PROVIDENCE PREPARES FOR THE FUTURE
Meanwhile, Providence had worked behind the scenes in Madison, Tennessee, to prepare a man to meet the legal, financial, and political challenges in The Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelist’s future—Percy T. Magan, a middle-aged minister/teacher. In 1910 his close friend and colleague Edward A Sutherland, tried to persuade Magan to join him in becoming a physician.
After much soul-searching and discussion, including counsel from Loma Linda co-founder Ellen G. White, the two men decided to attend medical school together at the University of Tennessee Medical School. Mrs. White had said that if they would go to Nashville and take the medical course, “The Lord will raise you up friends.” At the time, these men did not understand the importance of the instruction. Later, after Dr. Magan had become associated with CME, this statement was fulfilled to the letter. Men with whom Dr. Magan was associated with as teachers in Nashville and Memphis, Tennessee, proved to be real friends in opening the way to solve the most difficult problems at CME.
Magan and Sutherland, both educational legends, became physicians on June 6, 1914. They had been professional partners for 28 years. Although Sutherland criticized his medical education in Tennessee, he did not criticize the medical profession. He had strong feelings about his personal experience, and told Magan that he had decided to share his insights and wisdom about medical education with Mrs. White. “I'm going out and have a talk with Sister White. I'm going to tell Sister White some things that undoubtedly she doesn't know anything about in running a medical school.”
This statement not only illustrates Sutherland’s recognition of Ellen White’s continuing prominence in developing the School of Medicine in Loma Linda, but also shows Sutherland’s acknowledgement of the sorry state of medical education in America. The Abraham Flexner Report, sponsored by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, by closing 84 inadequate schools of medicine, had intended to improve the quality of medical education in America. Sutherland sincerely felt that under the circumstances it would be impossible for the Seventh-day Adventist denomination to develop an acceptable school of medicine in Loma Linda.
Sutherland told Mrs. White that developing an approved medical school in Loma Linda couldn't be done. CME didn't have the money to put up the necessary buildings, a fact demonstrated in 1913 when CME tried to build its first hospital in Loma Linda. It didn't have a competent faculty. Furthermore, it couldn't get one. It would be impossible for Loma Linda to succeed.
Every time Sutherland shared his wisdom and what he believed it would take to belong to the American Medical Association, Mrs. White responded according to her providential insights. She stated that the Lord had shown her that the College of Medical Evangelists (today’s Loma Linda University School of Medicine) would become one of the finest schools of medicine in the land. She stated that CME's graduates would someday make the best physicians and that they would go to the ends of the earth. Sutherland wouldn't give up. “Then I would get my breath and I'd meet her again the next day and I'd start to tell her something new, try to go over the same thing that I did in a more impressive way, but I never got anywhere.”
Mrs. White insisted that CME was going to be a success, that the Lord had "planted it," and that He would make it one of the strong institutions of the world. Sutherland conveyed his conversations to Magan.
In August 1914, CME elected Newton G. Evans, MD, the medical superintendent of the Madison Sanitarium and Professor of Pathology at the University of Tennessee, to be its new president. Dr. Wells A. Ruble had asked to be relieved of his administrative responsibilities.
Just after Evans arrived, Nathan P. Colwell, MD, secretary of the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association again inspected CME, including its Los Angeles outpatient clinic. Although encouraged by Colwell's evaluation, Dr. Evans felt he needed assistance in attaining a higher accreditation rating for the institution.
Evans immediately remembered Percy T. Magan, MD, one of his educational colleagues at Madison, Tennessee, whom he had encouraged to become a physician. Magan, now a recognized diagnostician, a loyal church member, and an astute educator, because of his tenacious but winning ways, could become instrumental in representing the church-related institution to the American Medical Association.
Loma Linda University and Loma Linda University Medical Center owe a huge debt of gratitude to the Nashville Agricultural Normal Institute in Madison, Tennessee (in 1937 renamed Madison College), and its sister institution the Madison Sanitarium, not only in recruited leadership, but also in subsequent financial support.
Just as Newton G. Evans, MD, prepared to build his new home on the Madison campus, the urgent invitation came for him to become the president of the College of Medical Evangelists in Loma Linda. Madison gave—as became her custom—her first physician. Evans then called Percy T. Magan, MD, a recent graduate of the School of Medicine at the University of Tennessee, to help raise CME’s accreditation status with the American Medical Association. Dr. Magan’s natural leadership abilities, his education and administrative experiences at Battle Creek College, Emmanuel Missionary College, and at Madison, plus his unquestioning faith in the great principles of education, preeminently fitted him for enormous responsibilities which he was destined to fulfill at CME. To Madison the loss of Magan was compared to “tearing asunder bone and marrow,” but Madison gave again.
To be continued….