Counsels to Parents, Teachers, and Students

Medical Evangelistic Work

In connection with our larger schools there should be provided facilities for giving students thorough instruction regarding gospel medical missionary work. This line of work is to be brought into our colleges and training schools as a part of the regular instruction. The students should learn how to care for the sick, for many of them will have to engage in this kind of work when they take up missionary labor in the fields to which they shall be called. They are to be taught how to use nature's remedies in the treatment of disease. While gaining a knowledge of present truth, they should learn also how to be ministers of healing to those whom they go forth to serve. They should be given wise instruction regarding the principles of healthful living. This should be looked upon as an important part of their education, even though they may never be missionaries in foreign lands. Even in the primary schools the children should be taught to form habits that will keep them in health. CT 519.2

Those in training to be nurses and physicians should daily be given instruction that will develop the highest motives for advancement. They should attend our colleges and training schools; and the teachers in these institutions of learning should realize their responsibility to work and to pray with their students. Students should learn to be true medical missionaries, firmly bound up with the gospel ministry.... CT 520.1

Whenever a well-equipped sanitarium is established near a school, it may add greatly to the strength of the medical missionary course in the school if there is cooperation between the two institutions. The teachers in the school can help the workers in the sanitarium by their advice and counsel, and by sometimes speaking to the patients. And, in return, those in charge of the sanitarium can assist in training for field service the students who are desirous of becoming medical missionaries. Circumstances, of course, must determine the details of the arrangements that it will be best to make. As the workers in each institution plan unselfishly to help the other, the blessing of the Lord will surely rest upon both institutions. CT 520.2

No one man, whether a teacher, a physician, or a minister, can ever hope to be a complete whole. God has given to every man certain gifts and has ordained that men be associated in His service in order that the varied talents of many minds may be blended. The contact of mind with mind tends to quicken thought and increase the capabilities. The deficiencies of one laborer are often made up by the special gifts of another; and as physicians and teachers thus associated unite in imparting their knowledge, the youth under their training will receive a symmetrical, well-balanced education for service. CT 521.1