The Story of our Health Message

United in Study and Counsel

As conference officials, ministers, and physicians united in study and counsel, there was rekindled in the hearts of many the old-time enthusiasm regarding the importance of the health message and the relation of the medical missionary to the task committed to the church. In the preamble to a resolution passed by the council, Loma Linda was welcomed as a place whose special mission it was to train such as would fill the need for “medical evangelists, thoroughly qualified to carry the gospel message and to minister to the sick, laboring as nurses, who through diligent study and experience, have acquired extraordinary ability.” Pacific Union Recorder, November 14, 1907. SHM 375.2

It was recognized that the maintenance of such a school was beyond the resources of the local Southern California Conference, and it was recommended that the Pacific Union Conference and the General Conference assist the Southern California Conference “in bearing the expense of this school.” (Ibid.) Among other recommendations adopted were those requesting union conferences to “place their medical departments on the same basis of operation as the publishing and educational departments [of the General Conference]”; urging that competent instructors go “into the churches and the field at large and teach the people these [health] principles”; and that health leaflets be prepared for wide distribution. However, the vital question regarding the training of physicians was not embodied in the recommendations beyond a request that “the General Conference Medical Department ... give most careful study to the question of providing for our young people the most favorable opportunities for them to secure the qualifications that they must have in order to carry forward the medical missionary work of our cause.” (Ibid.) SHM 375.3

It was impossible at this time, indeed, to secure united action in such a matter. The difficulties in the way of giving a complete medical course seemed insurmountable, and it is not strange that many were positive that it would be folly to consider such an undertaking. Some urged that an attempt be made to give a course that might be recognized as a special system of healing, such as osteopathy, or chiropractic, or homeopathy, whose graduates were permitted to practice under certain restrictions. To others it seemed more feasible to provide a limited equipment, and a small faculty sufficient to furnish two or three years of the medical course, with the hope that this might be recognized by other medical institutions where the students might go for their final degrees. And even such recognition, though hoped for, was not assured. SHM 376.1