The counsels of Ellen G. White and the unique but successful operation of Seventh-day Adventist Sanitariums around the world obviously influenced the curriculum of the Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists. The institution’s bulletin emphasized this fact: “The Medical Course extends over five years of thirty-six weeks each. While the medical course as ordinarily given in medical schools lasts only four years, it is manifestly impossible to crowd into this time all that should be given in medical and scientific lines together with Bible, evangelistic training, hydrotherapy, and dietetics and also provide for a practical experience in the diagnosis and treatment of disease under competent instruction as called for by the curriculum.”
Practical experience included: treatment rooms, Sanitarium laboratory, pharmacy, care of the sick, diagnosis and prescribing, and operating room. Because electric lights had not yet been perfected, the first operating room on the third floor of the Sanitarium had inadequate lighting. Although gas lights were the brightest, fear of explosion from the type of anesthetics used at that time precluded their use. Therefore, surgeons scheduled their operations during the brightest time of the day and illuminated their surgeries by sunlight from nearby windows.
The next year CME added to its curriculum pathology, surgery, pediatrics, diseases of the eye, ear, nose, and throat, genito-urinary diseases, mental, nervous diseases, dermatology, electrotherapy, hygiene, and medical jurisprudence. To its practical experience it added anesthesia and operating assistance, autopsies and clinical microscopy, electro and radiotherapy.
Board minutes provide a time capsule of the early CME and its activities. The financial statement for June 30, 1910, included bees worth $170, a provision for a railroad switch for $220, and ministry and object lesson supplies worth $69.40. A report to the Board acknowledged that Loma Linda personnel had pledged $3,000 to the building fund. The Board authorized faculty who traveled by train to purchase "tourist sleeper rates."
Evidence documents the existence of two bowling alleys. One was built inside the Assembly Hall that the former owners called the Recreation Hall. The other stood on the hill north of the Assembly Hall. Seven years after the purchase of Loma Linda (1912), the Board voted to turn the bowling alley at the back of the Assembly Hall into a cooking school! Meanwhile, CME’s second school year opened September 29, 1910. The institution limited admission to the Nurses’ Course to those who had completed nine grades.
President Ruble praised the faculty and students, and acknowledged the institution’s growing pains: “All the available room is being used and the ingenuity of the instructors and managers drawn upon to the utmost in providing adequate instruction for the students with the facilities at hand. A better, more earnest and devoted class of young people could not be found….”
As large numbers of unexpected students taxed the institution’s resources, President Ruble asked: “Shall we disappoint them or as a people furnish that which is necessary? The call now is for means…. With all these trying conditions the students are doing excellent work and never a word of complaint is heard. They recognize that this is the Lord’s work and His school and are willing to accept what He sends. We trust, though, that His people will recognize the responsibility resting upon them in establishing this school and come to our aid in providing such equipment as is absolutely necessary for the proper conduct of our work.”
Edmund C. Jaeger, one of the outstanding student physicians, injured himself in a bicycle accident one foggy morning, as he rode over Pigeon Pass. Happy that he felt prepared to take his histology examination, Jaeger rode with both hands off the handlebars, whistling as he went. When his front wheel hit a rock, the bike spun around and Jaeger fell off, badly injuring one of his wrists.
After making his way to Loma Linda, Sanitarium personnel examined and bandaged his arm. They told Jaeger that he would be unable to take notes for at least three weeks because of his injury. His wrist would be sore and stiff. And it was sore. He couldn’t even lift his fingers to hold a pencil.
Dr. Ruble, the president of CME and a proponent of hydrotherapy, said, “Don’t you believe them! You can be taking notes in three days.” So bath attendants had Jaeger soak his wrist in a pail of hot water, as hot as he could stand it, for three minutes, and then in a pail of icy cold water for one minute—hot and cold, hot and cold, hot and cold. Jaeger started taking notes in three days.