Our medical program came to us by divine revelation. As you will recall, the General Conference was organized more than one hundred years ago on May 21, 1863. Sixteen days later (24 days before the battle of Gettysburg) a message was given to Ellen G. White in the farm home of Adam Hilliard at Otsego, Michigan, June 6, 1863, that the principles of healthful living are a religious obligation. And it was on December 25, 1865, at Rochester, New York, that an additional message came, stating that Seventh-day Adventists were to have a medical institution of their own. Nine months later, on September 5, 1866, the doors of the Western Health Reform Institute of Battle Creek, Michigan, were opened. This institution became the world-renowned and very successful Battle Creek Sanitarium.
Some are confused as to the type of institution Seventh-day Adventists should have. Some consider a sanitarium as being altogether different from a hospital. Some people contrast sanitarium care with hospital care. The word sanitarium is thought to have been coined by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg and used in naming our first institution. Incidentally, the Clifton Springs Sanitarium, Clifton Springs, New York, founded in the 1850's, claims to have used the term sanitarium some years before it was used at Battle Creek. At that time people were becoming interested in sanitation. Public health regulations were being enacted as Louis Pasteur was doing his monumental and revolutionary work in France. Up until that time garbage and refuse was thrown out of the windows of the houses into the streets and a person had to be careful lest it fall on him as he walked on the sidewalks below. I do not believe that there is anything sacred about the word sanitarium. The Western Health Reform Institute (original name of our first medical institution) was renamed in 1876, "The Medical and Surgical Sanitarium of Battle Creek." Surgery was considered an integral and important part of the work of a sanitarium. To have surgery one must have hospital facilities. The type of work we should be doing in our institutions is summarized in Medical Ministry, page 26: "Sanitariums are needed, in which successful medical and surgical work can be done."
The type of institution that Seventh-day Adventists ought to be operating would have everything medically scientific that a hospital contains, plus. The Battle Creek Sanitarium was such a place. It was larger eventually (had more beds), than all of our institutions in California put together! It became a fashionable place for leaders of the world. Presidents, governors, Senators, foreign princes, financial, industrial, and social leaders came there and followed the Battle Creek plan. Its patient list read like the social registry. The Rockefellers, Fords, Mellons, and other great names were frequently on the roster.
As the medical missionary work of the denomination expanded and developed it was organized into what later became known as the "International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association." This organization not only controlled the Battle Creek Sanitarium but also our original health journal first known as the Health Reformer (later as Good Health); our medical publications, health food manufacturing, and medical education. It controlled our first medical college known as the American Medical Missionary College and the Battle Creek Sanitarium School of Nursing, which was one of the first in this country and the first in the West. (That school which had a five-year course many years ago had trained more nurses by the time it closed than any other school of nursing in this country.) At Battle Creek also was probably the world's finest school of dietetics and there were schools for chefs, cooks, medical technicians, physical educators, et cetera. This organization controlled sister medical institutions in this country, city missions, welfare and temperance work, and also our foreign medical mission program. To illustrate: In 1895, or thereabouts, our first missionaries were sent to India by the Seventh-day Adventist Mission Board with headquarters in New York City. This missionary board was separate from the General Conference and more or less autonomous, although it had many of the same members on its governing committee. About this same time the American Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association sent a physician and several nurses to India. These got together there and carried on their work, although sent out by two separate organizations.
By 1901 the medical work had become so large that it overshadowed the denomination. In the minutes of the 1901 General Conference is the following:
W. W. Prescott: "I find from the statistics given in the General Conference BULLETIN, on page 163, that the entire General Conference employs . . . [1500 workers]. I was not quite sure, Mr. Chairman, of the statistics; but the best I can get, from the report, is that this association employs 74 physicians, 448 nurses, and about 1,200 other helpers. Am I correct?"
The Secretary: "I think that is about right."
W. W. Prescott: "Then, if this is correct, there are more persons in the employ of this association in its various departments of work, than in the employ of the whole General Conference. Is that correct?"
J. H. Kellogg: "The number is nearly 2,000 now."
W. W. Prescott: "There are 1,500 in the employ of the General Conference. Now it has seemed to me these figures were very striking, and are worth noticing; and so many were nodding assent while it was going on that I fear they did not notice these figures, and do not realize the size of the work that is being brought before us to-day."---General Conference Bulletin, April 10, 1901, p.. 178.
Some felt that the medical work was overbalancing the rest of the work of the church. Ellen G. White made the remark that we were not to cut the medical work down but we were to bring the other lines of work up to the level of the medical work.
This great medical missionary program was not all, however, according to God's plan. The servant of the Lord made this comment in Testimonies for the Church, Series B, No. 7, page 56:
The vast fabric that has been woven by our medical missionary leaders into the web of God's cause for these last days, bears not in man) respects the decided marks of God's direction.
In turn, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, the leader of the medical work and the head of the American Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association, was at this time very critical of the ordained ministry and of the leadership of the church. It must be said in his defense that this was not without provocation. Some of the leading brethren did not accept health reform and were critical of the medical work, which they did not understand. The doctor was uncooperative in the general program and did not take kindly to the suggestions made by Ellen G. White and others. Previous to 1901 Mrs. White was in Australia. She repeatedly wrote to Dr. Kellogg, asking that the Battle Creek Sanitarium devote some of its resources to establishing a medical institution there. This the doctor refused to do, but he and his brother each sent sizable contributions. These were returned with the comment that the prosperous sanitarium, established by the sacrifice of the believers in the early days, should help in establishing new institutions. The doctor countered by changing the articles of the charter to stipulate that the earnings of the institution could not be used outside of the State of Michigan. He boasted of having done this to prevent the church from dipping into the "till."
The doctor wanted to break down denominational barriers and to make the institution interdenominational. He also taught pantheism, a serious doctrinal heresy concerning the nature of God, which would eventually have led to spiritism. In time he succeeded in removing the control of the Battle Creek Sanitarium from the denomination. As I understand it, the denomination could have claimed the property but would have had to go to court, and it was recognized that without the genius and the name of the doctor the institution, which had grown so large, would have been difficult if not impossible to manage. In 1907 the doctor was disfellowshiped.
As a result of all this a reaction set in against the medical missionary program. "The baby was thrown out with the bath water," as someone remarked. The medical work received a deadly wound, which has never been fully healed. The right arm, which is the medical missionary work, and which is to break down prejudice, protect the church, and open new doors, was fractured and has remained in that state pretty much to the present.
What is the blueprint for our medical institutional work?
Small sanitariums are to be established in many places.—Medical Ministry, p. 327 (1905).
Small sanitariums should be established in connection with our larger schools, that the students may have opportunity to gain a knowledge of medical missionary work. This line of work is to be brought into our schools as part of the regular instruction.—Medical Ministry, p. 323.
Medical missionary work should have its representative in every place in connection with the establishment of our churches.—Ibid., p. 322 (1902).
There should be sanitariums near all our large cities. Advantage should be taken of the opportunities to purchase buildings in favorable locations, that the standard of truth may be planted in many places.—Ibid., p. 324.
We need a sanitarium and a school in the vicinity of New York City, and the longer the delay in the securing of these, the more difficult it will become. —Ibid., p. 308.
Plants should be established in various places all over the world. First one, and then another part of the vineyard is to be entered, until all has been cultivated.—Counsels on Health, p. 214.
Let forces be set at work to clear new ground, to establish new, living interests wherever an opening can be found.... It is a positive duty to go into regions beyond.—Ibid., p. 510.
How are we to relate ourselves as a denomination to this instruction? In 1910, when we had a world membership of 104,526, we had 22 sanitariums in the United States, while in 1950, forty years later, with a world membership of 1 million we had eighteen! But in the past decade the number has more than doubled numbering more than forty at present! To my mind this increase in the past few years is one of the great signs that God is leading His people and that the church is "tooling up" for the finishing of the work. The medical work is to play an increasingly important part in preparing the people for a reception of the three angels' messages.
I wish to tell you that soon there will be no work done in ministerial lines but medical missionary work.—/bid., p. 533.
It is possible for us to advance in medical institutional work, for we have the potential. We have a university training hundreds of physicians, dietitians, nurses, dentists, and paramedical personnel. We have more than 3,000 physician alumni, including many specialists, and we have strong base institutions. Will our doctors and other medical workers, our hospital administrators, sanitarium boards, conference committees and other church authorities, and our constituencies plan for a great advance along these lines?
I am instructed to tell our people that it will be necessary for them to give all that they can spare of their means for the establishment of sanitariums that will do the work which the Lord says must be done.—Medical Ministry, p. 328.
If the workers will humble their hearts before God, the blessing will come. They will all the while be receiving fresh, new ideas, and there will be a wonderful revival of gospel medical missionary work.—/bid., p. 257.
We shall see the medical missionary work broadening and deepening at every point of its progress, because of the inflowing of hundreds and thousands of streams, until the whole earth is covered as the waters cover the sea.—Ibid., p. 317.
May God bless the men who are leaders in the medical ministry in these closing days.