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Testimonies for the Church Volume 7
there was seen the necessity for a change. For the medical work it
was necessary that the process of reorganization should reach into the
thinking of the men and women connected with it and change their
philosophy of the great work in which they were engaged. At the
time of the General Conference session in 1901 it seemed that the
Battle Creek Sanitarium had reached its zenith and, with its satellite
institutions, constituted a large part of the work of Seventh-day Ad-
ventists. It became evident that its leaders were beginning to envision
a great Christian medical missionary work quite undenominational in
character, which, as they thought of it, would soon eclipse the work of
the Seventh-day Adventist denomination
.
Then, on February 18, 1902, the first disaster struck. The main
building of the Battle Creek Sanitarium burned to the ground. While
arrangements were soon made for re-establishing the plant, the expe-
rience of the fire together with the spirit of prophecy counsels which
reached the hands of the workers within the next few months, led many
to see more clearly the true place of medical missionary work as a
distinctive but integral part of the work of the denomination. There
was a call to spread out and establish many medical missionary centers,
not too large or ambitious in their scope
.
[6]
It was in these settings that Mrs. White’s articles constituting the
section on “Our Sanitarium Work” were penned. They were included
in volume 7 so they might continue to serve the denomination
.
In the earlier years, when the Review and Herald and the Pacific
Press were established, it had been necessary to have well-equipped
plants to produce the type of literature needed at a moderate price.
But in the beginning days, there was not a full-time use for such
establishments in strictly denominational work. To keep the machinery
operating and to maintain a well-trained printing house staff, our
publishing institutions had solicited commercial printing. Such work
ranged from the printing of stationery and office forms to the issuance
of bound books. This was quite remunerative and helped to maintain
the plants and the staffs on a sound basis
.
A number of problems, however, arose in this commercial printing.
Manuscripts for books were offered and accepted which were not of an
uplifting character. Some of this literature contained serious doctrinal
errors, and some of it was for other reasons decidedly detrimental.
These conditions reached a climax in the times of volume 7. The