted with scrofula through the wrong habits of the mother in her eating and dressing.8

Can scrofula be passed down to children in the manner suggested by Mrs. White? Below, these claims will be tested against scientific fact.

Scientific Review of Ellen White's Statements

Statement 1: "Their blood was filled with scrofula, transmitted to them from their parents"

Scientific Verdict: Invalid

This reflects pre-germ-theory beliefs about disease. Scrofula (tuberculous lymphadenitis) is not inherited genetically.9 It is an infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis or similar bacteria. A child may be born with congenital tuberculosis only if the mother has active TB and passes it during gestation or birth, but that is rare and not "double-inherited" from both parents.

The father's past health habits (e.g., alcohol use, poor hygiene) could affect his own health but do not directly "corrupt" the child's blood in the way described. This is pseudoscientific, based on outdated ideas about "bad blood" and humoral theory.

Statement 2: "They will bear the mental and moral deficiencies of the father, and the lack of noble independence, moral courage and force, in the mother."

Scientific Verdict: Invalid and Ethically Reprehensible

There is no credible scientific basis for the direct inheritance of moral character traits like "moral courage" or "noble independence." While there is evidence for genetic influence on temperament and certain mental illnesses, moral character is largely shaped by environment, education, and experience. It is not predetermined by parental virtue or vice. This reflects 19th-century eugenic thinking, which wrongly connected moral worth to biology, and has since been discredited and condemned. This line of thinking is deeply flawed and ethically dangerous. It wrongly attributes morality to genetic inheritance and promotes stigmatization.

Statement 3: "Children are born with their blood tainted with scrofula."

Scientific Verdict: Inaccurate

Scrofula is an old term for tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis, a condition where the lymph nodes in the neck become infected, often due to Mycobacterium tuberculosis or Mycobacterium scrofulaceum. It is a form of extrapulmonary tuberculosis and was once very common, especially in children.

Scrofula is not a blood disease. It affects the lymphatic system, not the bloodstream. It is not typically congenital (i.e., not passed from mother to baby at birth), except in extremely rare cases where the mother has active tuberculosis and transmits it in utero or during birth. The phrase "tainted with scrofula" reflects 19th-century language and misunderstandings of disease transmission.

Statement 4: "Through the wrong habits of the mother in her eating..."

Scientific Verdict: Oversimplified and Lacking Evidence

Maternal nutrition during pregnancy is important for fetal development and immunity. However, poor eating habits do not directly cause scrofula in the child unless they result in severe immune compromise, making the child more susceptible to infection after birth. There is no evidence that maternal diet alone transmits tuberculosis bacteria to the child.

Statement 5: "Through the wrong habits of the mother in her...dressing..."

Scientific Verdict: Implausible

How a mother dresses herself has no known effect on the likelihood of her child developing scrofula. This reflects the moralistic medical thinking of the 1800s, where fashion (e.g., corseting) was blamed for a wide range of health problems—often with little to no scientific basis.

Final Verdict

Ellen White's statements about the transmission of scrofula are not scientifically accurate. Her thinking reflects that of a person under the strong delusion of eugenics rather than the instruction of God. Scrofula is an infectious disease, not a congenital condition caused by poor lifestyle choices like diet or fashion. Her "heaven-sent" writings reflect 19th-century health myths which she no doubt obtained from fellow Adventist health reformer L.B. Coles who wrote in 1851:

Scrofula is a disease which is inborn, through father or mother, in the constitution of thousands.10

Ellen White on Father's Alcohol Use Causing Mental Disability

Mrs. White made some odd statements about a father's alcohol use causing mental damage in his children:

There are two innocents in the [Brown] family—imbecile—an inheritance transmitted by the father who used intoxicating drinks, but they are a very excellent family. The father was a very capable man but killed himself by liquor drinking.11

As a rule every intemperate man who rears children transmits his inclinations and evil tendencies to his offspring; he gives them disease from his own inflamed and corrupted blood. Licentiousness, disease, and imbecility are transmitted as an inheritance of woe from father to son, and from generation to generation, and this brings anguish and suffering into the world.12

Scientific Review of Ellen White's Statements

Statement 1: "...imbecile—an inheritance transmitted by the father who used intoxicating drinks..."

Scientific Verdict: Overstatement

Claiming direct inheritance of "imbecility" due to the father's alcohol use is an overstatement. There is no conclusive scientific evidence that a father’s past alcohol use causes intellectual disability in his children via direct genetic transmission. Genetic intellectual disabilities (like Down syndrome, Fragile X) are not caused by alcohol in the father.

Statement 2: "Licentiousness, disease, and imbecility are transmitted as an inheritance of woe from father to son..."

Scientific Verdict: Inaccurate

The idea that "disease, licentiousness, and imbecility" are biologically transmitted as a rule is an overgeneralization and not scientifically accurate. Traits like morality or sexual behavior are not biologically inherited in the way described. Environmental influences (family, trauma, culture) are far more significant in shaping such traits. The notion of inherited "evil tendencies" or sin through blood is moralistic rather than scientific.

Final Verdict

While Ellen White's concerns about alcoholism's impact on families are morally instructive, her statements reflect pre-genetic ideas, contain elements of early eugenic thinking, and do not align with modern understanding of heredity, intellectual disability, or behavioral science.

Conclusion

Ellen White often mixed moral judgment with out-dated understandings of genetics resulting in outlandish statements that her followers believed were truth from the Spirit of Prophecy. In reality, they are falsehoods that deceived her followers into believing the false teachings of Lamarckism and eugenics. Even to this day, uneducated SDAs repeat these falsehoods as if they are true. God said it best:

Behold, I am against them that prophesy false dreams, saith the LORD, and do tell them, and cause my people to err by their lies... (Jer. 23:32)

See also

Citations

1. O.S. Fowler, Tight-Lacing, or the Evils of Compressing the Organs of Animal Life (New York: Self-published, 1844), 12.

2. Caleb Jackson, The Sexual Organism and its Healthful Management (Boston: B. Leverett Emerson, 1862), 34.

3. For more info, see: https://www.agrobotany.in/2024/09/pre-and-post-mendelian-concepts-of.html#google_vignette.

4. Ellen White, Health Reformer, Oct. 1, 1871.

5. Ellen White, Health Reformer, Nov. 1, 1871.

6. Ellen White, Testimony for the Church, no. 18 (1870), 38. See also Testimonies, vol. 2, 378-379.

7. Ellen White, A Solemn Appeal, (Battle Creek, MI: Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Assn., 1870), 121.

8. Ellen White, Review and Herald, Oct. 31, 1871.

9. Dr. Vasundhara Atre, "Tuberculosis: Myths and Facts", quote: "Tuberculosis is not hereditary", http://www.scribd.com/doc/35034/SG-KE-TOI-Tuberculosis-Myths-and-facts, extracted Feb. 8, 2008. Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, on page 851 of his book The Home Book of Family Medicine: A Family Guide in Health and Disease Part 2 (1914), writes of scrofula, "not that the disease itself may be inherited, as is generally supposed."

10. L.B. Coles, Philosophy of Health (1851), 164.

11. Ellen White, Letter 146, 1893.

12. Ellen White, Testimonies for the Church, vol. 4, 30.

Pictures sourced from The Freaks of Fashion (London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1870).

Category: Mrs. White versus Science
Please SHARE this using the social media icons below
.
All material on this web site is copyrighted © 2009- by nonsda.org. Template by HTML5 Templates
Home    About    External Links    Contribute