The Story of our Health Message

The Nursing School Opened

The training school for nurses was opened in November, 1905. Soon there were seven students in this first class, each of whom had already received one year’s training elsewhere. They all joined heartily in an evangelistic program in nearby cities, introducing Mrs. White’s book Ministry of Healing, which had recently come from the press, the profits of which had been dedicated by the author for medical missionary work. SHM 365.1

But Mrs. White urged broader plans for the educational work at this center than for the preparation of nurses only—that it include also the training of physicians. Intimation of this we find in a letter of December 10, 1905, in which she wrote: “In regard to the school, I would say, Make it all you possibly can in the education of nurses and physicians.”—E. G. White Letter 325, 1905. SHM 365.2

During the next few months plans were laid for the organization of “an advanced training school for workers in connection with the sanitarium.” At a council meeting held on the grounds in April, 1906, attended by Mrs. White and members of the Pacific Union Conference and the Southern California Conference committees, definite arrangements were made for this educational work. The school was to be known as the Loma Linda College of Evangelists. Prof. W. E. Howell, who had spent several years as principal of Healdsburg College in California and of the Hawaiian Academy in Honolulu, was invited to take charge of the new enterprise. SHM 365.3

The presence of the members of this council made this a fitting time for the formal dedication of the Loma Linda Sanitarium. Invitations had been sent not only to the members of our nearby churches, but also to businessmen and leading citizens of the surrounding cities, including several physicians. Mrs. White was among the speakers who addressed those present from an improvised platform, facing an audience of about five hundred persons on the gently sloping lawn, in a beautiful grove of pepper trees. Of her address, she wrote: SHM 365.4

“I tried to make it plain that sanitarium physicians and helpers were to co-operate with God in combating disease not only through the use of the natural remedial agencies He has placed within our reach, but also by encouraging their patients to lay hold on divine strength through obedience to the commandments of God.”—The Review and Herald, June 21, 1906. SHM 366.1