"The true science of education" gives the student a knowledge of the laws governing his body, and a love for those laws. Every Christian school should give its students a knowledge of the proper diet, proper clothing, and should acquaint him with those phases of life that make a successful missionary. A wave of reform in the matters of diet, clothing, and other important health principles swept over the country, and many educational reformers endeavored to introduce these practical subjects into their schools. The spirit of God was preparing them for the crucial test in 1844.
"Among the studies selected for childhood, physiology should occupy the first place." (Ellen G. White, The Health Reformer, August 1, 1866, par. 4).
"It should be regarded as the basis of all educational effort." (Ibid., November 1, 1871, par. 3).
"While the schools we have established have taken up the study of physiology, they have not taken hold with the decided energy they should. They have not practiced intelligently that which they have received in knowledge." (Ellen G. White, Healthful Living, p. 13 [1897]).
"The health should be as sacredly guarded as the character." (Ellen G. White, Christian Education, p. 184).
The founders of Oberlin, moved by the spirit of reform said,
"That we may have time and health for the Lord's service, we will eat only plain and wholesome food, renouncing all bad habits, and especially the smoking and chewing of tobacco, unless it is necessary as a medicine, and deny ourselves all the strong and unnecessary drinks, even tea and coffee, as far as practicable, and everything expensive that is simply calculated to gratify appetite." (The Story of Oberlin, p. 86).
In 1832, Mr. Sylvester Graham, the inventor of graham flour,
"began to call men to repent of the sins of the table. According to this classical authority, vegetables and fruit should constitute the substance of every meal, and should be eaten as nearly as may be in their natural state. Bread should be made of unbolted wheat flour (that being the natural condition), though rye and Indian are allowable if unbolted, likewise rice and sago, if plainly cooked. Good cream may be used instead of butter, though milk and honey are somewhat better. Flesh meat and fish in all forms had better be banished from the table. No fat or gravies are to be tasted, nor any liquid foods like soup and broth. Pastry is an abomination, and cakes in which any fat or butter has been used. Bread should be at least twelve hours from the oven, and twenty-four hours are better. And as for condiments, pepper, mustard, oil, vinegar, etc., and stimulants like tea and coffee, they are to be by all means eschewed as deadly foes to health." (Ibid., pp. 218-219).
Professors Shipherd and Finney of Oberlin both confessed to being restored to health through the Graham diet reform. "The Oberlin pulpit became aggressively Grahamite. The boarding department of the school was placed in charge of a disciple of Graham. "Tea and coffee were not introduced into the college boarding hall until 1842-possibly a little later... Many of the families discarded tea and coffee, and a few adopted the vegetarian diet." Concerning the vegetarian diet, we read,
"For two or three years longer the students were furnished at the hall with 'Graham fare.' They were not restricted to this. A table was still set for those who preferred a different diet." (Oberlin: The Colony and the College, p. 83).
Diet reform in other schools
Oberlin was not along in these reforms. "In Williams College an association was formed in 1831 comprising the majority of the students with board based upon the principles of abstinence from tea and coffee, and the use only of food, the simplest in every respect" "The same reform was recorded in the history of Hudson College." In Lane Seminary "it was the wish of the students to dispense with tea, coffee, and all luxuries, and to live on the principles of Christian simplicity and economy." "In Danville, Ky., and Maryville College, Tennessee, it was the same, because we wish our ministers free from dyspepsia and liver complaint." Oberlin's historian writes that "the company was large that used neither flesh nor fish, neither butter nor milk, neither tea nor coffee." (The Story of Oberlin, 222, 223).