By 1919, the Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists operated the largest and by far best-equipped dispensary in the City of Los Angeles. According to Percy T. Magan, MD, dean of the Los Angeles division, it scheduled more than 18,000 patient visits in 1918, about one third more than the oldest dispensary in town.
And he was cheered by the general feeling of confidence and brotherly love expressed toward the White Memorial Hospital by the world church: “I don't know that I have ever spent a year of my life in any institution when I have had greater reason to believe that our General [Conference] Brethren in Washington [DC] and our local men were really heart and soul with us, and doing all they could do to help us and more than we dreamed they could or would do,… I feel this is a matter which ought to give all of us a great deal of thankfulness—to our God and to our brethren.”
The old C rating by the American Medical Association had turned many potential students from CME. Magan also proposed that CME increase the percentage of female students. He told of his wife’s class at the American Medical Missionary College in Battle Creek, Michigan, with 14 women and 11 men. “At the present time, I think we have only five women students in our school here. I believe that a serious effort ought to be made to interest young women in our medical work for our homeland and foreign fields,” he said. (In 1919 and 1920, CME admitted no women. Then, admissions for women increased over the years until 2007 and 2008, when the Loma Linda University School of Medicine enrollment included 50.56 and 51.32% women.)
Then A. G. Daniells, President of the General Conference, praised God as he reflected on the institution’s increased rating with the AMA to the B grade: “We do not indulge very much in praise of each other or throwing bouquets to persons, but I feared perhaps I did not give enough glory to God, because it does seem to me, brethren that the Lord has taken hold and wrought changes here Himself in this situation. I know plenty of men who could not believe that this rating would be raised and they were sincere men and thoughtful men, men of good judgment in things, preachers, and doctors who put it right down hard and flat to me with a thump on the table that we would never get this thing raised. We were down in a hole and would never get out of it. They believed it and were sincere and they didn't wish the institution ill either. A great many of us had grave fears and anxiety about it. The thing seemed stupendous. It seemed impossible when you looked at it from one standpoint. But it swung around and we are there. Now away back behind all the scenes of perplexity and strife, many humble people were on their knees praying and I suppose there is just as much credit due them as to those who went down to Washington and met the medical men. It is the people who get down and fight these battles out in the dark and get victory through faith and prayer. I guess we are all in it. It’s the people who gave their money. But to God belongs the glory and the power for working this change and putting it where it is.”
Observers attributed much of the credit for changing the rating to former associations of Drs. Magan and Hare with people who eventually came to power in the arena of medical education in America. “I do not think I shall ever forget as long as I live one day in Washington and one in Chicago, when men, big men medically, big men of the world who had for years told us, ‘You never can succeed, you cannot put that thing over,’ – when these men kindly and quietly and seemingly with deep feeling in their hearts, told us, ‘We have come to believe that your cause is right and we are going to help you.’ I believe, brethren, with all my heart that the angels of God heard prayers uttered all over the land and turned those men’s hearts in our time of need. I will never to my dying day believe that it was anything else but the mighty power of God that turned these men’s hearts. I think you have heard me tell how one of those men had been labored with for hours, how that man kindly, almost tenderly turned toward Doctor Hare and myself and gave us his hand and said, ‘I will do everything in my power to help you.’ I believe that was the power of the almighty God…”
Dr. Magan not only acknowledged God’s intervention, but also the faith of the students. “It has taken a great deal of faith on [the part of the students] to stay in school. I will never forget the afternoon I received the wire saying that the students had gotten together and said they would stick by the school even though it meant the trenches, instead of going to a worldly school. I thought then God was going to honor the faith of these poor lads. They turned their back on all the favors other schools could give as far as military exemption was concerned. When I got that wire I knew in my soul that God would not desert us but would honor those young men and see them through…”
To be continued…