The Chicago Part of Our Medical School Work
By David Paulson
WHEN our board decided to establish a medical missionary college, there were many perplexing questions to be answered at once. The most important of these were, first, Is the necessary number of competent teachers available? and second, Can we enlist the interest of a sufficient number of young men and women who possess the necessary educational and missionary qualifications to begin a four years’ course of training in a school that has no graduates, and consequently no record or standing among the medical profession? It would not have been surprising if a large number of medical men had treated this effort with contempt, but we have been happily surprised to find that, with scarcely an exception the best men in the medical profession have regarded this enterprise favorably, and a number of the very ablest physicians not only at the beginning, but since then, have volunteered to assist us in our educational work. Dr. Bayard Holmes, one of Chicago’s leading surgeons, has given instruction in his specialty each year since the school was organized. Dr. Sarah Hackett Stevenson, a prominent medical educator in this city, has for several years given our classes most valuable lectures. Dr. Walls, who is at present secretary of the Chicago Medical Society, has for the last four years been one of our regular instructors, and has taken a deep interest in the work of our medical school. One or two other medical men have given short courses upon subjects which they were specially qualified to present. Our students have the same opportunities as those of other schools to attend the valuable clinical lectures and demonstrations that are daily given at the great Cook County Hospital. As we have three well-patronized medical missionary dispensaries of our own, our students have unusually favorable advantages to study thoroughly the various and complicated manifestations of disease, and to learn the best methods of dealing with them. Each of our students takes special interest in some particular patient in our hospital. He notes carefully the prescriptions that are made by our physicians, and critically observes the result. If the case demands it, he makes many critical tests to determine accurately the exact nature of the disease, at the same time seeking to take a spiritual interest in the patient. As a result of such work, some have been converted. In addition to these general medical opportunities, regular classes are conducted by our physicians, from three to five hours daily, covering all the different kinds of medical work that are taken up in the best medical schools, and in addition, placing special emphasis upon rational methods of treating disease. To show that our students have attained to a high medical standard in their training, it is only necessary to state that, with a very few exceptions, they have satisfactorily passed the State medical examinations, even in those States where such examinations are the most rigid and severe. The development of this great enterprise has not been accomplished without encountering perplexing difficulties, but one by one these have been surmounted. Our school, after a most rigid investigation, was admitted into the American Association of Medical Colleges, and there has been no time in the history of the school when it was prepared to do such thorough and efficient work as it will be able to do the coming year. Nearly forty earnest, consecrated, well-educated young men and women could be admitted at the beginning of the next school year. Even ordinary professional medical work is taxing13and trying, and the average physician’s life is not a very long one; but genuine medical missionary work is particularly taxing and trying. The medical missionary is in continual contact with not only the physical ills and ailments of humanity, but with their moral deformities. To deal with the latter requires greater skill and wisdom than to deal with the sick former. The man or woman who is graduated from our school, who is qualified to bear responsibilities, will soon be loaded down with hundreds of duties that the average physician never expects to assume; and while thus weighed down, like a cart beneath the sheaves, unless the Lord specially preserves him and gives him more than ordinary strength, he will soon pour out his life upon the altar of service. For this reason, only those should begin a course of medical training who have some definite indication that they are being called by the Lord. What the world needs is not professional missionaries, but men and women who have been baptized with the missionary spirit for service.