Heritage Snapshot Part 355

While Dr. Percy T. Magan delivered the dedicatory address, for the new Ellen G. White Memorial Hospital in East Los Angeles, on Sunday, April 21, 1918, a major earthquake shook all of Southern California. In a letter to Mrs. Lida Scott, Magan reported his experience: “In the middle of our dedicatory exercises, while I was making a little speech, there came the biggest earthquake that this part of California has had in 18 years…. The earthquake did not do a particle of damage to any of our hospital buildings, but a number of the buildings downtown in the city of Los Angeles were badly knocked about…. At Loma Linda the damage was much greater. Our laboratory building was badly sprung, so that it now stands out a couple of inches from the edge of the floor.” Containers of anatomy and pathology specimens crashed to the floor. The earthquake knocked down all of the tall chimneys on the Loma Linda Sanitarium. Fortunately, nobody was killed. A large fishbowl at the dining room entrance swayed in a circle on a small pedestal, and came to rest without spilling. The elegant dining room’s chandeliers swayed until they almost touched the ceiling. The earthquake’s epicenter was near Mt. San Jacinto, where for 15 to 20 minutes falling rocks caused a great cloud of dust. The next day, during the Constituency Meeting held on April 22, 1918, Newton G. Evans, MD, president of CME, reported the recent upgrade of the school’s rating with the AMA to Class B, and outlined the challenges faced by the college, and consequences for its students. “On the first of June the fourth class of physicians was graduated from the school, but there have been  impediments in various fields on account of the lack of such recognition on the part of the American Medical Association as has been necessary to secure legal recognition in many of the states of the Union. We have looked forward eagerly to the time when these conditions would be different and have prayed much that the time would come when the Lord could trust us with the favors which he held in store for the school. When it became evident on the first of October last that the United States Government would not give us the recognition which was being given to the Medical Schools of the best reputation and which is necessary in order that the medical students may be released from the draft for military service, and allowed to continue their medical studies, active efforts were made by us to secure a change in the Government’s attitude. The Lord signally blessed these efforts.” With this new favorable action by the Council on Medical Education of the American Medical Association, CME’s draft-eligible students continued their studies, and those who had already been drafted returned to their schoolwork. Evans continued: “With this recognition by the American Medical Association and the United States Government it became possible for our graduates to be legally licensed in most of the states of the Union, thus the conditions which threatened the very existence of the school were used of the Lord to bring a wonderful blessing. These events have impressed us with the sense of our absolute dependence on God’s providences and the fact that our work is and must be entirely a work of faith. This should serve to make and keep us humble and to strengthen our trust.” During the Constituency Meeting of April 22, 1918, Percy T. Magan, MD, reported progress at the Los Angeles Division’s new outpatient dispensary after the first seven weeks. Before moving to the new facility, the dispensary charged nothing. Then, in an effort to become self-supporting, the unit charged patients ten cents per visit. Charging the patients had no effect on attendance. Some predicted that after moving into the new dispensary, patronage would drop. But it didn’t. In fact, the patient load doubled from 50 patients a day to 100. Magan also reported drastic changes in the administration and charges for medications which had been entirely free. To help reduce the cost, the institution encouraged patients to reuse their drug bottles and corks. Magan called the plan “somewhat unique.” Then, in order to reduce the use of drugs, the institution added a hydrotherapy unit nearby and performed 30 to 40 treatments a day with what Magan called “our own distinctive denominational treatments.” He reported that the medical director of the dispensary, August H. Larson, MD, had developed an excellent reputation in the community and that he conducted much of his practice in patient’s homes, called “out-call work.” Magan reported that not many medical colleges arranged for patients to be visited at home. Most of their patients came from referrals from city and county hospitals and visiting nurses. CME had no such connections. The vast majority of CME’s dispensary patients had become friends of the institution through Dr. Larson’s out-call work, through the work of CME’s students. Magan reported that since the re-rating of the school to class B, many outside physicians were quite anxious to connect with CME. He believed CME’s respectable new hospital and a good dispensary contributed to this new interest. To be continued…