Medical Missionary Department

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · May 27, 1909

Medical Missionary Department

Second Meeting

May 16, 8 A. M.

Dr. A. C. Selmon called the meeting to order. The interest in the medical missionary work was shown in the fact that the room assigned for this department was filled to overflowing. In response to invitation by Dr. Kress, the meetings will be held in the gymnasium of the Sanitarium hereafter. The following committees were announced:—

On Program: J. R. Leadsworth, A. W. Simmons, Olive Ingersoll.

On reports for the Bulletin: G. H. Heald, C. C. Crisler, C. O. Warner.

To Select a Committee on Resolutions and Plans: R. S. Ingersoll, R. H. Habenicht, W. A. Ruble.

The topic for the day was “Medical Missionary Work in Spanish-Speaking Countries.” Dr. A. A. John read an inspiring paper.

He emphasized the importance of the medical missionary work—preaching and healing—as one work, and gave instances illustrative of how the medical work opened the way for the gospel in the Mexican field.

The Spanish-speaking countries need medical missionary training-schools where the principles of rational therapeutics can be emphasized and properly demonstrated in connection with the teaching of gospel truth.

Elder G. W. Caviness, of Mexico, discussing Dr. John’s paper, referred to the beginning of the medical missionary work in Mexico, and to the various vicissitudes through which this work had passed.

Among the most pressing needs to-day are medical mission and treatment-rooms in Mexico City, also a health retreat in a little lower altitude, where workers and others can go to recuperate from the effects of the trying climate they find in many parts of the country.

Dr. Habenicht, speaking for Argentina, said that there is also very great need for medical missionaries in this field. It is difficult to obtain legal recognition, and good physicians are very scarce. There are places having three or four thousand inhabitants which are often without one physician.

Third Meeting

May 17, 8 A. M.

The third meeting of the Medical Missionary Department was held in the Scandinavian tent, with Dr. A. C. Selmon in the chair.

The discussion of yesterday’s paper, “Medical Missionary Work in Mexico,” was continued by Elder George W. Reaser, director of the Mexican field, as follows:—

No field in the world offers better opportunity for medical missionary work than Mexico. The early experience of Dr. Lillis Wood (now Starr) in the city of Guadalajara proves this. Although Guadalajara was a fanatical center, within a few weeks after the doctor had opened treatment-rooms she was overwhelmed with the applications from all classes for healing. Had assistance been given her, and had the large fund provided at that time for medical work been used in establishing treatment-rooms in half a dozen large cities in Mexico, there would have been numbers of influential centers radiating truth in different parts of the republic. We must use our failures of the past only as mighty counselors for the future. If we have made a mistake in dealing with our physicians in Mexico in the past, it was in not giving the same support and encouragement to them as to our evangelists. We desire to do everything in our power for the encouragement and support of our medical missionary workers in Mexico in the future.

An excellent sanitarium near Mexico City is placed at our disposal, and we are anxious to secure a consecrated physician to take charge of this institution, and also to connect with treatment-rooms in the capital, and thus revive and place this department of our work on a sure footing in the republic.

In the absence of Dr. G. K. Abbott, Dr. Olive Ingersoll gave a talk on “Preparation for Medical Missionary Work.” She referred to experiences in India, where nurses said, “I did not come out here to care for babies, but to do missionary work,” or, “I did not come out here to do housework, but missionary work.”

This raises the question, What is missionary work? The answer comes in the study of the life of Christ. The first thing that strikes one in his life is the long period of preparation for a comparatively short period of work.

Dr. W. B. Monsen mentioned consecration to God as first in importance in preparation for medical missionary work.

Dr. Ida Herr-Nelson spoke of the necessity

of thoroughness and of having a special training in rational treatments, such as is not obtained in the regular schools.

Dr. W. A. Ruble said that the important point in the mind of the committee in assigning this topic had not been fully touched. Shall we qualify in the legally recognized schools? or is it possible and advantageous to make preparation in a special missionary training-school, such as that at Loma Linda?

Dr. J. R. Leadsworth said that the missionary who gets in the ordinary college some very hard technical work, and then at the close takes a little veneering of Bible, finds it requires a real effort to do missionary work with his patients. In the school at Loma Linda there are some who are probably as well qualified as very many physicians to do medical work. These as a part of their required course go out and hold Bible readings, visit the sick, and do medical evangelistic work, and to these it is not afterward an effort to do missionary work with their patients.

Fourth Meeting

May 18, 8 A. M.

Dr. J. R. Leadsworth was asked to lead the meeting, and announced the continuance of yesterday’s topic, “The Preparation for Medical Missionary Work.”

Elder J. A. Burden said, in brief: When the gospel is received in its fulness, it is a remedy for all the ills that sin has brought. We have been instructed that every member of the church should take hold of medical missionary work. Then the preparation for medical missionary work must be as varied as the ability of the worker to labor would indicate, from the simple treatments and instruction that can be given by the laity to the more full instruction given by the nurse and competent physician. As the work to be done is “gospel medical missionary evangelistic work,” the character of the preparation is indicated. The world needs to-day what it needed nineteen hundred years ago, a revelation of God as revealed in the life of Christ. The work done in our sanitariums is but a small part compared with that, which should be done in the homes of the people. Light has come that qualified medical missionary evangelists should go through our cities and villages laboring as Christ labored for the restoration of the people physically and spiritually, and that those who do this work will reap a rich harvest of souls both from the higher and lower classes.

Elder Burden’s talk was followed by a paper on “Medical Missionary Work for the Colored People,” prepared by Dr. Lottie Isbell-Blake, of Huntsville, Ala., and read by D. E. Blake.

Among other things this paper spoke of some of the difficulties encountered in the early establishment of the work, principal of which were poor equipment and prejudice. The first effort, though unsuccessful in some ways, had a good educational influence, and won friends. Activities now under way for the strengthening of the work are:—

1. To install in a building which is already on the premises at the Oakwood school, Huntsville, treatment-rooms for charity patients.

2. In connection with these treatment-rooms a corps of visiting nurses, who shall seek out and minister to those in need of help, and instruct the people. A trained nurse should be accompanied on her visiting tours by one or more pupil nurses, equipped with material for giving treatment in homes.

3. A closed conveyance, which may be used by the nurses for visiting, as well as to carry supplies of clothing and literature for distribution. When occasion demands, it may serve as an ambulance.

4. It is greatly desired to maintain beds for surgical cases, the same to be supported by donations from individuals who may be interested in such work. The advantages of these endowed beds would, of course, extend also to the poor of our own denomination.