Association Seeks Centralized Control

The medical missionary work was given a very prominent place in this epochal conference. The regular meetings of the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association were largely attended by the delegates to the General Conference, as also were the meetings of the Michigan Sanitarium and Benevolent Association, which was the successor to the Western Health Reform Institute. There was, as could be seen later, one disturbing factor in the plans developed by the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association. Clearly and definitely underlying the counsel for reorganization was the principle that responsibilities should be distributed rather than centralized. Yet at the very time when the General Conference delegates were seeking to follow this counsel, steps were being advanced involving a more effective centralized control by the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association of all medical missionary enterprises.SHM 309.1

On April 16, 1901, the president of the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association outlined a plan “to bind our different sanitariums together.” When new sanitariums were started, instead of independent corporations being formed for their control, there were rather to be “auxiliary associations established, tied to this central body.” Under this arrangement the officers of such organizations were to be nominated not by local conferences or organizations, but by the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association with headquarters in Battle Creek. It was set forth, as a desirable arrangement, that it should be “impossible for these institutions to exist without this body, and to maintain their corporate life without this corporation.” After proposing this plan, the association’s president continued:SHM 309.2

“I want to ask this body to take a vote adopting this mode of procedure, and recommending that it shall be continued, and that all the sanitariums organized and incorporated shall be incorporated on a similar plan, so that they shall be tied to this body.”—Minutes of the International Medical Missionary and Benevolent Association, reported in the The General Conference Bulletin, April 18, 1901. (Italics mine.)SHM 310.1