The Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists (CME) continued exploring all options to provide clinical experience for its student physicians. On March 26, 1913, the Board asked: CME president Wells A. Ruble, MD; John Burden; Daniel D. Comstock, MD; H. W. Lindsay; and F. M. Burg, to form a committee to determine the possibility and costs associated with opening an outpatient clinic in the City of Los Angeles. They also voted to ask the Sanitarium Association of Seventh-day Adventists of Southern California, to allow CME students to use its institutions.
The Board's efforts to increase and improve educational opportunities at CME complemented other adjustments to improve the institution's educational standards. On March 27, 1913, the Board voted to increase prerequisites for admission. To address the institution’s most urgent need, the next day the Board asked Drs. Ruble and Abbott to ascertain what additional clinical privileges might be arranged at the San Bernardino County Hospital.
On May 23, 1913, following a lengthy illness, the highly respected Board President George A. Irwin died. In response, on June 24, the Board unanimously adopted the following resolution: “In tender memory of our chairman and beloved fellow member, Elder G. A. Irwin, whose recent decease has left a vacancy in our board, we hereby sorrowfully recognize this break in our circle and we gratefully acknowledge the earnest, efficient and untiring service that our brother has rendered to this institution during the time of his connection with it….” The Board unanimously elected E. E Andross to be the new president of the Board.
Still struggling with its lack of outpatient facilities, the Board voted on August 16, 1913, to appoint a committee of three, to locate and open an outpatient clinic in Los Angeles. “We have completed arrangements for a dispensary in Los Angeles,” wrote Dr. Ruble to Dr. Edward H. Risley on September 12, 1913, “in what we are told by the Health Officers, the Nursing Commission, and the Board of Charities is the very best location in the city.” Located near the Santa Fe railway station, it was 27 feet by 63 feet. In order to make the dispensary a free clinic, the City of Los Angeles proposed to furnish all the supplies and provide a nurse.
Ruble reported that the fifth-year class would spend most of the year in Los Angeles, and the fourth-year class may be there the latter third of the year. “I have…made arrangements for our students to attend all of the clinics they are offering in the [Los Angeles] County Hospital. They are to have the same privileges as other students of medical schools in the city and you know they receive most of their clinical experience in the County Hospital there,” wrote Ruble. “Our students will be admitted to all surgical and medical clinics, and will have the advantage of the teaching from the best instructors who hold clinics there. I feel, myself, that we have advantages superior to the other schools to offer to our students, and there is no doubt but what we shall get better recognition when the time comes for another investigation.”
On September 29, 1913, CME launched its long-awaited Los Angeles outpatient clinic at 941 East First Street, one mile from the Los Angeles Civic Center. Within a year CME had increased its accommodations by erecting a small building behind the clinic for medical examinations and a classroom. But, from the start administration recognized the need for a hospital in connection with the clinic.
To emphasize increasing concerns over the monumental task of funding CME, the Board voted on October 22, 1913 to again seek broad denominational support: “Whereas the College of Medical Evangelists is engaged in the important work of training both young men and young women as missionary physicians for the great, needy fields beyond, and this work calls for the strongest and fullest support that can be given by the entire body of our people….”
Over the months, as the financial deficits of the institution became increasingly apparent and painful, some Board members questioned whether the denomination should have undertaken the founding of a medical school at all. The first comment questioning the future of CME appears in the Board Minutes of October 22, 1913: “Elder Knox felt that our finances are now beyond the grasp of the denomination; and asked, What is the future of Loma Linda?”
In response, A. G. Daniells stated that possibly the CME Board had made a mistake in going ahead and establishing a full medical school…. These discouraging words led to a serious study of modifying CME’s curriculum in order to reduce expenses. After much discussion, on October 26, 1913, the Board compared the costs of running a three-year school ($10,000) with the expenses of running a five-year school ($19,020), a figure which estimated the expenses of operating a 70-bed hospital.
To acknowledge the reality of financial difficulty, the Board then voted to drop the fourth and fifth year of the medical course.
But before the Board implemented this drastic decision, the discussion continued. F. M. Wilcox felt that instruction from CME’s co-founder, Mrs. Ellen G. White called for a full medical course. W. C. White thought there was an advantage in giving the full course to the church’s young people. Dr. Ruble spoke of the openings in Los Angeles for giving the fifth year of the medical course. Dr. Paulson called attention to the rocks in the stream which were met by the American Medical Missionary College in Battle Creek, Michigan.
To be continued…