Harvey A. Elder, MD (Class of 1957), was born in Morristown, New Jersey, on Feb. 27, 1932, in the house where he was reared.
When Harvey was only 5, before fluid and electrolyte balance were understood and when sulfanilamide was the only available anti-microbial, he and his sister Mary came down with dysentery—such a bad case that a pediatrician told his mother it would be a miracle if either one survived. They both survived.
Harvey grew up with the idea that God had saved his life for a purpose. His interest in infectious diseases was influenced by the fact that his paternal grandfather died after four months of suffering from a hospital-acquired infection. His early personal experiences dominated his entire life.
Harvey grew up on a farm and has loved animals ever since.
In 1943, when the local church school closed, his father allowed one of his farm buildings to be used as a church school and called it Morristown Barnyard Academy. Harvey graduated from Greater New York Academy, on Long Island, New York, in 1948, and from Emmanuel Missionary College (now Andrews University), Berrien Springs, Michigan, in 1952. While attending the Loma Linda College of Medical Evangelists he earned a master’s degree in biochemistry in 1954. After particularly enjoying his clinical education, he graduated from CME in 1957, completed his internship in 1958, and had an internal medicine residency in 1960—both at the University of California hospitals in San Francisco.
From 1960 to 1962, Dr. Elder performed selective service in the Laboratory of Parasite Chemotherapy at the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Atlanta, Georgia. He then became a fellow in Bacteriology and Immunology at Harvard University from 1962 to 1963 and entered a fellowship in Infectious Diseases at the Thorndike Memorial Laboratory, Boston City Hospital, from 1963 to 1965. From 1965 to 1967, he became a Research Associate in Bacteriology and Immunology at the Channing Laboratory, Harvard University.
Dr. Elder joined the faculty of Loma Linda University School of Medicine in 1967, the year the new University Hospital opened. He shared an “enormous excitement” with the faculty of the School of Medicine that had just moved from Los Angles. The clinical faculty was small, but with enormous commitment and high morale, they were determined to make the institution succeed.
Over the years Dr. Elder’s practice was mostly in infectious disease consulting. He started the computerized database infection control program at Loma Linda University Medical Center, acknowledged by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta, Georgia, to be “a model program.” When the Jerry L. Pettis Memorial Veterans Medical Center opened in 1977, he administered infection control in both hospitals.
When Dr. Elder came to Loma Linda, he responded very favorably to the support and can-do attitude he encountered from Dean David B. Hinshaw, Sr., MD. He also learned from A. Graham Maxwell, Ph.D., and Jack Provonsha, MD, Ph.D., that there is a role for religion in the practice of medicine. Wil Alexander, PhD, got him started on whole-person care. In addition to teaching, Dr. Elder has enjoyed whole-person care ever since. In fact, it has become his mission in life; what he believes God has called him to do. Some of his patients travel past many very sophisticated HIV clinics to see him because he encourages their spiritual growth and prays with them.