Chartered December 9, 1909, as part of the College of Medical Evangelists, the infant medical school could not have been born into a colder legal climate. In 1910 the Abraham Flexner Report, financed by the Carnegie Foundation, began closing scores of inadequate medical schools. New strict accreditation procedures graded each surviving school, and those that did not soon measure up were closed also. Administrators were told it would be impossible for a new, poorly equipped, church-related school of medicine to measure up to these strict standards.
"In 1910 few Seventh-day Adventists comprehended what was happening in medical education in the United States. They saw little need to pour money into the construction of classrooms, laboratories, and hospitals. Church leaders knew of many physicians who, by taking short courses, had received the M.D. degree. Furthermore, it had been possible for a young man to be trained in medicine by any physician who would act as his preceptor. Some argued that the young people should take short courses in medical evangelism, as they did in ministerial training, to prepare them for foreign-mission service.
"Therefore, when high standards of training were suddenly demanded, and when adequate laboratories and hospitals were declared essential for CME, leaders in the North American Division [of the Church] balked at appropriating the funds called for to carry on a medical college."1
In the spring of 1910, A. G. Daniells, president of the General Conference, was on his way to Loma Linda for its incorporation meeting. Concerned that John Burden would commit the church to an overwhelming financial obligation, Pastor Daniells, with Professor Homer Salisbury, secretary of education for the General Conference, stopped in Chicago to see Nathan P. Colwell, M.D., secretary of the AMA Council on Medical Education. Colwell had been authorized to examine and rate medical schools and to enforce AMA requirements.
Hoping not to prejudice Colwell against Loma Linda, the two men identified themselves by name only, deliberately saying nothing about Loma Linda. They did not want to jeopardize an AMA-accredited denominational medical school if one should be launched. They simply asked how much it would cost to establish an acceptable medical college. Colwell outlined the requirements: a large campus; library; pharmacology and pathology laboratories; classrooms; a one-hundred-bed hospital in a poverty-stricken section of some city, to be used for clinical experience; and many specialists in each branch of medicine. In addition, they would need strong financial backing.
The two men thanked Colwell and started to leave when he stood and pointed at Daniells saying, "And you tell those people at Loma Linda...."
"What makes you think we are from Loma Linda?" Daniells asked.
"Because," answered Colwell, "no one but you Adventists are so foolish as to think you can build and maintain a medical college without money!"
"Well, Dr. Colwell, suppose we put it on anyway?" asked Daniells.
"You put it on," Colwell snapped back, "and we will put it off. We are not going to have any more of these one-horse medical schools in this country."2
The American Medical Association eventually closed 84 schools of medicine. On May 11, 1910, the men at Loma Linda "put it on anyway," with a new charter consolidating the Sanitarium and the College. Two years after its incorporation, Colwell visited CME, apparently to "put it off," or at least to make a preliminary assessment of its standing with the AMA. After examining the school and conferring with its faculty, he was taken to John Burden, the institution's business manager.
His greatest concern seemed to be funding. "What is the financial backing of this school?" asked Colwell. Burden replied that the church's 110,000 members made up any deficits in the church's mission and educational programs.
"I gave him an idea of the yearly financial budget of the denomination for its world work, which seemed to be quite a surprise to him," Burden later said. He further explained how the 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."
Burden 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's answer was indirect. "Mr. Burden, when I took my medical course it was to become a medical missionary.... The medical got me, and the mission lost out." From that day on Colwell was a friend to CME. He understood its purposes, appreciated its objectives, and did all he could each year to help it achieve advanced rating.3 But the school was not without setbacks and opposition.
In 1916, two years after the first class was graduated from the medical school, a noted midwestern medical educator, writing to Dr. Percy T. Magan said, "On my way home...I happened to run across one of the most prominent and influential members on [the AMA's Council on] Medical Education. He incidentally mentioned to me that the status of Loma Linda was up before the committee at this time. Remarks which he made more than justified me in reiterating what I said to you in my former letter, that the future of the Loma Linda medical school is absolutely hopeless. The medical profession will not tolerate such a thing as a medical college under sectarian control.... A medical school to meet the ideas of the medical profession must be purely scientific, standing apart from theological or sectarian control or interests. I am as certain as I am alive that the Loma Linda Sanitarium will never get any higher recognition than it gets now....
"I am writing you these facts because I feel if you were convinced that I am right you would hesitate to ask poor men and women who have barely sufficient to supply themselves with the necessaries of life and seldom are able to indulge in the smallest luxuries, to invest their hard earnings in an enterprise that has no future."4
Nevertheless, the School and church administrators chose to ignore this voice of doom. After 12 years of efforts by the Loma Linda administrators and AMA councilmen, the prayers and financial sacrifices of many were blessed, and on November 14, 1922, the School of Medicine was awarded an "A" grade. The School of Medicine of CME (Loma Linda University as of 1961) has now graduated more physicians who have become medical missionaries than has any other school of medicine in the world.
Facilities Expanded
In order to provide clinical experience for the medical students, facilities were opened in Los Angeles on September 29, 1913. Five years later, on April 21, 1918, CME dedicated its Ellen G. White Memorial Hospital (now the White Memorial Medical Center). In 1961 the College of Medical Evangelists--then, a consortium of several colleges, schools, and professional curriculums--became Loma Linda University. Its School of Medicine and School of Nursing each were located on two campuses at the time: Los Angeles (at the White Memorial Hospital) and Loma Linda. In 1962 the trustees voted to consolidate the two campuses in Loma Linda. This made it necessary to expand greatly the facilities for the School of Medicine and the School of Nursing and to build a hospital/teaching/research facility--the Loma Linda University Medical Center.
A School of Dentistry?
In 1939 Herbert G. Childs, Jr., D.D.S., a Los Angeles dentist, published a brochure which promoted a church-operated dental school. He was considered "ahead of his time."
From 1934 to 1942 ten Seventh-day Adventist dental students had been accepted each year into Atlanta Southern Dental School and had been excused from attending classes on Saturday, which they believed to be the Sabbath. However, in 1942 Atlanta Southern Dental School was merged with Emory University, where the new administration limited admissions to applicants from the southern states only.
Drs. John and Gerald Mitchell, practicing dentists in Atlanta, Georgia (who had been responsible for the no-Sabbath-classes agreement), now focused their attention on developing an Adventist school of dentistry. In 1943 the Mitchell brothers and a Detroit dentist, Dr. M. Webster Prince, organized the National Association of Seventh-day Adventist Dentists (NASDAD).
One of NASDAD's main objectives was to develop a church-operated school of dentistry. It pressured church leaders to support the proposed school, but did not receive much encouragement--and for good reason. The estimated cost of a dental school at Loma Linda was one million dollars. Reconstruction of the church's mission program following World War II placed demands on every dollar. A million-dollar school of dentistry was hardly a top priority.
But in 1951 the General Conference authorized CME to found a school of dentistry, to be administered on the same basis as the School of Medicine. NASDAD members immediately pledged $67,800 to help establish the school. Dr. Prince was the first dean.
Forty-three freshmen from across the United States enrolled in the first class, scheduled to begin in September 1953. But the facilities were meager and scattered. Students were accommodated in the basement of the clinical pathology laboratory behind the old Loma Linda hospital on the hill. They had one large room for laboratory studies and one small classroom. Dean Prince's office was in the administration building. Patients were seen across the campus in the basement of the School of Medicine's pathology building. The situation was less than ideal. In 1954 plans were made for a new facility.
In September 1955, the students and faculty moved into the almost-completed dental building. In 1957, just one month before graduation ceremonies for the first class, the school was granted full accreditation. By 2004 the school was scheduling 100,000 appointments annually for 24,500 patients.
Expansion
In 1976 the University built a new five-story addition to the School of Dentistry, more than doubling its size. In 1999 the School built a $2.5 million two-story addition. These expanded facilities include research laboratories, closed-circuit color television--now used extensively, 262 dental chairs, and two large teaching amphitheaters, which can be combined to seat 240.
Forty-three were enrolled in the first class in 1953. The new facilities can accommodate 90 students in each year's class. Between 1957 and June of 2004, the school graduated 3,340 dentists. It has developed (and received recognition for) dental techniques now practiced throughout the nation. It has been a leader in dental pain control for decades, and in 1992 became a national leader in dental implantology. Loma Linda University School of Dentistry exists today because a few Adventist dentists were persistent in their conviction that dentistry deserved a place in the healing ministry of the Seventh-day Adventist church.
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Last Revised: Thu, Oct 04, 2007