The Battle Creek Sanitarium
This institution was incorporated in 1866, and it is therefore nearly thirty-six years since it began its work. It is but reasonable to inquire what has been accomplished since its organization. If we turn to figures for an answer to our question, we find the number of people visiting the Sanitarium increasing every year. The years from 1866 to 1897 show an aggregate of 25,755 patients, of whom 3,785 received treatment free or nearly so. The gain during the last five years has been much more rapid. The number of patients in 1900 was 3,248, and in 1901 nearly 5,000, taxing the facilities of the institution to the utmost, especially during the summer, when the monthly register ranged from 650 to 1,050. The roll of those receiving treatment free or nearly so, averaged one hundred and sixty-five a month throughout the year. This brings the aggregate up to between forty thousand and fifty thousand. Surgical work did not occupy a prominent place in the work of the institution for many years, nor has there ever been an effort made to constitute it a specialty, though a large number of important operations have been performed, the policy of the work being to resort to it only when other means were unavailing. Most of the surgical work has been done since 1888, when the then new Hospital afforded increased facilities for such work. Five thousand two hundred and sixteen operations have been performed, of which more than one half have been free. From 1891 to 1899 a number of beds were supported by individuals and conferences for the treatment of the very poor, the donors furnishing enough to meet board and room, and the Sanitarium supplying medical care and treatment. After a time these beds numbered fourteen or fifteen, and as many as fifty patients were received in the course of a year. This plan was, however, abandoned in 1899, for various reasons, though there was thereby no lessening of the charitable work of the institution, which continued until the Hospital was burned last February. These figures mean that thousands of sick people have received more or less physical benefit from their stay at the Sanitarium; that thousands whose lives would have been cut short in the midst of their usefulness have been restored to life, and that thousands of others have been lifted from invalidism into lives of happy activity. But this is not all, and not the greatest part. It means that all these have come more or less closely into contact with the truths for these last days, and have had an opportunity to learn of them. It means that they have had the principles of physical righteousness daily and hourly set before them, in many cases for weeks and months. At the table, the medical offices, at parlor lectures, in schools of health, in the cooking school, in the gymnasium, in the dress parlors, where hundreds of women have gone to have the shackles of custom stricken off, the better way of living has been presented, not simply from the standpoint of selfish interest, but from the highest of all considerations, that of man's relation to God and of his hope of eternal life. In all these places, physicians, nurses, and other workers have kept constantly before the patients the fact that God is the only healer, that science and the wisdom of men and the multiplicity of appliances are nothing except as divine power works through the instrumentalities used for the restoration of sin-sick bodies, and that the power that can heal the body is waiting to save the whole man, soul as well as body. Many a tired, discouraged soul has here found its way back to God, and some who have delayed too long to find bodily cure have found peace in God, and have blessed the day when they came to the Sanitarium. Have all these definitely accepted present truth? — No, not even a large proportion; but all have had opportunity. In many instances they know what it is, and when the final test comes, they cannot plead ignorance. Not all who have fully accepted the message have stood as conspicuously before the people as did Mrs. S. M. I. Henry, but there are others more or less actively engaged in the Lord's work whose first knowledge of the truth came to them through the same instrumentality. As for those who have recognized the divine origin of the health principles, and have committed themselves to them, and are living and working in harmony with them, they are many, and from all walks in life, from the highest to the lowest, and they have exerted their influence in behalf of as much of the truth as they have recognized. We leave such with him who is able to lead into all truth those whom he recognizes as his own. At no time since the early days of the institution has it been without a chaplain, and sometimes it has had two, who have conducted daily worship with both helpers and patients, services at the beginning and close of the Sabbath and on the Sabbath day, besides the mid-week prayer meetings, and for a number of these later years the noonday prayer meeting at the Hospital. The Sabbath school has met regularly since the organization of the Sanitarium family. This is attended not alone by helpers, but by patients, the nurses and physicians having endeavored to encourage their patients to attend it. For years the chaplain or some of his assistants have given Bible studies each week, at the request of interested patients. The large rack near the mail window was kept filled with tracts, and many thousands of pages have been distributed each year through this medium, not thrust into indifferent hands, but taken by those who, from interest or curiosity, wished to investigate. By many the religious opportunities of the house are greatly appreciated. Letters come from former patients, speaking of the privileges enjoyed and the helpful influences received. ‘I am a better woman for having known you. Besides the physical help given me, you and your co-workers have helped me to a higher estimate of life. I can never go back to my old ways again. I thank God for what the Sanitarium has done for me.’ Thus writes one to her physician or nurse. ‘Life means a different thing to me,’ says another. ‘I am holding on to what I learned there, and shall always have a good word to speak for your work and the workers.’ As we turn over some of the records of the past few years especially, we see mention of victims of the liquor habit, the morphine and the tobacco habit, to say nothing of wrong habits of life in many other ways, who, after trying other means in vain, have here found freedom from their slavery, and in most of these cases they have recognized the divine power that through the treatments and care has operated for their healing, and to which they must look for strength to stand hereafter. Some time ago a young man suffering with consumption was brought to the Sanitarium. His mother, a worldly woman, but devoted to her son, expressly insisted that he should not be approached on the subject of his spiritual condition. His nurse, an earnest Christian, who could not bear to see a soul slipping out of reach without an effort to save him, had asked to pray with him, but met with a curt refusal from the patient himself. But night after night when he had finished his treatments, and was about to lie down in the room to obtain what rest he could while watching, he bowed by the side of his cot and pleaded silently with God for the soul of his patient. The young man went home to die, and the nurse was sent with him. His mother asked for another nurse, but the patient urged that this one should accompany14him. One evening as the nurse knelt as usual, to his surprise the young man asked him to pray aloud. He did so, not only that night, but every night afterward. As the end drew near, the patient said one evening as the hour of prayer came, “Pray for me to-night, and pray harder than you ever did before.” A few days later he requested the family to gather to see him. He gave a message to each, and pleaded with them to become reconciled to Christ. He pleaded especially with his mother, that she would accept Christ, and meet him in the better life. And this is not an isolated instance by any means. Talk of mission fields, when souls come right to our doors because they want spiritual help! Talk of scattering the truth, when people congregate by the thousands every year within the sound of it! Tell of efforts to reach the various classes, when men and women of all walks in life come and go; when ministers, lawyers, politicians, state officials, representatives of army and navy, physicians, lecturers, missionaries from all over the world, natives of many countries and representatives of many races, gather here of their own accord, knowing that we are a peculiar people. May God forgive us that we have not better improved our opportunities, and help us to work in the future as we never have done in the past. Into this broad field of activity the fire came last February, sweeping away the most important of our buildings and equipment. Necessarily it checked the work. From a financial point of view it seemed most disastrous. But the fact that the shock set in vibration chords of sympathy all over this country, and even in foreign lands, showed, as nothing else could, how far the influence of the Sanitarium extended. The disaster and the experiences that followed served to demonstrate the real work the institution had been doing, and its motives, as an uninterrupted course of prosperity would not have done. Meantime the buildings that remained have been fitted temporarily but conveniently for their work, and are filled to their capacity, and the cottages are filling up also. The cool weather has doubtless prevented a rush which would overtax the present capacity, but nearly two hundred and fifty patients are cared for in the present buildings. The charitable work was necessarily largely interrupted, but only temporarily, as some of the buildings now in use will be available later for that purpose, and will give larger opportunities in that direction. Meantime the new building is steadily rising out of the ashes of the old, and with God's blessing on the work and the workers, will do a grand work in the closing of the gospel message yet to go to all kindreds and tongues and peoples.