In 1901, Ellen White wrote a letter to a friend to advise him on his livelihood as a busy piano tuner. Pianos were very popular at that time since radios and televisions did not exist, and playing the piano was a major form of home entertainment. She urged him to find another type of work because, as she wrote, regularly tuning pianos for hours each day was “exceedingly trying to the nervous system… In many cases I have advised out-of-door work for piano tuners, telling them that unless they changed their business, they would have to deal with insanity.” [21MR 134]. Sounds like unreasonable advice, right?
At the time these words were written, pianos had a green felt cloth inside for the hammers (the 88 little devices that strike the strings when you hit a key, producing sound) to rest on when the key was not being played. In the 1800’s, this green color was made by infusing arsenic into the cloth, and the piano tuner had to both touch and inhale this arsenic in order to tune the instrument. Over time, this exposure could become toxic. Arsenic toxicity is extremely damaging to the nervous system, leading to delirium, mood disorders, hallucinations, dementia, severe mental illness, and death. God cared so much for this man’s health that He gave this bit of advice to EGW so she could pass on the warning to him and anyone else who read her writings.
Fortunately for us, arsenic-based green pigments fell out of favor by the early 1900’s and very few pianos from that era are around today.