The Story of our Health Message

Dr. David Paulson’s Experience

A few of the students from Ann Arbor took their final year in medicine at the Bellevue Hospital in New York City. One of these young men, David Paulson, lived in a small rear room in the mission home conducted by Dr. George Dowkontt, the medical director of the International Medical Missionary Society. SHM 269.2

At this time (in 1893), Dr. Dowkontt was still hopefully working for the establishment of his medical missionary college. Of that experience, Dr. Paulson relates how he used to meet for prayer every Tuesday morning with Drs. Dowkontt and Keller, the latter being a missionary who later served in China. The burden of their prayer was “that the Lord might open the way for him [Dr. Dowkontt] to establish a medical missionary school.” SHM 269.3

“One morning,” wrote Dr. Paulson, “the truth flashed into my mind that what I was asking God to do in New York would be done in Battle Creek. I was so confident that this would take place that when a few weeks later, on my return, I met Dr. Kellogg at two o’clock at night, he said to me, ‘What great thing do you suppose the board did tonight?’ I replied immediately, ‘Started a medical school.’ In surprise, he said, ‘How did you find out so soon?’ I said, ‘That is just what I have been praying and looking for.’—Ibid., July, 1910. SHM 269.4

The establishment and maintenance of a medical school equipped and staffed and able to meet the advanced standards upheld by the American Medical Association, and that by a small denomination, seemed incredible to many, and the story of the providences connected with it and leading up to it can be told but briefly in the next chapter. SHM 270.1