By October 31, 1913, the new hospital, located in the middle of what is now the basic sciences quadrangle, neared completion. On November 24, 1913, John Burden expressed to the Board his opinion that the estimated cost of running the new facility was entirely too high. Others agreed. On November 24, Board members named the new facility “Loma Linda Hospital.” They also made it available for Sanitarium patients and School clinics, and placed it under the medical supervision of Dr. Wells A. Ruble. Patients would be moved into the new hospital on December 1. 1913.
By the March 1914 Constituency Meeting, the issue of reducing the five-year curriculum to three still had not been resolved. The chair asked the Constituency if it would like to hear a report of the meeting held in Washington the previous autumn. The point of special interest, as stated by Board Chair E. E. Andross, was whether or not CME should continue its five-year medical course or reduce it to a three-year medical evangelistic course. The Autumn Council also discussed the advisability of offering part of the course at Loma Linda and finishing the last year or two in Los Angeles. Andross stated that no decision had been made at the Washington council, because the matter was for the Constituency to decide. However, the committee appointed to investigate and prepare a report had failed to meet. Therefore, no report.
What caused this lapse is not recorded. However, the philosophical debate continued to rage. The chair again repeated his question as to whether or not the five-year course should continue: “Are medical men needed in this message? Is the Lord calling for such a school as we have been trying to carry? When we know for what the Lord is calling, we will know better how to work to attain that end.”
T. J. Evans MD expressed surprise that the denomination had as many faithful physicians as it had, considering the error that was woven into worldly education. He reiterated that the time had come when the church’s young people should be educated in its own schools. He suggested that self-supporting physicians might be recruited who would be able to give some time to CME’s educational program in Los Angeles.
W. A. George, MD, said he thought the matter of the church having its own medical school already had been settled. He said we should have a medical school, and the question with him was how and where it should be conducted.
W. C. White expressed thankfulness for the faithful work done by those who “have been on the ground.” He acknowledged tremendous difficulties and expressed himself strongly in favor of the full five-year course. Anything less, he said, would deprive the school of the power it should wield. He feared that a shortened course would force the most valuable young people to get their training in worldly schools and eventually they would be lost to the work of the church.
W. A. Spicer wondered how the American Medical Association would regard the School if it succeeded in gaining privileges at the Los Angeles County Hospital. W. A. Ruble stated that the superintendent of the County Hospital supported the work of CME and that all he needed was the permission of the Board of Supervisors. Ruble also stated that the Loma Linda Hospital would provide students with “a training in therapeutics such as we hold as a denomination.”
The Constituency voted to appoint a committee of five to study the question. More delay.
The General Conference Commission ascertained what recognition might be granted to CME if it conducted the fourth and fifth years in Los Angeles, and delivered this report to the Constituency Meeting held in March of 1914. The Board then reversed itself and voted to continue the fourth and fifth years in Los Angeles. Most interested people today do not realize the gravity of the circumstances faced time after time throughout the history of the institution, any one of which could have derailed it.
During the March 25, 1914 Constituency Meeting, Dr. Ruble, president of the College delivered an encouraging report: “With the completion of this year we will have demonstrated the possibility of conducting a full medical course in the denomination. There has been the best spirit of cooperation in the school during the year that has existed since the medical school was started. Very little discipline has been called for in any way. The students are generally taking a deep interest in bringing the school up to the high standard it should occupy.
Regarding the new hospital, Ruble reported: “This new hospital makes it possible for our students to have under their own supervision different diseases which they may treat according to the system of physiologic therapeutics which have been accepted by this denomination.”
Hospital patients numbered 15 to 20. No great effort was made to fill the hospital “on account of the desirability of conducting this part of our institution on as nearly a self-supporting basis as is possible.” CME endowed several beds to receive worthy cases that would be of great teaching value.
In an editorial in the campus newspaper, The Medical Evangelist, during the spring of 1914, Dr. Ruble reported recent progress at CME, including completion of the new hospital and the graduation of the first class of physicians: “The present school year thus far has been the most prosperous and encouraging in the history of the College of Medical Evangelists. For four years the College has been building first with one class, then two, and so on until the present year finds five classes, or the entire course in progress. This seems good to those who have toiled and prayed for the success of the school, for we feel that we are now on the home stretch….”
To be continued…