The Story of our Health Message

Progress in Chicago

The development of the medical missionary work in the city of Chicago, Illinois, forms a necessary background to an understanding of the launching of a fully equipped, firstclass medical college by Seventh-day Adventists. SHM 275.1

Dr. J. H. Kellogg’s visit to Dr. Dowkontt in the summer of 1891 had inspired in him “the desire to see a similar work established in Chicago,” and he received from Dr. Dowkontt “a great many valuable suggestions concerning it.” Ibid., July, 1900. SHM 275.2

In the spring of 1892 a further impetus to the project was given when Col. George R. Clarke, who had been conducting in Chicago a work similar in many respects to that of Dr. Dowkontt in New York, was a guest at the sanitarium in Battle Creek, Michigan, for some weeks. One evening, by special request and in a simple narrative which touched every heart with its pathos, he related to the sanitarium family the story of the work he had been conducting. “He also told of its financial success through the power of prayer.” Ibid., April, 1892. SHM 275.3

A few months later the way was opened for beginning such work in Chicago. A wealthy gentleman in that city offered to pay for the services of a missionary nurse from the sanitarium to labor among the poorer classes in that great metropolis. There was already in Chicago a Visiting Nurses’ Association, whose purpose was to alleviate the suffering and distress among the very poor, but they were crippled for means and workers and were able to support only five workers. The sanitarium sent, as its pioneer worker in this line, a Miss Emily Schramm as a minister of mercy to work at first under the auspices of the Visiting Nurses’ Association, and to be supported by the generosity of the gentleman mentioned. Soon other nurses from the sanitarium at Battle Creek volunteered to give several weeks of their time to visiting the poor, “the sanitarium giving them their actual support, and their fellow nurses aiding them to meet other expenses.” Ibid., January, 1894. SHM 275.4