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The mouth is Heaven’s gate? A biochemist-turned-Adventist on food for life

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 October 2026

Eve-Riina Hyrkäs
Eve-Riina Hyrkäs*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Humanities, History of Sciences and Ideas, University of Oulu, Finland
*
Email: eve-riina.hyrkas@oulu.fi
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Abstract

Jacques Monod’s philosophical essay Chance and Necessity (1970) briefly credits a little-known Finnish scientist for contributions to the study of enzyme synthesis, noting with regret that the author, ‘Karstrom’, had left biochemical research ‘to become a monk’. This article uses the biochemist-turned-Adventist Henning Karström’s career as a case study of the entanglement of modern biology and religious thought in the twentieth century. It examines how Karström sought to integrate J.H. Kellogg’s autointoxication and Ellen White’s vitalistic physiology with contemporary microbiology and biochemistry, developing a unique reading of Adventism. In so doing, Karström returned to a vitalistic concept of externalized agency in explaining life processes, envisioning the biblical ‘breath of life’ as a vital force that contributed to the physiological ‘becoming’ of the immortal soul. Figures like Karström complicate conventional accounts of the decline of vitalism by the twentieth century and demonstrate the continued dialogue between scientific and religious cultures. It is argued that ‘vitalism’ remains a useful analytical category for examining non-mechanistic understandings of life in both historical and contemporary contexts.

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The British Journal for the History of Science , First View , pp. 1 - 17
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This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
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© The Author(s), 2026. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science.

The role of the lac (lactose) operon in prokaryotic gene regulation is common knowledge to biochemists today. Introducing a lactose analogue to a cell induces the expression of lactose-cleaving enzymes and is an important biotechnological method. The 1965 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine was awarded to the molecular biologist Jacques Monod (1910–76), together with François Jacob and André Lwoff, for describing enzyme synthesis in lactose metabolism.Footnote 1 In his 1970 philosophical essay Chance and Necessity (Le hasard et la nécessité in the French original), Monod mentions an obscure Finnish scientist, ‘Karstrom’, who in Monod’s opinion made ‘notable’ contributions to the understanding of the induction of enzyme synthesis. Regrettably, Karström had given up research ‘in order to become a monk’, or so Monod thought.Footnote 2 The Finnish biologist Anto Leikola (1937–2026), who met with Monod in the 1970s to seek permission to translate Chance and Necessity into Finnish, learned that Monod regarded Karström’s findings in enzyme chemistry as ‘classical’.Footnote 3 But who was this Karström, and what makes him noteworthy to historians of science?

Henning Karström (1899–1989) was a promising Finnish biochemist whose life and career took an unexpected turn when he decided to leave scientific research – which he had been conducting under the tutelage of chemist and Nobel laureate Artturi I. Virtanen (1895–1973) – to head a Seventh-Day Adventist school in 1946. The history of the study of ‘ferments’, a nineteenth-century term for what would eventually be called enzymes, and the history of Seventh-Day Adventism, come together in a unique manner in Karström’s personal history.Footnote 4 His experiences are unusual: a devout scientist in the twentieth century who belonged to the Adventist faith, devotees of which were a rare breed in Finland.Footnote 5 This background gave Karström a distinctive viewpoint on the Adventist health message, and his contributions are still recognized by Finnish Seventh-Day Adventists today.Footnote 6 In this paper, I draw on a selection of archival and published sources and interviews to relate Karström’s ideas on fermentation, cellular respiration and nutrition to those of contemporary scientific and Adventist authorities.Footnote 7 I show how Karström supported the health message with arguments relating to his scientist background, arguing that he developed an original vitalistic reading of human physiology.

The Seventh-Day Adventist movement emerged in the 1860s United States through the initiative of Ellen G. White (1827–81) and her husband James White. While James acted as the movement’s publicist, Ellen’s visions defined the Adventist health programme, which became fundamental to its practice of faith. In Adventism, the purpose of a vegetarian diet, physical treatments and abstinence from stimulants is the sanctification of body and soul. These guidelines resemble health-reformist practices that were prevalent at the time of Ellen White’s health-related visions. In fact, the pioneering historian of Adventism Ronald L. Numbers has argued that Ellen White knowingly appropriated the writings of some of her contemporary American health reformists.Footnote 8 The Adventist diet doctrine is based on the idea of a ‘natural law’ common to all humans, meaning that its principles can be elucidated by scientific research.Footnote 9 This conception has facilitated and even encouraged a dialogue between Adventism and modern science. However, most historiography has focused on the tensions between Adventist healing practices and orthodox medicine, with limited attention paid to its relationships with other scientific disciplines.Footnote 10

The Adventist Church defined itself against the social and ideological background of nineteenth-century America, which is the primary historical context for the movement.Footnote 11 However, the Adventist health message has spread worldwide, requiring historians to attend to local interpretation. For example, levels of meat consumption among Adventists vary wildly between countries, although reasons for these variations have received surprisingly little study.Footnote 12 The international outreach of the church has also created unique opportunities for epidemiological comparison between population groups. For example, there is some anecdotal evidence that Finnish Adventists possibly contributed to the Finnish physician Pekka Puska’s (1945–present) idea for the North Karelia project, which was connected to Ancel Keys’s famous Seven Countries Study.Footnote 13 In the Nordic countries specifically, traditionally high levels of milk and meat consumption posed a particular challenge to the Adventist health message: Karström’s activities were important in managing this relationship.Footnote 14 Karström headed the Adventist-led union of Finnish health and abstinence organizations ETRA (Elämäntavat ratkaisevat (‘Lifestyle Matters’), originally Elämäntavat raittiiksi (‘Choose Sobriety’)), which in 1956 rose to the challenge of promoting a vegetarian diet in Nordic conditions. While Karström did not have a significant influence on Anglo-American Adventism, he was acquainted with and communicated research findings to the biochemist U.D. Register (1920–97) of Loma Linda College, renowned for his work on the nutritional adequacy of vegetarian diets.Footnote 15

In the final part of this paper, I identify the concept of life as a common denominator between the scientific and religious cultures that were relevant in Karström’s body of work.Footnote 16 Adventist authorities frequently spoke about the relationship between the health message, vital force and longevity. These conceptions were influenced by vitalist hypotheses, which in the latter half of the nineteenth century were quickly losing their mainstream appeal in medicine and biology. Modern-day biochemistry prides itself on substituting speculations of vital force for a mechanistic conception of life.Footnote 17 However, this straightforward narrative has been challenged by recent historiography of the life sciences, which interrogates the legacy of vitalism in the twentieth century.Footnote 18 Religious denominations offer a useful point of comparison for exploring conceptions of life, although they are rarely scrutinized in scholarly discussions of vitalism.Footnote 19 This article will show that Karström’s stance, building on vitalism in the Adventist tradition, actually tapped into a neo-vitalistic sentiment in twentieth-century biology. By demonstrating the common ground between scientific and religious concepts, I argue that ‘vitalism’ can still be a useful analytical category for discussing alternative perspectives on life in both historical and contemporary contexts.

Virtanen and Karström in the history of fermentation research

The study of ferments was crucial to the development of biochemical concepts in the early years of the twentieth century.Footnote 20 In the alchemical tradition, ferments were understood as general activating principles in nature. This broad conception was gradually narrowed, notably through the influence of G.E. Stahl (1659–1734), as fermentation itself became a phenomenon requiring explanation. By the nineteenth century, fermentation research had become a major field of inquiry in which chemical explanations for life processes were formulated.Footnote 21 One of the key controversies was whether fermentation – the breaking down of sugar molecules – could occur without living cells. Eduard Buchner’s (1860–1917) studies on zymase extracted from crushed yeasts eventually demonstrated, in line with a mechanistic explanation by the German chemist Justus von Liebig (1803–1873), that fermentation depended on free enzymes that were present in solution. However, these enzymes were excreted by living yeast cells, which the French microbiologist Louis Pasteur (1822–95) regarded as necessary for fermentation.Footnote 22 Despite the fact that enzymes were synthesized by a living organism, Buchner’s research proved their independent chemical activity. In the interwar years, this observation led to an exponential expansion of research on enzymes and other biologically active substances as the chemical regulators of bodily functions.

The first twenty-two years of Karström’s professional life were interwoven with fermentation research and the work of his mentor, Virtanen. Virtanen exploited the resources of his employer, Valio, a national coalition of Finnish dairies, to establish broad scholarly connections across Europe.Footnote 23 In the 1920s, he worked with the German-born scientist Hans von Euler-Chelpin (1873–1964), who taught Virtanen the basics of enzyme chemistry. Euler’s mentorship ignited lifelong enthusiasm for the chemical study of life processes. Euler, in turn, had studied in Munich under Jacobus van’t Hoff (1852–1911), Emil Fischer (1852–1919) and Buchner, the last of whom Virtanen regarded as ‘the father of biochemistry’.Footnote 24 In a 1928 paper on the enzyme action of lactic-acid bacteria, Virtanen and Karström corroborated the observations of Buchner and concluded that while the fermenting ability of cells deteriorated quickly in a toxic solution, a weak capacity for it prevailed even in the absence of living cells.Footnote 25

Fermentation research conducted in Valio’s laboratory pioneered biochemistry in Finland. The connection to the dairy industry benefited the field in many ways.Footnote 26 For one, as professor of chemistry and Virtanen’s mentor Ossian Aschan (1860–1939) had contended, Finns were wise to follow the German example by linking industry and science.Footnote 27 This ethos drove Virtanen’s two principal research programmes, on biological nitrogen fixation in legumes and the preservation of silage.Footnote 28 For another, Virtanen’s research aspired to ensure Finland’s agricultural self-sufficiency, a goal that was attractive to multiple funding bodies. In 1931, Valio’s research group was able to move to a brand-new research laboratory. The Biochemical Research Institute (Biokemiallinen tutkimuslaitos, henceforth BRI) was funded by the Foundation for Chemical Research (Kemiantutkimus-Säätiö, established in 1929) and Valio. The institute was financially feasible thanks to one of Virtanen’s inventions, AIV (Virtanen’s initials) butter salt, which had given Valio an edge in international butter markets.Footnote 29

Significant developments had been made in the understanding of the chemical properties of acids and bases between the 1890s and the 1930s.Footnote 30 Upon returning from Christian Barthel’s laboratory in 1921, Virtanen brought with him an apparatus for measuring pH levels.Footnote 31 With this, Søren Sørensen’s modern concept of pH, defined as the negative logarithm of hydrogen ion concentration, could be applied at the Valio laboratory. Studying silage – the product of fermenting green fodder in a silo – was a novel undertaking in Finland. Green fodder had rarely been used to feed livestock due to its short storage duration.Footnote 32 Virtanen’s insight that silage preservation was connected to hydrogen ion concentration set him apart from other contemporary researchers.Footnote 33 AIV fodder, which won Virtanen a Nobel Prize in 1945, exploited the fact that lowering pH to 4 stopped the functioning of proteolytic enzymes.Footnote 34 Karström’s contribution to this invention has been a subject of debate. However, the consensus in the literature is that the theoretical basis for AIV fodder was formulated by Virtanen: Karström’s role was to carry out the practical investigations.Footnote 35

Enzyme theory highlighted specific chemical events at the expense of cell morphology and structure.Footnote 36 Like higher organisms, bacteria depended on enzymes for their chemical activity. Virtanen’s group began to study the phenomena observed with yeast using strong bacterial suspensions.Footnote 37 Karström’s PhD dissertation on how bacteria metabolized sugars also engaged with the new enzymology.Footnote 38 As lactose was abundant at Valio, Karström cultured his Escherichia coli in a medium that contained milk sugar but none of the pentoses that were the main subject of his doctoral research. The results were surprising. The strand of bacteria Karström had grown proved unable to digest pentoses. According to Karström’s unpublished autobiography, Virtanen responded to this news by saying: ‘Well, they are going to have to get used to them!’ This remark gave Karström’s research a new focus – enzymatic adaptation.Footnote 39 Karström managed to establish that certain enzymes were always present while the production of others was triggered by exposure to relevant carbohydrates. As such, Karström had uncovered a fundamental difference between what he decided to call ‘constitutional’ and ‘adaptive’ enzymes.Footnote 40 Few researchers were studying such topics in the 1920s, but those who did saw great value in Karström’s observations. He corresponded with the well-known British microbiologist Marjory Stephenson (1885–1948), and the concept of adaptative enzymes (later called inducible enzymes) likewise caught Monod’s attention.Footnote 41 The value of Karström’s discovery was also recognized by his colleagues, who continued to study adaptive enzymes during the 1930s and 1940s.Footnote 42

Acid-forming and putrefactive bacteria

From 1924 until completing his dissertation in 1930, Karström was absorbed in scientific work. But when tasked with handling the time-consuming patent disputes around AIV fodder, he slowly started to lose his enthusiasm.Footnote 43 By 1934, this tedious job, together with a self-reported spiritual yearning, had led Karström to the Seventh-Day Adventist Church.Footnote 44 The movement had arrived in Finland in the 1890s and had much in common with existing Finnish religious groups – the main Evangelical Lutheran Church and the five major revival movements. However, its teachings were decidedly more eschatological.Footnote 45 The sect faced significant criticism and social prejudice, some of which Karström shared. In a letter to ETRA’s executive director, Tauno A. Luukkanen (1933–2020), Karström related how difficult it had been to ‘lose faith in science’ and, adding insult to injury, to be ‘pulled’ into a ‘despised sect’.Footnote 46

It is not entirely clear why Karström chose the Adventist denomination. He attributed the choice to divine guidance, yet apparently also felt a special affinity for the Adventist health gospel. Karström had already dabbled in Louis Kuhne’s water cures and vegetarianism in the 1920s, but learning about their concordance with the Adventist health message reignited his zeal for health reform. Even more momentous was the ‘realization’ that the health message – such as the superiority of the vegetarian diet – had been ‘proven’ by nutrition science. After leaving Virtanen’s institute in 1946, nutrition became Karström’s ‘biggest hobby’.Footnote 47 He wrote countless articles to the health-reformist journal Terveys (Health), which was published by the Finnish Adventist publishing house Kirjatoimi. Its readership extended well beyond Adventist circles. Adventists in other Nordic countries were also active in publishing, and the Nordic journals often contained articles translated from Anglo-American sources. This literary exchange ensured that health innovations from across the Atlantic reached the Nordics in a timely manner. The Nordic–American link was also sustained by cooperation in the field of sanatorium work.Footnote 48

Karström’s background in studying bacterial enzymes gave him a unique perspective on the theory of autointoxication or ‘self-poisoning’, which was put forward by the Adventist physician John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943) of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.Footnote 49 In the late 1800s, autointoxication theorists had taken advantage of germ theory’s triumphant demonstration that microorganisms were responsible for putrefaction to argue that not only microorganisms themselves but also the by-products of their metabolism could act as disease-causing agents. Germs of disease were thought to be able to penetrate the intestinal wall and enter the blood stream, causing symptoms on a systemic level.Footnote 50

By the 1920s, autointoxication had been exiled from the medical mainstream, but the idea continued to intrigue irregular healers like Kellogg. He addressed the topic in his bestselling book Autointoxication (1919), arguing that nutrition changed intestinal flora. In addition to the founding autointoxication theorist Charles Bouchard and his pupils, Kellogg cited the work of the Nobel laureate Elie Metchnikoff (1845–1916) of the Pasteur Institute. Although Metchnikoff’s scientific successes had nothing to do with autointoxication, he had managed to start a fad for soured-milk preparations fermented with Bacillus bulgaricus, a type of lactobacillus allegedly responsible for the good health and longevity of the Bulgarian people.Footnote 51

Kellogg’s quest for scientific recognition, a partial reason for his break with the Adventist Church in 1907, led him to ground his conclusions in bacterial cultures obtained from leading European centres of fermentation research. Research at Battle Creek concluded that ‘the character of bacteria may be modified to an astonishing degree by a change of food or culture media’. Kellogg further argued that ‘protein-loving’ bacteria grew well in nitrogen-rich media.Footnote 52 Kellogg associated these bacteria with putrefaction, concluding that meat and egg residues in the colon accelerated the production of toxic substances. He also believed that fermentation was a process antagonistic to putrefaction: if the conditions of the colon favoured the proliferation of fermentative bacteria, then putrefaction could be slowed down or stopped. Shifting the microbial balance to acid-forming bacteria required avoidance of meat and could be expedited with a strict milk regimen, which provided a source of lactose to support fermentation.Footnote 53

Karström’s own research on green fodder had demonstrated that increasing acidity stopped putrefaction in a silo, suggesting that the organic acids produced by acid-forming bacteria could also impair the action of putrefactive bacteria in the colon. Retrospectively, Karström claimed that God had intervened in the silage experiments, thus revealing the crucial importance of acidic conditions for fermentation.Footnote 54 It is therefore not surprising that Karström, having received both scientific and divine proof of the concept, would be drawn to Kellogg’s theory of autointoxication. Karström agreed with Kellogg that the food eaten altered the species of bacteria found in the intestine. Lactic-acid bacteria and E. coli, representative of healthy bacterial growth in the colon, thrived on a lacto-vegetarian diet:

[Lactic-acid bacteria and E. coli] cannot break down proteins, starch or cellulose. If we eat a lot of meat, when the digestive system and the colon contain a lot of … broken-down proteins, putrefactive bacteria proliferate. On this, Professor [of chemistry at the University of Helsinki] Jorma Erkama writes the following: ‘The proliferation of putrefactive bacteria in the colon is not desirable because they degrade proteins into toxic substances. Although many physiologists today agree that [these substances] rarely enter the blood … there is no doubt that long-lasting bacterial putrefaction in the colon is unhealthy. The benefit of acid-forming bacteria is that they preclude the takeover of putrefactive bacteria in the colon’.Footnote 55

This extract from 1958 testifies to the long-lasting intrigue of autointoxication among Finnish health reformists. Karström’s account stood out in at least three regards. First, he highlighted E. coli as friendly bacteria, no doubt due to his own research on E. coli cultures. Second, he provided compelling evidence for autointoxication by citing Erkama, his former colleague at the BRI, who had secured a notable position in the Finnish scientific world.Footnote 56 Third, Karström made no reference to Kellogg or Adventism, although this is not unusual in the Nordic context. When Adventist health practices were discussed in the press, the eschatological gospel was often downplayed to broaden the appeal of the message and draw sanatorium guests.Footnote 57

Karström, like Kellogg, recommended soured-milk products for healthy intestinal flora. He promoted the German physician, and Hitler’s personal dietician, Werner Zabel’s (1894–1978) dairy-based healing regimen. Its cornerstone was kvark, a curd separated from buttermilk by fermentation, which was cited as having a number of benefits. Kvark supported the action of the liver, which was responsible for making meat toxins harmless; preserved the optimal pH of the stomach; reduced the putrefaction of proteins in the bowels; contained high-quality protein; and, if prepared from skimmed milk, was even low-fat.Footnote 58 Karström’s reference to Zabel resulted from the close connection between the post-war Finnish health reform and the Internationale Gesellschaft für Nahrungs- und Vitalstoff-Forschung (‘International Society for Research into Nutrition and Vital Substances’), which was the new home of many German former life reformists.Footnote 59

The Adventist health message in a Nordic society

Both Adventist health practices and Nordic food culture valorized milk as a source of vitality. Milk’s high standing reflected Nordic realities, where the long cold winters made livestock farming a significant agricultural option. The seasonally limited availability of fresh fodder motivated intensive research on the practical applications of fermentation. In the ‘vitamin era’ of nutrition science, fermentation also gained prestige as a method for preserving the vitamin content of ‘winter milk’.Footnote 60 While Kellogg had to persuade American readers that milk was not merely a baby food, no such gimmicks were needed with a Nordic audience.Footnote 61 Karström, having been employed in an industrial laboratory, was well aware of this, and frequently noted the similarities between Nordic cuisine and the lacto-vegetarian diet.Footnote 62

The dietary value of milk was severely questioned in the post-war decades, when debates about cholesterol put dairy fat under a new kind of scrutiny. The stakes were especially high in the Nordic countries, where the cholesterol debate affected the most politically significant agricultural sectors.Footnote 63 Virtanen lamented in 1950 that the ‘rumour mill’ around cholesterol had scared the public into avoiding dairy. He insisted that the ‘traditional’ diet of Finnish farmers – consisting of butter, whole milk and potatoes – aligned perfectly with current conceptions of healthy nutrition.Footnote 64 Karström, too, called cholesterol materia peccans, but was reluctant to discuss the ramifications of recasting dairy as a source of saturated fats. Instead, Karström harnessed the cholesterol scare to support a lacto-vegetarian diet by condemning meat and eggs for their high cholesterol content.Footnote 65 This pardoning of dairy paralleled the opinions of early Adventists. In addition to Kellogg, Ellen White had argued that eggs deserved more condemnation than milk because they were more highly ‘animalised’.Footnote 66

Prejudice against vegetarianism, in turn, had always been marked in Finland and other Nordic countries. The Skodsborg sanatorium which operated in Denmark for nearly a hundred years earned the unflattering nickname of ‘Parsley Palace’ for serving vegetarian dishes.Footnote 67 The Toivonlinna (‘Castle of Hope’) boarding school, which Karström led from 1946 to 1961 after leaving the BRI, functioned as a sanatorium in summertime.Footnote 68 As the guests were about to arrive in the summer of 1948 – when activities were resumed after the Second World War – the school’s religious teacher informed Karström that Ellen White’s Counsels on Diet and Foods (1938) forbade Adventist sanatoria from serving meat dishes. Karström brought the issue to the school board: they unanimously agreed that the sanatorium could not succeed without serving meat, because ‘the Finns were so accustomed’ to it. However, the authority of the prophetess was too great to be ignored. The first steaks fried in the kitchen of the reopened sanatorium were also the last.Footnote 69

The opinions of the board reflected the difficult position of Finnish vegetarians. The operations of Finlands vegetariska föreningen (‘Finnish Vegetarian Society’) had ceased during the Second World War, and vegetarianism became further marginalized in the conservative post-war atmosphere. According to the historian Jukka Vornanen, the early phases of vegetarianism were overshadowed by the 1970s environmentalism boom and the associated renaissance of vegetarianism.Footnote 70 However, the promotion of vegetarianism had continued in health-reformist journals throughout the 1950s and 1960s. While this vegetarian community consisted of people with miscellaneous backgrounds, Adventists figured prominently among them. Karström, a lacto-vegetarian since his baptism in 1934, harnessed the full force of his biochemical expertise to support the vegetarian diet. He defended vegetarian protein against doubts regarding its ‘deficient’ amino-acid profile, a stance that also put him at odds with scientific orthodoxy.Footnote 71 One of Karström’s boarding-school students, who later obtained a graduate degree in nutrition science, recalled that Paavo Roine, professor of nutritional chemistry (1949–73) and Karström’s ‘good friend’ from the BRI, warned the student not to include Karström’s thoughts in her master’s thesis. According to her, the sustainability of vegetarianism was the most significant point of disagreement between Roine and Karström.Footnote 72

In 1956, when Karström became the first chair of ETRA, the promotion of vegetarianism in Nordic conditions became his pet project. Among other things, ETRA introduced the successful concept of vegetarian cooking courses for mothers as early as 1960.Footnote 73 Adventist colporteurs, who sold health magazines and vegetarian cookbooks across the country, may thus have paved the way for vegetarianism in Finland to a much greater degree than has previously been realized.Footnote 74 This campaign lacked the environmentalist focus that led to the eventual breakthrough of vegetarianism. But, by 1987, two years before Karström’s passing, Finnish nutritional guidelines still remained sceptical about plant-based nutrition.Footnote 75

A component of Karström’s attack against meat was the demonization of fat. On this, scientific and religious literature spoke with one voice. The dangers of saturated and hardened fats uncovered by nutrition science corroborated the exhortation from Leviticus: ‘you shall eat no fat of ox or sheep or goat’.Footnote 76 The avoidance of fat had an Adventist seal of approval, as Ellen White had recommended coarse vegetarian meals with little fat or butter. White’s view was borrowed from the health reformist Sylvester Graham, who claimed that the fact that fat remained separate from other contents of the stomach meant that it was difficult to digest.Footnote 77 According to Karström, cooking animal fat at high temperatures was even more harmful as, together with proteins, it turned into carcinogenic black soot.Footnote 78 Once again, Karström connected the ongoing expert discussion, now regarding the carcinogenicity of foodstuffs, with the Adventist health message.Footnote 79

Karström arrived at a conclusion that Finns, overusing fat, sugar, animal protein and coffee, had ‘the worst public health in the world’.Footnote 80 Karström campaigned against these harmful habits both personally and under the auspices of ETRA. Karström’s Swedish-language nutrition guide Vägen till hälsa (1966) was translated into Finnish and Norwegian and went through multiple editions. By the 1980s, he had settled on the radical position of the American nutritionist and longevity researcher Nathan Pritikin (1915–85), who insisted that fats of any kind should make up only 10 per cent of macro-nutrient intake. Pritikin’s work finally persuaded Karström to take dairy fat off its pedestal. He praised Pritikin’s book Live Longer Now: The First One Hundred Years of Your Life (1974) in his memoir and related that following its advice had near miraculous healing effects. For example, Karström’s (undiagnosed) heart troubles disappeared after adopting the Pritikin diet.Footnote 81 In 1978, Pritikin was interviewed for the Seventh-Day Adventist journal Ministry about the points of agreement and disagreement between the Pritikin diet and Ellen White’s health message.Footnote 82 Despite some differences regarding the use of fatty foods, the optimal number of daily meals and the position of meat in the human diet, none of them led to irreconcilable disagreements.Footnote 83 The Pritikin diet was viewed favourably by the international Adventist community.

Karström’s health advocacy put special emphasis on raw food, still promoted by ETRA in a way that recalls Karström’s position.Footnote 84 He was particularly taken with the idea that enzymes of uncooked vegetables synthesized unknown substances from precursor chemicals in plant matter, as Virtanen had suggested in a personal letter to Karström in 1962. Karström took Virtanen’s cautious remarks further by suggesting that plant enzymes were not fully destroyed during digestion but ended up in the colon, where they ‘catalysed aerobic enzymatic reactions’ and supported the action of acid-forming bacteria.Footnote 85 Raw food, sometimes called living food, hence had a wonderful ability to preserve the activity of enzymes, which continued to do their good work in the human body.Footnote 86 Here we can see traces of the connection that Karström construed between correct nutrition and a vitalistic reading of human physiology.

The breath of life revisited

The health recommendations of Adventism were founded on a utopian vision of the human body as capable of overcoming death and decay – or at least deferring it for as long as possible. This conception was rooted in Ellen White’s health message, influenced by vitalistic theories that, by the late 1800s, had been rejected by the scientific orthodoxy only to be adopted by health reformists.Footnote 87 Ellen White’s vitalism aspired to the preservation of vital force, or, to use her specific term, ‘vital capital’. Ronald L. Numbers has used the analogy of a bank account to illustrate White’s reasoning. During the life course, the ‘account’ was depleted prematurely by repeated withdrawals (intemperate acts): vital capital could be conserved by observing Adventist tenets. The vital capital was placed in humans at the Creation and in each individual at birth. The first humans, overflowing with vital force, had not been subject to death and disease: millennia of sinning, however, had worn down that reserve.Footnote 88 White paraphrased Horace Mann without credit by stating, ‘If Adam, at his creation, had not been endowed with twenty times as much vital force as men now have, the race, with their present habits of living in violation of natural law, would have become extinct.’Footnote 89 Autointoxication theory was also preoccupied with safeguarding life, but from putrefactive forces. In the 1880s, the toxic products of putrefaction had been aptly classified by the German scientist Ludwig Brieger under the heading ‘ptomaines’, deriving from the Greek word for ‘corpse’.Footnote 90 That putrefaction was the enemy of life had also been expressed by Bouchard:

I have said that the organism, in its normal, as in its pathological state, is a receptable and a laboratory of poisons … Man is in this way constantly living under the chance of being poisoned; he is always working toward his own destruction; he makes continual attempts at suicide by intoxication.Footnote 91

This connection did not go unnoticed by Kellogg, who regarded organic life as a battle between living cells and putrefactive bacteria. At death, the body’s defences collapsed, allowing the bacteria to invade the blood in copious amounts.Footnote 92

Karström, too, wrestled with the difficult problem of ‘how and from where life first came into dead matter???’.Footnote 93 He reasoned,

It is … reasonable … to believe the Scripture when it attests: ‘God formed man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils THE BREATH OF LIFE and man became a “living soul”’, that is, a living entity … Precisely the moment of Creation has demonstrated the power of God very clearly.Footnote 94

The meaning of the breath of life was debated among Adventists; did it refer to animal life possessed by men and beasts alike, or to the immortal soul? Many took the former stance. For example, Karström’s contemporary, the Adventist minister LeRoy Edwin Froom (1890–1974), argued that the breath of life equalled the spirit of life (here, pneuma) and was common to all living things.Footnote 95 Karström shared the belief that the breath of life was the property that animated dead matter across Creation.

The connection between the breath of life and the immortal soul is usefully clarified in the Seventh-Day Adventist author Uriah Smith’s (1832–1903) Man’s Nature and Destiny (1884). According to Smith, the immortal soul was not ‘superadded’ to the body but fulfilled its inherent potential:

When the breath of life was imparted, which, as we have seen was given in common to all the animal creation, that simply was applied which set the machine in motion. No separate and independent organization was added, but a change took place in the man himself. The man became something, or reached a condition which before he had not attained … The boy becomes a man; the acorn, an oak; the egg, an eagle; the chrysalis, a butterfly: but the capabilities of the change all inhere in the object which experiences it. A superadded, independent soul could not have been put into man, and he be said to have become that soul. Yet it is said of Adam, that he, on receiving the breath of life, became a living soul.Footnote 96

Smith’s view resembles twentieth-century vitalist Hans Driesch’s (1867–1941) concept of entelechy, which emerged as part of the vitalist–mechanist debates of biology in the interwar era. Like many of his contemporaries, Driesch endorsed the idea of purposiveness in nature that had its roots in the German Naturphilosophie tradition. Driesch regarded entelechy as a force that was responsible for the apparent teleology in organismic development.Footnote 97 Just as the unorganized contents of the cell formed a new living organism under the direction of entelechy, so the breath of life could be understood as a principle that jump-started the becoming of the immortal soul.

Intriguingly, the idea of an activating principle was also present in the enzyme theory of the early twentieth century. Driesch argued in 1908 that even though the effect of ferments was inorganic, entelechy could play a role in their activation – the somewhat mysterious process in which inactive pro-ferments transformed into ferments. This conclusion was permitted by contemporary observations of digestive enzymes, which needed to interact with certain organic or inorganic agents to gain a cleaving ability.Footnote 98 When Karström discussed similar enzymes in 1931, enzyme activators were no longer thought to transform pro-enzymes but to increase their activity by reversible chemical bonding.Footnote 99 Other similarities with Driesch’s reasoning included Karström’s conviction that organic life required a special directive force. Karström elaborated on this in a 1962 article, claiming that the ‘materialist’ believed in the complex chemical and physical processes of the body but could not explain which ‘power’ drove these processes forward in a wonderful ‘harmony and purposefulness’. Karström seems to have equated this driving force with the breath of life, which on different occasions he juxtaposed with ‘vitality’, ‘soul’ and ‘spirit’.Footnote 100 Karström summarized humans’ holistic nature by stating that unhealthy habits not only weakened the body but also eroded humans’ intellectual and moral capacities, which were attributes of the soul. A healthy body and soul were the foundation for becoming an eternal being – a state closely tied to achieving immortality.Footnote 101

Poisoned metabolism and cancerous germs

Karström’s vitalistic physiology went into extraordinary biochemical detail. For example, his model of carcinogenesis viewed cancer as a fatal decline in vital force while illustrating how correct nutrition contributed to the ‘becoming’ of the immortal soul via metabolic pathways. Karström addressed the connection between cancer and nutrition in a series of articles published in Terveys in the early 1960s. His argument drew heavily on the work of Otto Warburg (1883–1970), whose Über den Stoffwechsel der Tumoren (1926) proposed that lactic acid fermentation was an essential energy source for cancer cells. Building on the work of Warburg and others, Karström argued that the cellular respiration of normal and cancerous tissues differed fundamentally. He classified cancer as a deficiency disease, claiming that shortages of vitamins and minerals required as prosthetic groups of enzymes impaired cellular respiration and ultimately deprived tissues of oxygen. Lack of oxygen, he maintained, forced cells to resort to lactic acid fermentation to meet their energy needs, thereby transforming them into cancer cells. Hence Karström’s notion of a ‘poisoned’ metabolism referred to cellular respiration in the absence of oxygen. Human tissues could adapt to oxygen-deprived conditions, but only at a high cost: once the metabolic shift occurred, cells could never return to their original state.Footnote 102

Karström’s depiction of anaerobic metabolism revealed a symbolic entwinement between ‘breath of life’ and oxygen as the final electron acceptor. Karström’s interest in the connection between cancer and anaerobic fermentation dated back to the 1920s, when Warburg’s cancer research inspired a brief sub-study scheme at the BRI.Footnote 103 As a student, Warburg had been intrigued by the observation that cancer cells had a much faster metabolism than regular cells. More generally, Warburg’s ‘respiratory ferment’ hypothesis of cellular respiration attracted attention in the 1920s, and even though some elements of Warburg’s theory have since been discredited, observations made during this research earned him a Nobel Prize in 1931.Footnote 104 At the time, Warburg believed – influenced by the German Entwiklungsmechanik school – that respiratory ferment could carry out fermentation in vitro at only a fraction of the rate of these reactions in an organized living cell. He deemed cell structure decisive for optimal enzymatic activity and had a distaste for the new enzymology, a position initially endorsed by Karström.Footnote 105 But it was unclear to what extent Warburg’s observations based on mammalian tissues could be generalized to bacterial metabolism, which helps explain why Karström’s dissertation makes no reference to Warburg’s concepts. It appears that Karström revisited Warburg’s early work only after converting to Adventism and was intrigued by Warburg’s holistic approach influenced by German morphological research – a view that Warburg himself later abandoned.Footnote 106 However, Karström’s mature approach does not fully align with either reductionistic enzymology or holistic morphology. It was a hybrid form, considering both specific coenzymes and the (oxygen) microenvironment of the living cell, seeking to harness mechanistic concepts in support of the Adventist conception of requirements for longevity.

To return to carcinogenesis, Karström thought that abnormal RNA transcription and protein translation took place in cells that had resorted to anaerobic fermentation. Irregular protein synthesis constituted a carcinogenic pathway because, as Karström claimed, viruses were ‘gigantic protein molecules’ and ‘most … cancers were caused by viruses’.Footnote 107 Although the hypothesis was based only on half-truths, Karström concluded,

It is astonishing that the well-known American author Ellen G. White (1827–1915) … already in the late 1800s gravely warned her audience against the abundant use of flesh-meats, mostly because ‘very few domestic animals are fully healthy’. She went on to emphasize that the meat of sick animals could be full of ‘cancerous germs’, or to use today’s terminology, cancer viruses.Footnote 108

As Numbers has shown, White was not really this far-sighted. Around the 1860s, she had written that flesh-meats filled the blood with ‘cancerous and scrofulous humors’, but substituted germs for humours only after becoming acquainted with the work of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch.Footnote 109

Karström’s vitalistic reading of modern biochemistry was not as far-fetched as it at first may seem. While he may have been alone in promoting a theistic interpretation of metabolism, holistic and even vitalistic trends were experiencing a renaissance in life sciences in the mid-twentieth century. As Garland Allen has observed, reductionistic biochemistry was being challenged by systems-level observations. The realization that the action of enzymes was shaped by interactions between the reaction site and its immediate surroundings added credibility to the view that chemical reactions in vivo differed from those in vitro.Footnote 110 The Nobel Laureate Francis Crick felt that ‘vitalism’ was rife in contemporary life sciences, but, according to the historian Erik L. Peterson, what Crick actually sensed was a critique of simplistic reductionism by recourse to ‘bioexceptionalism’, an advocacy for keeping biological pursuits methodologically separate from chemistry and physics. Of course, a commitment to special vital forces did not follow from this perception.Footnote 111

However, as Crick’s straw man exemplifies, there was space for thinkers like Karström to exploit prevailing attitudes to promote vitalistic and even apologetic reinterpretations of physiology. It is illustrative that the chemist and historian of chemistry Eduard Farber (1892–1969) asserted as late as 1950 that chemical and physical systematization had ‘not abolish[ed] the mystery of life’. Some aspects of it remained outside the sphere of explanation and the ‘old vital force’ could ‘be used, in a new meaning, to express the difference’. In 1950, the mode of action of inorganic trace elements found in food, including their exact roles as coenzymes, was still part of the ‘mystery’.Footnote 112 The question remains whether the ‘mystery of life’ can ever be resolved so thoroughly that there is no need for conceptual placeholders. Despite the shortcomings of phrases such as ‘vital force’ or ‘vitalism’, their potential to pinpoint unsettled spaces in life-scientific discussion remains a compelling reason to engage with them.

Conclusion

This article has provided a snapshot of the interrelated themes of enzymology, nutrition and life as they appeared in the writings of a scientist believer. Karström’s background in fermentation research was the foundation for a distinctive reading of Kellogg’s autointoxication and Ellen White’s vitalistic physiology. Advancements in enzyme theory continued to influence Karström throughout his life. His perspectives reflected the local realities of Northern Europe, demonstrating the need to study the interpretations of the Adventist health message in different contexts. The valorization of milk and the strong dairy industry – of which Karström had first-hand experience – likely facilitated his conversion to Adventism. In contrast, the traditionally high levels of meat consumption in the region created roadblocks to the spread of the Adventist health message. Karström tried to dismantle them via ETRA, which still upholds his legacy. While Karström’s ideas appeared dated against the environmentalist backdrop of 1970s vegetarianism, they resonate more strongly with recent trends, as increasing numbers of people adopt a vegetarian diet for health reasons. This momentum has also been recognized by the Finnish Adventist Church, which in recent years started sharing its specific health messages in Finnish popular media.Footnote 113

After leaving Virtanen’s institute, Karström continued to consider scientific discoveries in dialogue with Adventism. He aligned a vitalistic reading of physiology with the neo-holistic tendencies which were re-emerging in the life sciences in the mid-twentieth century. Karström’s return to external agency in explaining life processes was a sincere endeavour by a critical mind to reconcile two vastly different modes of explaining life, in a way that paralleled the thinking of more famous vitalists. The published version of Erwin Schrödinger’s influential What Is Life? (1944) lectures closes with a recourse to Hindu philosophy and the endorsement of the mystics’ slogan: ‘I have become God’.Footnote 114 Likewise, Karström’s career demonstrates the persistent need for exploring the problem of life at the intersection of scientific and religious cultures. As the historian Jessica Riskin has argued, removing the external mover – be it the breath of life, vital force, irritability or God – left a contradiction at the heart of modern life sciences. The agency of living things had to be explained through the functions or qualities of inanimate matter, with which the material world actually gained agency.Footnote 115 This is the problem area where vitalistic hypotheses are located. Lately it has been suggested that even modern biology would benefit from methodological vitalism, which takes into account the purposeful action of organisms on both genetic and ecological levels.Footnote 116 Revisiting past conceptions of vitalism, with due attention to their philosophical commitments, can help us evaluate the requirements for and implications of such methodological renewal in the new century.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Research Council of Finland (ref. Profi6 336449), the University of Oulu and the KONE Foundation (grant number 202403387). The author gratefully acknowledges the insightful feedback from anonymous reviewers.

References

1 Nobel Foundation, ‘The Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine 1965’, undated version, at www.nobelprize.org/prizes/medicine/1965/summary (accessed 27 May 2025).

2 Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity: An Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (tr. Austryn Wainhouse), New York: Vintage Books, 1972, p. 74 n.

3 Olavi Rouhe, ‘Jumalan kunniaksi – ja terveyden’, Suomen Kuvalehti (1974) 82(20), pp. 18–21, 20.

4 Seventh-Day Adventism is a religious movement born in the nineteenth-century US. It was established after the Baptist preacher William Miller’s prophesy of the Second Coming in 1844 failed to be realized. This event goes by the name the Great Disappointment. However, Adventists held on to the idea of Christ’s imminent return and teach the realization of the Second Coming (Advent) of Christ, the Creation of Man and Saturday Sabbath. They consider the Adventist church to be the prophesized congregation of the end of days. Juha Seppo, Uskovien yhteisö vai valtionkirkko, Helsinki: Suomen kirkkohistoriallinen seura, 1983, pp. 29–30.

5 In 2015, the Adventist Church in Finland had roughly 3,500 members, constituting but a fraction of Finnish Christians. Statistics Finland, ‘Appendix Table 6. Population by religious community’, 20 September 2016 version, at https://stat.fi/til/vaerak/2015/01/vaerak_2015_01_2016-09-23_tau_006_en.html (accessed 27 May 2025).

6 Interview with Aki Pirskanen, Ritva Kuusisto and Elvi Honkanen by the author, 21 November 2025. People who knew Karström personally or knew of his influence were interviewed by the author. Interviewees included respectively the director of health ministries of the Finnish Seventh-Day Adventist Church, the Adventist-led health organization ETRA’s vice chair and one of Karström’s former students from the Adventist boarding school Toivonlinna.

7 The Henning Karström collection at the Finnish National Archive contains a manuscript version of Karström’s autobiography, some of his correspondence and interview transcripts between the records creator Tauno A. Luukkanen and Karström. In addition, Karström’s scientific publications, educational books and popular articles were used.

8 Ronald Numbers, Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White, 3rd edn, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008, pp. 220–8.

9 See e.g. Anders Bank Lodahl, ‘Skodsborg Badesanatorium: an Adventist health resort on the fringe of the Danish public healthcare 1898–1992’, Social History of Medicine (2024) 37(1), pp. 27–45, 34; and Auli Saarsalmi-Paalasmaa, ‘The vision of medical missionary sanitariums: a digital analysis of the Medical Revolution’s impact on Seventh-Day Adventist health work in southern California through Ellen G. White’s letters, 1900–1914’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Helsinki, 2025).

10 See e.g. Malcolm Bull and Keith Lockhart, Seeking a Sanctuary: Seventh-Day Adventism and the American Dream, 2nd edn, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007; first published 1989; Numbers, op. cit. (8); Ronald Numbers and Darrel W. Amundsen (eds.), Caring and Curing: Health and Medicine in the Western Religious Traditions, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997; James C. Whorton, Crusaders for Fitness: The History of American Health Reformers, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982. Also, geology’s relation to Creationism has received some attention. See Ronald Numbers, The Creationists, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992.

11 See e.g. Terrie Dopp Aamodt, Gary Land and Ronald Numbers (eds.), Ellen Harmon White: American Prophet, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014; and Bull and Lockhart, op. cit. (10).

12 Ronald Numbers and David Larson, ‘The Adventist tradition’, in Numbers and Amundsen, op. cit. (10), pp. 447–67, 458.

13 Interview with Pirskanen, Kuusisto and Honkanen, op. cit. (6). On the North Karelia project see Mikko Jauho, ‘Becoming the North Karelia project: the shaping of an iconic community health intervention in Finland (1970–1977)’, Social History of Medicine (2020) 34(4), pp. 1212–35.

14 See, however, Lodahl, op. cit. (9), for Denmark; and for Sweden see Motzi Eklöf, ‘Missionerande medicin: sjundedagsadventisternas internationella hälsoreform och vårdinrättningar i Sverige’, Svensk Medicinhistorisk Tidskrift (2008) 12(1), pp. 119–41; ‘Vegetarisk (rå)kost och det reformerade livet’, Lychnos (2005) 73(1), pp. 245–72; and ‘Neurosis: patienter, diagnoser och terapier i sjundedagsadventistisk vård 1935–1985’, Lychnos (2011) 80(1), pp. 75–97.

15 Interview with Pirskanen, Kuusisto and Honkanen, op. cit. (6); Henning Karström to Ester Jääkoski, 22 December 1963, A.I. Virtanen Papers, National Archive, Helsinki (henceforth AIV), Received Letters, Box 35.

16 For a definition of life see Carlos Mariscal, ‘Life’, in Edward Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 30 November 2021 version, at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2021/entries/life (accessed 27 May 2025).

17 Vitalism is not a monolithic philosophy. For historical examples of its different interpretations see e.g. Geoffrey Sutton, ‘The physical and chemical path to vitalism: Xavier Bichat’s “Physiological researches on life and death”’, Bulletin for the History of Medicine (1984) 58(1), pp. 53–71; Timothy O. Lipman, ‘Vitalism and reductionism in Liebig’s physiological thought’, Isis (1967) 58(2), pp. 167–85; and Hilde Hein, ‘The endurance of the mechanism: vitalism controversy’, Journal of the History of Biology (1972) 5(1), pp. 159–88. On the history of molecular biology see Garland Allen, Life Science in the Twentieth Century, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978; Soraya de Chadarevian and Harmke Kamminga (eds.), Molecularizing Biology and Medicine, London: Routledge, 1998; Soraya de Chadarevian and Jean-Paul Gaudillière, ‘The tools of the discipline: biochemists and molecular biologists’, Journal of the History of Biology (1996) 29(3), pp. 327–30 and the related special issue; Lily E. Kay, The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Rise of the New Biology, New York: Oxford University Press, 1993; Horace Judson, The Eighth Day of Creation: The Makers of the Revolution in Biology, New York: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press, 1996; Robert Olby, The Path to the Double Helix, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974; and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger, Toward a History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.

18 See Charles Wolfe, ‘Vitalism without metaphysics? Medical vitalism in the Enlightenment’, Science in Context (2008) 21(4), pp. 461–3 and the related special issue; Christopher Donohue and Charles Wolfe (eds.), Vitalism and Its Legacy in Twentieth Century Life Sciences and Philosophy, Cham: Springer, 2023; Sebastian Normandin and Charles Wolfe (eds.), Vitalism and the Scientific Image in Post-Enlightenment Life Science, 1800–2010, Dordrecht: Springer, 2013, for further reading and references.

19 See, however, Victoria Shmidt, ‘Vitalist arguments in the struggle for human (im)perfection: the debate between biologists and theologians in the 1960s–1980s’, in Donohue and Wolfe, op. cit. (18), pp. 217–38.

20 Allen, op. cit. (17), pp. 154–7.

21 E.g., Bohang Chen, On the Riddle of Life, Cham, Springer, 2024; Kevin Chang, ‘Fermentation, phlogiston and matter theory’, Early Science and Medicine (2002) 7(1), pp. 31–64; and Joseph Fruton, Fermentation: Vital or Chemical Process?, Leiden: Brill, 2006.

22 Robert Kohler, ‘The background to Eduard Buchner’s discovery of cell-free fermentation’, Journal of the History of Biology (1971) 4(1), pp. 35–61. See also Robert Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry: The Making of a Biomedical Discipline, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

23 Jarmo Pulkkinen, ‘AIV-voisuola: A.I. Virtasen ensimmäinen suuri keksintö’, Tekniikan Waiheita (2012) 30(3), pp. 20–37, 20.

24 Touko Perko, Mies, liekki ja unelma: Nobelisti A.I. Virtasen elämäntyö, Helsinki: Otava, 2014, pp. 63–7.

25 Artturi I. Virtanen and Henning Karström, ‘Über die Milchsäuregung. V.’, Hoppe-Seyler’s Zeitschrift für physiologische Chemie (1928) 174(1–2), pp. 22–7.

26 Perko, op. cit. (24), p. 68.

27 Touko Perko, Kalevankadun Akatemia, Helsinki: Ravitsemuksen Tutkimussäätiö, 2009, p. 14.

28 Perko, op. cit. (24), pp. 79–80.

29 Perko, op. cit. (24), pp. 72–4.

30 See e.g. John Hudson, History of Chemistry, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1992. For scholarly debates on the acidity concept see Hasok Chang, ‘Acidity: the persistence of everyday in the scientific’, Philosophy of Science (2012) 79(5), pp. 690–700; and E.R. Scerri, ‘Hasok Chang on the nature of acids’, Foundations of Chemistry (2022) 24(3), pp. 389–404.

31 Henning Karström, ‘A.I.V. henkilönä ja tutkijana’, Kanava (1985) 13, pp. 409–16, 410–11.

32 Kari Salminen and Matti Heikonen, ‘100 vuotta Henning Mauritz Karströmin syntymästä’, Kemia-Kemi (1999) 26(5), pp. 376–9, 377.

33 Perko, op. cit. (24), pp. 71, 81.

34 Matti Heikonen and Tauno Moisio, ‘Pantiorehusta hallittuun biotekniikkaan’, Kemia-Kemi (1988) 15(10), pp. 848–58, 852.

35 Perko, op. cit. (24), p. 91; Heikonen and Moisio, op. cit. (34), p. 853.

36 Allen, op. cit. (17), pp. 157–8.

37 Jaakko Mäki, ‘A.I. Virtanen in the history of fermentation research’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Oulu, 1983), pp. 40–1.

38 Henning Karström, ‘Über die Enzymbildung in Bakterien und über einige physiologische Eigenschaften der untersuchten Bakterienarten’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Helsinki, 1930), pp. 2–3.

39 Henning Karström, autobiography manuscript, 1982–5, Tauno A. Luukkanen’s Henning Karström Collection, Finnish National Archive, Helsinki (subsequently HKC), Box F8 64/5, pp. 1–105, 30.

40 Karström, op. cit. (38).

41 Interview with Henning Karström by Tauno A. Luukkanen, undated, HKC, Box F8 64/5, pp. 1–40, 31.

42 Mäki, op. cit. (37), pp. 12–3.

43 Henning Karström, ‘Henkilökohtaisia kokemuksia’, in Olavi Rouhe (ed.), Kirjeitä uskosta ja elämästä, Tampere: Kirjatoimi, 1980, pp. 99–105, 100.

44 Henning Karström, Kemistin elämäntarina: 22 vuotta A.I. Virtasen työkumppanina ja toiset 22 vuotta adventtiliikkeen palveluksessa (ed. H. Luukko), Tampere: Media7 Julkaisut, 2014, pp. 91, 97.

45 Toivo Ketola, Hengellisiä liikkeitä: historiallinen tutkielma Suomen Adventtiliikkeestä, Turku: Uusi Aura, 1952, pp. 73–4.

46 Henning Karström to Tauno A. Luukkanen, 20 March 1983, HCK, Box F8 64/5.

47 Interview with Karström, op. cit. (41), 34–6.

48 Eklöf, op. cit. (14), pp. 128–9. Prior to 1955, the Adventist congregations in Finland and Sweden belonged to the Eastern Nordic Union of the Adventist community, which convened every year. Karström, op. cit. (39), p. 86a.

49 In 1877, the Battle Creek Sanitarium, originally established by the Western Health Reform Institute, was expanded into a large facility that treated a variety of ailments. Kellogg’s treatment programme included bathing, the use of electricity, a mainly vegetarian diet, physical therapy and massage. The San was a model institute for a network of treatment facilities that soon mushroomed around the world. Brian Wilson, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and the Religion of Biologic Living, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014.

50 Micaela Sullivan-Fowler, ‘Doubtful theories, drastic therapies: autointoxication and faddism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries’, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (1995) 50(3), pp. 364–90.

51 Whorton, op. cit. (10), pp. 219–20.

52 John Harvey Kellogg, Autointoxication, Battle Creek: The Modern Medicine Publishing Co., 1919, pp. 24–5.

53 Kellogg, op. cit. (52), pp. 26–8.

54 Karström, op. cit. (44), pp. 75–6.

55 Henning Karström, ‘Onko liharuoka terveydelle haitallista (osa I)’, Terveys (1958) 22(8), pp. 174–5, 186. All translations are by the present author unless otherwise specified.

56 Jorma Erkama, ‘Rakas veljeni Henning’, in Marita Karström-Erenius et al. (eds.), Henning Karström 80 år, Tampere: Kirjatoimi, 1979, p. 16.

57 Cf. Lodahl, op. cit. (9).

58 Henning Karström, ‘Näkökohtia syöpäpotilaan ruokavaliosta (osa I)’, Terveys (1962) 26(1), pp. 10–11, 21.

59 Eve-Riina Hyrkäs and Mikko Myllykangas, ‘Obesity and the vitality of food in Finland, ca. 1950–1970’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science (2024) 106, pp. 99–108.

60 Henning Karström, ‘Vitamiinirikas talvimaito’, Terveys (1937) 1(1), pp. 10–12. On the history of vitamins see Rima Apple, Vitamania, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1996; Sally Horrocks, ‘The business of vitamins: nutrition science and the food industry in inter-war Britain’, in Harmke Kamminga and Andrew Cunningham (eds.), The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840–1940, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1995, pp. 235–58; Harmke Kamminga, ‘Vitamins and the dynamics of molecularization: biochemistry, policy and industry in Britain, 1914–1939’, in Soraya de Chadarevian and Harmke Kamminga (eds.), Molecularizing Biology and Medicine: New Practices and Alliances, 1910s–1970s, Amsterdam: Harwood, 2003, pp. 78–98; and Ulrike Thoms, ‘“Vitaminfragen – kein Vitaminrummel?” Die Deutsche Vitaminforschung in der ersten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts und ihr Verhältnis zur Öffentlichkeit’, in Sybilla Nikolow and Arne Schirrmacher (eds.), Wissenschaft und Öffentlichkeit als Ressource für einander, Bielefeld: Campus, 2007, pp. 75–96.

61 Kellogg, op. cit. (52), pp. 107, 134.

62 Henning Karström, ‘Maito-kasvisruoka erityisen sopivaa pohjoismaalaisille’, Terveys (1959) 9(3), pp. 48–9.

63 Unni Kjaernes and Runar Doving, ‘Controlling fat and sugar in the Norwegian welfare state’, in Derek Oddy, Peter J. Atkins and Virginie Amilien (eds.), The Rise of Obesity in Europe: A Twentieth Century Food History, London: Routledge, 2009, pp. 131–44.

64 Artturi I. Virtanen, ‘Ravinto, verisuonten kalkkiutuminen ja liikalihavuus’, in Liikalihavuuden vastustamisyhdistys (ed.), Terveyteni tieteen vaa’assa, Helsinki: Kirjatoimi, 1950, pp. 42–51, 42–3.

65 Henning Karström, ‘Ravintomme kalorioista, vitamiineista ja haitallisista aineista’, in Liikalihavuuden vastustamisyhdistys, op. cit. (64), pp. 52–61.

66 Numbers, op. cit. (8), p. 224.

67 Lodahl, op. cit. (9), pp. 36–7.

68 The main reason for establishing Adventist schools in Finland was the perceived ‘anti-religious’ sentiment in higher education. Schooling in Toivonlinna started at the age of ten and lasted four years. The duration was extended to six years in 1951 to make the school preparative for university. Ketola, op. cit. (45), pp. 145–7, 152–3. There were also full-time health reformist sanatoria in Finland. See e.g. Suvi Rytty,’Ruumiista reformiin: Suomalaiset elämänuudistajat, luonnonmukainen ruumiinmuokkaus ja modernisaation ongelma, 1910–1932’ (unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Turku, 2021).

69 Karström, op. cit. (39), p. 88.

70 Taru Anttonen and Jukka Vornanen, Lihansyöjien maa, Helsinki: Into, 2016, pp. 270–2.

71 Henning Karström, ‘Onko liharuoka terveydelle haitallista (osa II)’, Terveys (1958) 22(9), pp. 198–9; Henning Karström, ‘Valkuaisaineiden merkityksestä ravitsemuksessamme’, Terveyttä kohti (1958) 4(5), pp. 84–5.

72 Interview with Pirskanen, Kuusisto and Honkanen, op. cit. (6).

73 ETRA, ‘Historiikki’, 2026 version, at https://etraliitto.fi/historiikki (accessed 31 July 2026).

74 Interview with Pirskanen, Kuusisto and Honkanen, op. cit. (6).

75 Anttonen and Vornanen, op. cit. (70), p. 277.

76 Henning Karström, ‘Virheellinen ravinto kansamme pahin kuolinsyy’, Terveys (1955) 19(12), pp. 282–5, 284–5.

77 Numbers, op. cit. (8), p. 224.

78 Karström, op. cit. (55), p. 175.

79 Hyrkäs and Myllykangas, op. cit. (59), p. 103.

80 Interview with Karström, op. cit. (41), p. 38.

81 Karström, op. cit. (39), pp. 98d–f.

82 Karström followed the discussion in Ministry and also published there himself.

83 Ethel Nelson, ‘Nutrition and health: an interview with Nathan Pritikin’, Ministry (1978) 51(4), pp. 32–4.

84 Interview with Pirskanen, Kuusisto and Honkanen, op. cit. (6).

85 Artturi I. Virtanen to Henning Karström, 10 May 1962, AIV, Sent Letters, Box 70; Henning Karström, Syö oikein – elä kauemmin, 2nd edn, Tampere: Kirjatoimi, 1972, pp. 80–7

86 See e.g. Hyrkäs and Myllykangas, op. cit. (59).

87 Roger Cooter, ‘Alternative medicine, alternative cosmology’, in Cooter (ed.), Studies in the History of Alternative Medicine, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1998, pp. 63–78.

88 Numbers, op. cit. (8), pp. 212–13.

89 Numbers, op. cit. (8), p. 213.

90 Whorton, op. cit. (10), p. 216.

91 Cited in Sullivan-Fowler, op. cit. (50), p. 367.

92 Kellogg, op. cit. (52), p. 49.

93 Karström, op. cit. (39), p. 43, original underlining and question marks.

94 Karström, op. cit. (39), p. 43, original capitalization and underlining.

95 LeRoy Edwin Froom, The Conditionalist Faith of Our Fathers, 2 vols., Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1966, vol. 1, Chapter 4.

96 Uriah Smith, Man’s Nature and Destiny, Oakland: Pacific Press Publishing Company, 1884, Chapter 4, original emphasis.

97 For context see Garland Allen, ‘Mechanism, vitalism and organicism in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century biology’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (2005) 36, pp. 261–83; Christina Brandt, ‘Vitalism, holism, and metaphorical dynamics of Hans Spemann’s “organizer” in the interwar period’, Journal of the History of Biology (2022) 55, pp. 285–320; Erik Peterson, ‘The conquest of vitalism or the eclipse of organicism? The 1930s Cambridge organizer project and the social network of mid-twentieth-century biology’, BJHS (2014) 47(2), pp. 281–304. A form of teleological, cosmic vitalism was also upheld by Karström’s contemporary, the scientist and Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Jardin. H. James Birx, ‘Teilhard and evolution: critical reflections’, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations (1981–2) 9(1), pp. 151–67.

98 Hans Driesch, The Science and Philosophy of the Organism, Toronto: University of Toronto, 1908, pp. 181–8. On Driesch’s view on enzymes see also Chen, op. cit. (21).

99 Henning Karström, ‘Hiilihydraattien biokemiallisissa hajoamisissa toimivista aktivaattoreista’, Suomen Kemistilehti 1931 4(11–12), pp. 126–35.

100 Henning Karström, ‘Näkökohtia syöpäpotilaan ruokavaliosta (osa II)’, Terveys (1962) 26(2), pp. 34–5; Karström, ‘Ajatuksesi terveyden perustana’, Terveyden viesti (1976) 22(3), pp. 5–6.

101 Henning Karström, ‘Hyljätkäämme se mikä on elimistölle vierasta’, Terveys (1966) 30(11), pp. 340–1.

102 Henning Karström, ‘Vaurioitunut soluhengitys – sen syyt ja seuraukset’, Terveys (1961) 25(12), pp. 272–3, 289.

103 Artturi I. Virtanen, ‘Maitohapon muodostumisesta syöpäkasvannaisissa’, Acta Chemica Fennica (1929) 2(2), pp. 19–22.

104 Robert Kohler, ‘The background to Otto Warburg’s conception of the “Atmungsferment”’, Journal of the History of Biology (1973) 6(2), pp. 171–92.

105 Allen, op. cit. (17), pp. 159–62. Also Kohler, From Medical Chemistry to Biochemistry, op. cit. (22).

106 On German holism see e.g. Christopher Lawrence and George Weisz (eds.), Greater than the Parts: Holism in Biomedicine, 1920–1950, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998; Anne Harrington, Reenchanted Science: Holism in German Culture from Wilhelm II to Hitler, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996; Michael Hau, The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany: A Social History, 1890–1930, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Somewhat ironically, Warburg’s own mature view was in line with the principles of mechanistic materialism that had taken over the biochemical field in the interwar era. Allen, op. cit. (17), p. 181.

107 On the history of tumour viruses see Gregory Morgan, Cancer Virus Hunters: A History of Tumor Virology, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022.

108 Karström, op. cit. (102), p. 289.

109 Numbers, op. cit. (8), pp. 237–8.

110 Allen, op. cit. (17), pp. 182–3.

111 Erik Peterson, ‘A “fourth wave” of vitalism in the mid-20th century?’, in Donohue and Wolfe, op. cit. (18), pp. 173–92, 186–7.

112 Eduard Farber, ‘Bio-active substances in the nineteenth century’, Chymia (1950) 3(1), pp. 63–76, 75–6.

113 Iriz Silander, ‘Nämä uskovaiset elävät keskimääräistä vanhemmiksi – terveysjohtaja kertoo, miksi’, MTV Uutiset, 30 August 2025, at www.mtvuutiset.fi/artikkeli/nama-uskovaiset-elavat-keskimaaraista-vanhemmiksi-terveysjohtaja-kertoo-miksi/9207792 (accessed 21 October 2025).

114 Erwin Schrödinger, What Is Life? With Mind and Matter & Autobiographical Sketches, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, pp. 86–7. See also Sahotra Sarkar, ‘Erwin Schödinger’s excursus on genetics’, in Oren Harman and Michael Dietrich (eds.), Outsider Scientists, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013, pp. 93–109.

115 Jessica Riskin, The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-Long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Riskin defines agency in living nature as the rudimentary activity of matter (not consciousness).

116 Denis Walsh, ‘Objectcy and agency’, in Daniel J. Nicholson and John Dupré (eds.) Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018, pp. 167–85.