Special Mention by Percy T. Magan

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Sep 21, 1916

Special Mention

By Percy T. Magan

The Need of the Ellen G. White Memorial Hospital

We are living in the time of the end. War and famine, fire and flood, pestilence and crime, are abroad in the earth in greater degree than ever before. More people were stricken and died from the excessive heat this summer than at any other one time in the history of the country. The epidemic of infantile paralysis in the Eastern States has been unprecedented.

The Lord told his people in ancient times that if they failed to obey his law and to fear his glorious name, “then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful, and the plagues of thy seed, even great plagues, and of long continuance, and sore sicknesses.” Deut. 28: 58, 59.

We, too, are living in an age when men and women have forgotten God, and have made void his holy law. Therefore it is meet that we should not overlook the hand of Heaven in the colossal visitations of war and famine, fire, flood, and plague, which are devastating mankind. God himself has written: “I have sent among you the pestilence: . . . yet have ye not returned unto me, said the Lord. . . . Therefore . . . prepare to meet thy God, O Israel.” Amos 4: 10-12.

For such a time as this are Seventh-day Adventists come to the kingdom. To us the world is a vast lazar house, in which Christ has called us to heal the sick, the afflicted, and those who are tortured with evil spirits. Like the Master, we must turn away none who come to us for healing. Of him it is written: “Many of those who came to Christ for help had brought disease upon themselves; yet he did not refuse to heal them.” Our course must be the same. In a peculiar way, the woes of the sons and daughters of men must appeal to every true medical missionary, and special training is necessary in order that this may be so. Our hearts are to be touched, as was the heart of Christ, and of him we read in “The Desire of Ages,” the following beautiful words:—

“Christ feels the woes of every sufferer. When evil spirits rend a human frame, Christ feels the curse. When fever is burning up the life current, he feels the agony. And he is just as willing to heal the sick now as when he was personally on earth. Christ’s servants are his representatives, the channels for his working. He desires through them to exercise his healing power.”—Trade Edition, p. 987.

“The sufferings of every man are the sufferings of God’s child, and those who reach out no helping hand to their perishing fellow beings provoke his righteous anger.”—Id., p. 990.

It is all-important that these sentiments be burned into the lives and hearts of our young men and women who are in training for medical missionary work. Into the warp and woof of the fabric of their medical education, these elevating and ennobling principles must be woven. The purest example of self-sacrificing devotion to the world’s mighty need must now shine forth in the lives of our medical workers. Their ideals must be as much higher than those of the medical men and women of the world as heaven is higher than earth.

It is this which makes it absolutely necessary to train our physicians and our medical evangelistic workers in our own school, under the guiding light of the Spirit of prophecy, and under sanctified and self-sacrificing teachers. Only in this way can the blessed blending of the spiritual with the physical healing be reproduced in our workers according to the divine pattern. Over and over again we have been admonished to shun a medical education which is “given by physicians who reject the authority of Christ, the greatest physician who ever lived upon the earth.”—Medical Evangelistic Library, No. 1, p. 6.

From this it will be clear that there is a religious side of the medical training which cannot be had in the schools of the world, but which is vital in the preparation of young men and women for the work of the Lord. Moreover, it is not only true that there is a spiritual training which cannot be had, but there are influences in the worldly schools which, from the standpoint of training for self-denying missionary service, are exceedingly detrimental.

We have been told over and over again that the last work to close among Seventh-day Adventist people will be the medical missionary work. Is it not highly significant that in the days during which almost all the world is reeling beneath a veritable “pentecost of calamity,” when more men are being wounded and maimed and tortured on the battle fields and battleships than ever before in the history of the world, God should be calling for advanced moves in medical missionary work? We should not lose sight of this thought.

Now, according to the requirements of the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association, every medical college must have a hospital of its own, so located in a large city that an abundance of clinical material can be available. This is a right and reasonable requirement, and one with which we as a people should be fully in harmony. One of the most important things in medical training is to make that training practical. The world wants medical people who can do things. The students must have abundant opportunity not only to read what books have to say about disease, but to see it in all its variable forms and phases, and to learn to recognize and treat it under the supervision of competent instructors. The ordinary sanitarium practice does not in any sense meet the requirement. There must be plenty of accident and emergency cases; infectious cases, such as smallpox, typhoid, scarlet fever, and measles; diseases of the heart and lungs, such as pneumonia, pleurisy, pericarditis, and acute dilatation of the heart; the poisons of occupational diseases; all manner of children’s diseases, especially those bred by poverty, poor housing, and a lack of sanitation and hygiene. Such a variety as this can be obtained only in the poorer sections of a large city.

In connection with a hospital and dispensary like this, there are also always a large number of “out calls” to be made. These are medical visits to the homes of the very poorest people, where conditions are bad, and where the student finds a state of affairs, to some extent at least, bordering upon what he will find in a foreign field. This gives a splendid opportunity for practice with but few facilities, and for learning to better conditions through practical ingenuity. It is the training which all those who are going to foreign fields greatly need.

The foregoing furnishes the reasons for the building of The Ellen G. White Memorial Hospital in the city of Los Angeles, to be operated in connection with the College of Medical Evangelists.

PERCY T. MAGAN, M. D.