The Great Second Advent Movement: Its Rise and Progress

The American Medical Missionary College

Step by step the light advanced on the rational mode of treating disease until in June, 1895, a demand was created for the organization of a medical educational institution. In compliance with this demand, the American Medical Missionary College was organized for the special purpose of training physicians to work under the Seventh-day Adventist Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association, in home and foreign fields. The inauguration exercises were held in Battle Creek, Sept. 30, 1895, and the college was opened the following day, October 1, with a class of forty students. GSAM 372.5

In the college announcement we read: “The college is incorporated in Chicago, under the laws of the State of Illinois. The course of study will be as thorough as that of the best medical schools in the United States. The instruction will be given partly in Chicago, and partly in Battle Creek, Mich.” GSAM 372.6

Concerning those preparing for medical missionary work we read the following in The Medical Missionary, August, 1895: “The class of nurses now in training at the Battle Creek Sanitarium Training-School for Nurses numbers over 250; every one of these who is now competent to engage in medical missionary work has a position assigned him. Nurses are wanted for the South Sea Islands, India, the West Indies, South America, twenty-five or thirty for the Southern States of the United States, and for our large cities.” GSAM 373.1