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

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.