The Story of our Health Message

Plans for Caring for Students

While on a visit to New York City, Dr. J. H. Kellogg saw at first hand the noble, philanthropic lines of work carried on by Dr. Dowkontt and his associates, and his plan for maintaining a home for such medical students as were fired with missionary zeal and planned to become medical missionaries. Of this he wrote: SHM 265.3

“We had the pleasure, a few weeks since, of spending a few hours with the doctor in New York, visiting the home where the students of the medical missionary school reside, and also one of the dispensaries, or medical mission stations, maintained in the city. The good work we saw there, and the earnest words we heard uttered, impressed us that this is a most blessed kind of work and a most fruitful field of labor.”—The Medical Missionary, June, 1891. SHM 265.4

Had we been in Ann Arbor, Michigan, a few months later than this in 1891, we might have seen on Jefferson Street a two-story building where, within a few minutes’ walk of the state university, a group of Seventh-day Adventist youth who were to continue their training at the medical college there were moving in. These were the young men and women previously selected by the collaboration of the General Conference Committee and the Medical and Surgical Sanitarium Board (of the Battle Creek institution) to be encouraged to become qualified as Christian physicians. The commodious house was capable of accommodating several more than the eighteen occupants, for the sanitarium board felt confident that by the beginning of the following year the family of students would be considerably augmented as more young people caught the vision of medical missionary service. SHM 266.1

Thus was taken the first major step in surrounding the denominational medical students with an environment that would be helpful to them in holding fast to their objective. During the summer most of them attended “preparatory medical school” at the sanitarium, where they had an opportunity to observe and to take part in the sanitarium methods of treatment of the sick. In addition to the classes in the “medical missionary school,” they received more advanced studies in anatomy, materia medica, and physiology. During a portion of this time each one was assigned to be a doctor’s office assistant, to give the students an opportunity to observe the methods of diagnosis and of prescription for the sick. In return for their board, room, and instruction, they had given eight hours’ work daily. Now they were entering upon the final three years at the state university, at an estimated cost of from $700 to $900, with opportunity to lessen this amount by their earnings. Those who were unable to meet these expenses were, if accepted by the sanitarium board, given whatever assistance they required. The Medical Missionary, November and December, 1892. SHM 266.2