The Story of our Health Message

Counsel Sought

The perplexities regarding the future policy of the college, as its curriculum would affect both faculty and students, were clearly set forth by Elder Burden in a letter written to Mrs. White. He raised the questions, Should they seek recognition under the laws that governed the regular schools of medicine? Should they offer a specialized course of therapy that would graduate a new class of recognized healing practitioners, such as the eclectic, the homeopath, the chiropractor, or the osteopath? Or should they be content to work as “medical evangelists,” with no special degree that would entitle them to practice under the laws of the state? SHM 371.3

Mrs. White had then received no instruction that would furnish the answer to these perplexing questions. No doubt the time had not come for them to be answered specifically. It was doubtless best that there should be delay, and that by further providential guidance the faith of the believers should be strengthened until they might act unitedly in such an extraordinary enterprise as the launching of a new medical college. SHM 372.1

From the first, practical field work was linked with the study program at Loma Linda. The work of Elder and Mrs. S. N. Haskell in San Bernardino has been mentioned already. After their departure there was for a time difficulty in finding someone to lead the students in this line of endeavor. But soon Dr. Lillis Wood Starr, an experienced worker in house-to-house medical missionary labor and an able lecturer, came with her family to the sanitarium. The faculty at Loma Linda arranged for her and some of the sanitarium workers to begin a class in the study of the book Ministry of Healing among the little company recently raised up by the evangelistic labors of Elder Haskell and his helpers at San Bernardino. SHM 372.2