To encourage and enhance the institution’s success, the Constituency of the Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists (CME) planned efforts to increase its students and patients. Even though the annual Constituency Meeting scheduled to be held on August 15, 1911 adjourned because of the lack of a quorum, an informal meeting called by the chair considered some subjects of importance, including the appointment of a publicity committee.
To promote the institution, the Committee on Plans recommended that CME inaugurate a well-planned and continuous publicity campaign, including the publication and judicious distribution of tracts and pamphlets, the sending out of lecturers, and frequent correspondence with educational leaders. They based the resolution on the perception that the rapid and encouraging development of CME was a promise of continued success. They believed that the institution’s value to the denomination and to the world corresponded with the understanding and appreciation of its work by church members around the world.
Furthermore, they voted to ask co-founder Ellen G. White to authorize the publication of a collection of her writings regarding the medical and educational work to be carried forward at Loma Linda. They also asked Business Manager John Burden to write a “brief but comprehensive” history of CME. The Board then appointed a committee of three to prepare and illustrate pamphlets which reported the work “now being done.” They also decided to supply ministers and physicians everywhere with printed information regarding the College and to request that they promote the institution’s preparations “to give thorough and practical education in medical and evangelistic lines.”
The committee recommended that CME President Wells A. Ruble, MD, supply short articles regarding CME to the Union Conference papers nationwide. The next day, August 22, the Constituency decided to send G.A. Irwin, J. A. Corliss, and Dr. Alfred Shryock to visit camp meetings in the western United States to promote CME.
CME made serious, ongoing efforts to raise capital. In order to solicit support for the new laboratory the institution called a meeting of faculty, the family of employees, and local friends of the institution. The group of 125 pledged $2,937.50.
In the late fall of 1911, Nathan P. Colwell, MD, secretary of the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association, visited CME to make an assessment of it’s standing with the AMA. He had been authorized to examine and rate medical schools. He seemed pleased with CME’s progress in teaching basic sciences, yet could not make a report because the school was conducting classes in but three of its five-year curriculum.
Colwell then asked, “Why are you starting a new school when there are already a 150 medical schools in the United States? Don’t you know we are endeavoring to reduce the number of such colleges by cutting out the small schools that are not well prepared to give medical training?”
Dr. Ruble responded with CME’s objectives for the new school: “To prepare medical missionaries to go into foreign lands to preach the gospel; To provide a school where we can educate our own Seventh-day Adventist young people for our own work; To give to young people a training in the special lines of treatment which we pursue in our denominational institutions that are scattered throughout the world; To throw around our students an influence tending to keep them true to their determination to prepare themselves for medical missionary work; To provide a first class medical college….”
Colwell expressed his full sympathy and said that he saw the need for such a school. After examining the school and conferring with its faculty, he met with John Burden, the co-founder and business manager of the institution. Funding seemed to be his greatest concern. “What is the financial backing of this school?"
Burden (after whom Burden Hall was later named) replied that the church's 110,000 members (now more than 20,000,000) made up any deficits in its mission and educational programs. He further explained how church members had successfully supported various financial projects which had seemed, to all human appearances, doomed to failure. Burden then described the unique physical, mental, and spiritual emphasis of the church's international missionary program and said, “Will you tell me, doctor, to what school can we send our young people to equip them for this world mission work with this threefold preparation?"
Colwell replied, “There is no such school in existence.” He would know.
Burden then asked, “Do you propose to destroy this little medical school...that is in no way competing with your endowed medical colleges, but is our only means for supplying our missionary program?”
Colwell answered indirectly: “Mr. Burden, when I took my medical course it was to become a medical missionary.... The medical got me, and the mission lost out.”
Burden not only co-founded the Sanitarium, but also played a vital role in establishing the School of Medicine. From that day on Colwell befriended CME. He understood its purposes and appreciated its objectives.