General Conference Bulletin, vol. 4

MICHIGAN SANITARIUM AND BENEVOLENT ASSOCIATION

J. H. KELLOGG

Third Meeting, April 15, 3:15 P. M.

DR. J. H. KELLOGG in the chair.

The Chair: According to appointment, we now call to order the meeting of the Michigan Sanitarium and Benevolent Association. The first business in hand would be the reading of the minutes of the last meeting. This may be waived, however, as the minutes have been published in the BULLETIN. Unless called for, the reading of the minutes will be waived. GCB April 17, 1901, page 282.14

At the last meeting we considered some questions of interest, and to-day we have a number of important questions, which I am sure will be of interest to all the members of this body. Some of these are of more than local interest. One question that is of great practical interest to the members of this society is, How the sanitarium can be best utilized, or how does it operate as a missionary measure, as means of moral and spiritual grace, to those who come in contact with it? We have here a number of persons who have had experience in sanitarium work in different parts of the world; and to bring this question forward for discussion, I will ask Elder E. J. Hibbard to say a few words. GCB April 17, 1901, page 282.15

E. J. Hibbard: What I shall have to say will need to be extemporaneous, as I have no report prepared for the occasion. My observation is that it is all evangelical. I have observed quite closely the working of every department of the institution, and I will begin at the railroad train. I have visited the trains at the same time that our porters have been there to meet the guests who were coming to the sanitarium, and I have observed the contrast between the demeanor of our Christian porters and that of some others who meet the trains in behalf of worldly institutions. I am sure that persons arriving here can not but notice the difference, and be impressed with it. GCB April 17, 1901, page 282.16

The man at the door of the sanitarium is perhaps in one of the most important places in the whole institution. I have often shaken hands with different persons placed there, and have sometimes quoted this scripture: “I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord than to dwell in the tents of wickedness,” when they would say, “That is so.” GCB April 17, 1901, page 282.17

The next place at which a patient stops is at the desk, and there he finds clerks who are just as well acquainted with the Lord as any of the physicians, perhaps, or as any minister there. He then meets the matron, the receiving physician, the department physicians, and nurses in the bath-rooms, and when he has gone through the whole institution, and gets to the prayer-meeting, he is quite sure, if a Christian, to arise and testify to something like this: I supposed I was coming here to get physical good, but there is a general atmosphere here of Christianity that I never have found elsewhere. The fact is that I have received more good spiritually here than ever anywhere else in my life. This has been the testimony of those who have come here, over and over again. GCB April 17, 1901, page 282.18

I have been called on by several of the patients to study the Bible with them, and invariably the testimony has been, “I was brought to see the light, and the good that there is in Christianity, by the godly life of my nurse.” I have in mind now a prominent lady in New York society who never had thought of Christianity, as a matter that she desired to have, more than to go to church, and that she never had intended to give her heart to the Lord, but she sent for me, asking for Bible studies. It seems to me that if we were to speak of the evangelical work of the Sanitarium, we would simply have to take in every department, and look at it as a whole, to realize the salutary influence of the place. GCB April 17, 1901, page 282.19

Those who are there in training are not only studying the Bible when in the Bible class, but they study Bible in the physiology class, in the anatomy class, or any other class. In every place they are studying truth, as found in the Bible. GCB April 17, 1901, page 282.20

There is a great difference between the way the world studies truth and the way Christians study it. The world may get the exact facts that we get, and yet not see the principles of the Lord’s truth in it. In studying anatomy, they find certain functions of the human body, and get the names of them, but they come to a certain place where they lose themselves, and then they fall back on the evolutionary idea. But the Christian sees the Lord in all this, and goes into it, ever learning of the Lord. GCB April 17, 1901, page 282.21

All classes at the sanitarium study the gospel. I have often been present where the different physicians have begun their classes, and so far as I have seen, every one begins the class with prayer. The Lord is sought, and his truth is sought, so that the whole teaching is Christian. Do we neglect the study of what we call the message?—No. I never have been in a place where I have been freer to study with the classes all branches of what we call present truth than at this place; and if we fail to study what we call the practical subjects pertaining to the practical side of Christianity outside of the general doctrinal points of the message for a time, I would certainly be reminded of it in a very little while, because some one would soon call for the lessons. When we study these messages, we don’t study them as detached doctrines, but we study them as vital Christian truths, and always in their relation to personal principles of Christian experience on the part of the individual. GCB April 17, 1901, page 282.22

We have classes of patients who have asked to enter classes. One brother accepted the truth, and came into the whole light of the present message. Another was a missionary who had spent many years in India. Partly through her instrumentality, another missionary also who came from China, but who has now returned there, with her husband, accepted the truth. She knows the language of some parts of China, and is able to do good work there. Other individuals from Minnesota, Alabama, and other places, have accepted the full light of the message from attending these classes. Another was a missionary who had just returned from a three years’ trip around the world, visiting all the different missions. GCB April 17, 1901, page 283.1

Some may ask, Do you preach a sermon on the Sabbath question every once in a while in the chapel? Yes; Elder McCoy has often received requests to do that, and he has done it; but to to my mind, one of the greatest sermons that is preached in the sanitarium is the Sabbath-keeping of the people who are there. Every Friday evening, as the sun sets, they assemble in the parlor for vespers, and there they sing the praises of God, the Scriptures are read, and a prayer is offered, and the Sabbath is recognized as it is always spoken of in connection with that service. Again at the close of the Sabbath it is the same; and these vespers are not only attended by the physicians and helpers in general, but many patients delight to attend them. So I can say from the standpoint of the institution, and from the general influences of the work, that I have never been connected with a work where the light of present truth is held up any higher than it is at the sanitarium. It is one of the greatest missionary centers in the world. GCB April 17, 1901, page 283.2

The Chair: Quite a number of persons here have been supporters of this work of the sanitarium, and have been pillars in its work for many years. We have men who are representing Conferences and large constituencies, and I would be glad to hear from them. The reason these facts are brought forward is not because we suppose they are entirely new to all the members of the association, but because many of you represent hundreds and thousands of people at home, and we want you to be informed, so that you can tell the people with whom you come in contact, of the actual facts as they exist at the institution. Many people look upon the institution as simply a worldly affair, a sort of hospital, or commercial institution, and we want that idea to be removed. The connection of our sanitarium work with the Chicago mission work has certainly helped very greatly in the development of the true evangelical spirit in the institution, but there is no attempt made to proselyte people there. A proselyting spirit is rather discouraged. It is not a proper thing for sick people to be agitated over theological questions. But evangelical proselyting is quite a different spirit, and the thought is that if a man is brought into touch with a higher power, gives his heart to God, and starts out in a Christian life, God is able to lead him wherever he wants him to go, and will open his mind to whatever truth he is prepared to receive. I will call on Dr. Geisel, who is present in the audience, to give you a little personal history with reference to her own experience at the sanitarium in the line of evangelical influence. GCB April 17, 1901, page 283.3

Dr. Geisel: It has seemed to me ever since God found me in the Battle Creek Sanitarium six years ago, that the one thing the Master would have us do out in the world is to put people who do not know the Lord Jesus Christ in touch with him, by the power of personal example. So for the years that have followed my conversion, I have been, so to speak, turned loose in the world just to find the souls who are hungering for the Lord Jesus Christ, and have tried to bring them a little bit closer to him. I can not do any better this afternoon than to tell you of personal incidents that have come out by the way, not only in work in Chicago, but in the various large cities of the United States where have been called to labor. GCB April 17, 1901, page 283.4

There comes to mind, first of all, a strong, earnest, honest, scholarly man, who, in Tampa. Fla., had been led to see the mistake of his life. While the privileges he had known were not many, yet by coming in touch with healthful living, he had been led up through nature to nature’s God. Standing there on the platform in our little mission in Tampa. Fla., this strong man said, “For years my vision has been so clogged by things I ate, that I was fast getting where I had no control over my own personality, but was in the power of the devil.” After a few days of association with our friends who had lived as God would have them live, that man gave himself to the Lord Jesus Christ, and to-day is preaching, and teaching the people of the South a way getting back to nature’s God. GCB April 17, 1901, page 283.5

Crowded audiences come to us in the larger cities everywhere. Yet it is not always in the crowded audiences that we reach the largest number of people. But I fancy most of us feel that the large audiences are God’s greatest opportunities. Personally, I feel that it is by the close contact of the people in our homes, that our outside missionaries find their greatest opportunities. GCB April 17, 1901, page 283.6

I have in mind the death of Mr. P. D. Armour, in Chicago. You will remember, perhaps, noticing that in his last moments, he turned to the nurse at his bedside, and with the last strength of his life, said to her, “Will some one repeat the Lord’s prayer?” It was the voice of the nurse who repeated those sacred words, and the dying man’s voice took them up sentence by sentence. The nurse said to me, after that deathbed scene: “It seems to me an opportunity never to be forgotten, an opportunity worth living for, just to have been able to stand at the door of the grave, and usher a soul into the presence of God.” GCB April 17, 1901, page 283.7

That same day this nurse was called into a hovel home on the West Side of the city of Chicago. A messenger had said to her. “A woman is dying.” It was not for the dying woman that she was called, so much as for the helpless child that would be left without a mother. This dear woman said to her: “It is not for myself that I have sent for you, but for him,” giving the baby to her. Then in earnest, simple words, the nurse repeated to her sacred words from the promises of God. Taking the babe tenderly into her arms, she said: “I promise you to care for him,” and the soul went to her final rest, confident that it would be well with her child. GCB April 17, 1901, page 283.8

Perhaps these incidents seem trivial to you; but I myself stand before you today redeemed by the power of example up here in this dear old sanitarium; and I want to say to you in this Tabernacle that I love so tenderly, that if nothing else is done at the sanitarium, -if no bodies are ever healed,-but if souls are brought in touch with the Lord Jesus Christ by the power of the loves of our loved ones up there, much is wrought for eternity that can never be estimated. [Congregation: Amen!] The grandest preaching that ever was done from rostrum or pulpit is the lives of our precious girls and boys in the dear old home sanitarium, and not there only, but as one after another is called out into the broader fields of the wide world, going gladly wherever the Lord leads. Our own dear ones at the institution, of course, are carefully trained in heathful living; and over and over again, out in the field, I find men who are saying, as did a man just a few months ago, that they owe their present condition to health reform. This man had been drinking for six years, and four times during the six years he said, “I reformed in compliance [that was his own language] with the earnest urgings of people who tried to teach me how to die. But it is only since I have come in touch with people who have tried to teach me how to live, that I have reformed.” Eight weeks was the longest time he had been kept from the habit of drink during all those six years; yet after he had been taught how to live, three straight years have followed, and these years have been marked with steady progress upward, without one backward step. GCB April 17, 1901, page 283.9

A few weeks ago, at the Anti-Cigarette Convention in Chicago, Brother Paulson said something rather striking about “internal mustard drops”; and this man, who had had a great struggle to give up liquor, and had come up to the meeting, as he expressed it, with “whiskey under his feet” and with the purpose of putting the cigarette under his feet also, spoke to Dr. Paulson, saying, “I want to know a little more about ‘internal mustard drops.’” Soon we were kneeling there in the Palmer House with that strong man. All at once he arose to his feet, and said, “All on the altar for Jesus, every bit of it.” I had a note from him not many days ago, in which he said: “Since I pledged myself to the anti-everything-bad diet, my life has been true to God in every particular.” GCB April 17, 1901, page 284.1

Before I stop, let me say to you that I believe the greatest teaching that ever went before the world since the Master shed his blood on Calvary, is this precious message of right living: and if every one of us would live before the people, we would thus teach the wonderful side of this whole glorious truth, and in eternity we would meet the true estimate of the work thus done. GCB April 17, 1901, page 284.2

The Chair: It occurs to me that there may be here persons who out in the field encounter what you might call echoes from our sanitarium work here at Battle Creek. We would be glad to hear from some of these. I might mention just one interesting incident that I encountered myself when away frome home. About three years ago I visited the Omaha Workingmen’s Home. I did not find anybody in the front part, so I passed to the back part. As I entered the kitchen, trying to find somebody that I knew (I was simply stopping off between trains, and I had run in for a moment), I met a man I had not seen for nearly twenty-five years. In 1876 this man was a patient here at the sanitarium, with his wife and children, and twenty-two years afterward I saw him there in the mission. I was very much surprised to meet him. I said, “Mr.—, how do you do? I am very much surprised to see you.” I wondered how he happened to be there,—if he had fallen from grace, and had come to be a drunkard. I said, “How do you come to be here, Mr.—?” GCB April 17, 1901, page 284.3

“Well said be, “I became a vegetarian, and adopted the principles of health reform. A few years ago one of your preachers came to the town where I lived. He was looking up a boardingplace, and when one of my neighbors found out that he did not eat meat, he said, ‘Well, if you don’t eat meat, I would advise you to go over to Mr.—’s to board. He eats no meat.’ He came and boarded with me because I was a vegetarian. He carried on his lectures while boarding with me, and we talked about them at the table, and chatted about the Bible, and the first thing I knew I found myself believing just as he did, and I have been believing that way ever since.” GCB April 17, 1901, page 284.4

This man at the present time is one of the most earnest and efficient workers in the sanitarium at—. He goes out all through the country, making long journeys in the rural districts and also in the cities, and carries Good Health and various other health literature, letting his light shine as he can. GCB April 17, 1901, page 284.5

I want to mention just one more instance showing what opportunities doctors have. Dr. Rand, my colleague, was telling me a circumstance that occurred just a few days ago—since you came to this town. A physician from a distance came to the institution with a patient. He said as he came in, “Well, now I don’t take much stock in this thing. I don’t believe very much in your methods; but this gentleman, a friend of mine, wanted to go somewhere and insisted upon coming here, so I simply came along with him to get him here.” Dr. Rand found a desperately bad case in this man. He was all swollen up with dropsy. His heart was twice its normal size, and could scarcely circulate the blood through his system. His lips were blue, his face had a very bad color, and he was gasping for breath. He had every evidence of advanced disease of the heart and kidneys and other vital organs. It seemed impossible for him to live. Dr. Rand told the visiting physician that we could not give him any encouragement in this case, but that if he wanted to wait and stay a day or two and watch the case, and had confidence that anything could be done, to do so. GCB April 17, 1901, page 284.6

Well, he stayed a day or two, and to his surprise he found the man getting better,—his cheeks getting brighter, his lips redder. He thought he was certainly getting better. We consented to let him stay. So the doctor went away quite contented. The man remained three or four days, and became quite well acquainted, and he said to Dr. Rand about a week ago last Friday, “Doctor, there was an old patient of yours who came to see me. He heard I was going to die, and he told me that he wanted me to go to Battle Creek. That man, eighty-four years of age, who came to visit this old man, nearly eighty years of age, said, “I want you to go to Battle Creek. That is the place for you. You go to that sanitarium. They will help your body, and will do something more than that.” This man was an irreligious man; he did not, in fact, believe on Christianity. This neighbor of his, seeing he was about to die, went to him and asked him to come here. He had known him many years, and afterward this man said to Dr. Rand: “That was one of the reasons why I wanted to come here. That is the principal reason I wanted to come, because you will do something for me besides what you do for my body.” GCB April 17, 1901, page 284.7

The next day the doctor took time to visit his room and have a talk with him. Before the hour was up, this man gave his heart to the Lord, and to-day is a happy Christian. That was just what he came for. The sanitarium is getting a reputation for being a place where people can go to have something done for their souls as well as their bodies. GCB April 17, 1901, page 284.8

I said to a man who came from Washington, D. C., not very long ago, to have a surgical operation, “You have great surgeons in Washington. Why do you come here to have work done? This is not a very serious operation anyhow. GCB April 17, 1901, page 285.1

He replied, “Well, Doctor, I will tell you the truth about it. I heard long ago that you never had any operations at the sanitarium unless you prayed first. My operation is not very serious,—I knew that,—but I must take an anaesthetic. I know that people sometimes die from an anaesthetic; and I did not want the operation performed unless you prayed first. That is the reason I came here.” I would a great deal rather have such a reputation than to have the reputation of being the most skillful surgeon in the world. GCB April 17, 1901, page 285.2

I want to tell you a little circumstance that happened in connection with our sanitarium in Mexico. It was the case of a lady, a relative of one of the most eminent statesmen in the country; in fact, she was a cousin of the governor. She was brought to the sanitarium to have a desperate operation performed. She had had an operation performed by native doctors in Mexico, and had been left in an awful condition. The abdomen had been opened, and the wound had not been properly united, and the consequence was that all the contents of the abdomen were hanging out in the world, with nothing but a little covering of skin as protection,—a most terrible condition. I really felt sorry for the patient to come; for I did not like to do the operation. I had performed some operations like it; but it is a sort of operation that makes a surgeon’s knees quake. I felt rather glad when day after day passed, and the patient did not come. One day I saw the father, and he told me that his daughter was coming up the next day; “for,” he said, “we want you to perform that operation before you go away. I do not want you to leave Mexico without doing that operation.” GCB April 17, 1901, page 285.3

The patient came the next day, and in two or three days she was prepared for the operation. When we were ready for the operation, to my great surprise this lady said to me, through an interpreter, “I understand that you pray before you perform operations. Now I am a Catholic, and you are a Christian. We are not of the same faith; but we have the same God, and I want to be present when the prayer is offered.” She was therefore brought into the operating-room, and put upon the table. We all kneeled around the table to pray. Her prayer went up to God as ours did, and it was a comfort for me to think that that Catholic was looking straight to the great God, and did not have to go through a whole line of saints to get there. She renounced Catholicism that morning, because she looked up to God as we did. It was a great satisfaction to me to feel that our sanitarium was acting as an emancipator for the people, teaching them to look straight to God. GCB April 17, 1901, page 285.4

I might mention other cases, but I will call upon Dr. Thomason. He will give you other illustrations of this principle. GCB April 17, 1901, page 285.5

Dr. G. W. Thomason: I did not expect to be called upon to speak this afternoon; but I can speak of some things illustrating the principle to which the doctor has referred. One was the case of a young man, who was suffering an attack of pneumonia. He had progressed seven days in the disease, when two of his brothers came to the sanitarium at Guadalajara, and asked that a physician might visit the family, as the last resort. Both the leading physicians of Guadalajara had been called to see the case, and had given him up, saying that it was impossible for him to recover.. Several of us visited the case, Dr. Erkenbeck and Dr. Kellogg went down first and saw the case; and it presented a very desperate condition. The young man had been delirious for several days; had not slept, was unable to take any nutrition, or nourishment; his heart was very feeble: his breathing was very rapid, and it seemed almost impossible that anything could be done for the case. The physicians had given him up to die, and the priest had been sent for to administer the last sacrament of extreme unction. GCB April 17, 1901, page 285.6

On returning to the sanitarium, a nurse was sent to care for the case. The young man, upon entering the room, with the instruction that the doctors had given him, saw also that the case was desperate. The first thing he did was to kneel at the bedside of the young man, and pray that God would bless the treatment. At that time nurses were rather scarce at the sanitarium. A number of operations had been performed, and all the available help in the way of nurses had been utilized; so several of us had to take our turn. The young man required attention twenty-four hours in the day. We went down at different periods, and each remained with him four or five hours. GCB April 17, 1901, page 285.7

The methods we employed were not elaborate,—simply fomentations to the chest, followed by cold compresses, rubbing the surface of the body with cold water to reduce the fever, and applications of cold or ice to the head, to allay the delirium present. This was kept up for about twenty-four hours before there was any particular change apparent. But at the end of that time the young man fell asleep, the first sleep that he had had for many hours. He slept but a few minutes, perhaps half an hour or more, and then he awoke; but the little sleep that he had had so revived him that he was conscious for a few moments, though he lapsed again into delirium. But we persisted in the treatment that I have mentioned for a few hours more, and the young man again fell asleep. This time he slept several hours, and upon waking again was perfectly sane, and able to converse with those around him. GCB April 17, 1901, page 285.8

To make the story short, the recovery of this young man was uninterrupted. I should say, however, that the sisters and relatives of this young man were very much concerned as to the outcome, and frequently came into the sick-room to feel of the young man’s nose. It is a custom in Mexico to feel the skin between the eyes and over the nose, because they think that just before death there is a tightening of the skin over the nose, and so one, and then another, would run in and feel of the skin over the nose of the young man, to see if it was tightening any. After the young man was out of danger, several of us who had gathered told the young man’s friends that he was out of danger. Then they wanted to fall down and worship us, because they thought that it was something we had done, but I want to tell you, my friends, that it was a glorious privilege to say to those people that we had done nothing, but that God had done it all, and to him should be all the praise and honor. So the relatives and friends who had come to see the mighty work which had been done for the young man, with one voice, and with tears streaming down their faces, exclaimed, “Praise Deos!” So they joined with us in praise to God for bringing back to them their brother and friend, and we thought it was a privilege to be used of God in connection with the simple remedies that he had given us, to restore that young man to his friends and relatives. GCB April 17, 1901, page 285.9

Dr. J. H. Kellogg: There is one point I would like to notice, which Dr. Thomason omitted to mention, seeing that he himself was concerned. He was down there one day, and as he was passing out, the friends of this young man gathered about, and said, “Won’t you please pray to God that our brother may recover?” That is the thing I want to note especially. They were so thoroughly converted from Catholicism that they petitioned prayers to be made to the true God. Out upon the streets, when it was known that this young man had recovered, the crowds gathered about him on the streets, and said, “A miracle has been wrought. This young man is cured.” Everybody had said that he must die, and he would have died had it not been for God’s blessing in the simple remedies that were used. Candles were burning in the house, and people were weeping and wringing their hands, and praying to the Virgin Mary to cure their brother. As for the nurse, it was the most natural thing in the world for him to fall down and pray to God, and they recognized that God did not need these intermediaries. There are many people in that condition. They forget that they can go straight to God. They want to go to somebody else. GCB April 17, 1901, page 286.1

A Delegate: I have traveled in the different States for the last twenty-five years, and I have found persons who have visited the sanitarium, and that has been one of the best advertisements the work of the message has had, and so I am glad that the sanitarium is in existence. GCB April 17, 1901, page 286.2

A Delegate: Last year we pitched our tent in southern Illinois, and met a lady who some years before had been at the sanitarium. When she returned, she told her family that if there were any Christians on earth, they were Seventh-day Adventists. She told me that from that very moment she had a desire to know the truth. After we pitched the tent, the word came to her that we were there, and she came to one of the meetings. After the services, she invited us to go to her home. We visited her. She afterward accepted the truth, and she and her family are rejoicing in it to-day. GCB April 17, 1901, page 286.3

J. H. Kellogg: It is not because we have a proselyting institution, or because it is working to make people Seventh-day Adventists, that you have these favorable influences, but this is the reason: The sanitarium stands for truth; and when a man comes to the sanitarium and lays hold of the truth, we know that he is seeking truth, and wants more truth, and is ready to lay hold of it. It is not because he is favorably impressed, but because he is a man who loves truth, and this institution is holding up truth. We know that all we have to do in the world is to hold up the truth, and truth itself will attract those who are seeking after truth. Does not the Bible tell us that the spirit of truth that is within you shall lead you? Is it not a truth that every man who has the spirit of truth in him will be led into the truth? GCB April 17, 1901, page 286.4

It was here moved and seconded to adjourn to 3 P. M., April 16, 1901. The motion prevailed. GCB April 17, 1901, page 286.5

J. H. Kellogg, Chairman.
G. W. Thomason, Secretary.