William S. Sadler

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Dr. William S. Sadler M.D. F.A.P.A. (1875 - 1969) was a well-known American psychiatrist^[1]and college teacher in the school of medicine at the University of Chicago. For over sixty years he practiced his profession in Chicago, thirty-three years being associated in practice with his wife, Dr Lena Kellogg Sadler. The doctors were pioneers in the research on the mysterious Urantia Papers.

Education William and Lena married in 1897 and pursued their medical degrees together at the American Medical Missionary College (University of Illinois) where they equally graduated with honors in 1906. They founded the Chicago Institute of Physiologic Therapeutics (later called the Chicago Institute of Research & Diagnosis).

Professional background Doctor Sadler was originally trained in surgery, but following the first World War, gave up its practice and devoted himself entirely to psychiatry. He was a Fellow of the American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American Psychopathological Association. He was a professor at the Post-Graduate Medical School of Chicago, director of the Chicago Institute of Research and Diagnosis, consulting psychiatrist at Columbus Hospital, consultant in psychiatry to the W K Kellogg Foundation, and for thirty years, a lecturer in Pastoral Counseling at McCormick Theological Seminary. As a pioneer he interested ministers in improving their work of personal counseling through profiting by the experience of psychiatric practice.

Drs. William and Lena Sadler were lecturers before the old-time larger Chautauqua assemblies, introducing the modern concepts of mental medicine and physical hygiene for the prevention of disease. For many years, at the Chicago Institute, he taught clinics for physicians, ministers, and laity that covered the entire field of mental medicine that he liked to term "personology."

Writing more than a 30 books and numerous magazine articles, he authored such works as: "Theory and Practice of Psychiatry," "Psychiatric Nursing," "The Mind at Mischief," "Growing Out of Babyhood," "Piloting Modern Youth," and "The Quest for Happiness."

He did not adhere to purely mechanistic or materialistic views of psychology and psychiatry and was a consistent advocate of broad and rational principles of psychiatry; he was among early American psychiatrists who placed an emphasis upon the importance of the preventive aspects of mental hygiene. ^[2]

Family The Sadler's first son, Willis, was born in 1899 but died as an infant. Their second son, William Samuel Sadler Jr, was born in 1907. In 1923, Emma L Christensen, who was 23 at the time, was accepted as member of the Sadler family.

History William Sadler was born in Spencer, Indiana, son of Samuel Calvins Sadler and Sarah Isabel Wilson on June 24, 1875. After the death of one of the Sadler's twin daughters, he and his sister, Marie, were home-schooled due to their parents fear of disease. Being raised as a Seventh-day Adventist, at age 14, he worked as a bellboy and then salesman for John Harvey Kellogg, at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. In 1893, he became part of a team that started a new medical mission in Chicago for the poor. In 1897 Sadler married Lena Kellogg. On March 7, 1899, he became a licensed minister ^[3] of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and in 1901, an ordained minister. In 1901, the Sadlers moved to San Francisco to establish a new medical mission. They returned to Battle Creek and settled in Chicago. When the tensions between John Harvey Kellogg and Ellen White continued they severed ties with the Church.

Debunker Sadler was regarded by his colleagues as a professional researcher of considerable integrity. He was also a well-known skeptic of psychic phenomena and devoted a substantial amount of his time to exposing the proponents of the paranormal as frauds and charlatans. He worked with magician Howard Thurston in exposing frauds and mediums. He was considered one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject and held the life-long opinion that all psychic phenomena was explainable within the confines of the laws of nature.

Dr. William S. Sadler died on April 26, 1969.

The Urantia Book A Forum of 486 participants, now all deceased, claimed that the papers of the book were physically materialized one by one from 1925 until 1936. Documented also are types of reception that Dr. Sadler refuted as the way in which the Papers were received. See Appendix I "How We Did Not Get The Urantia Book" and Appendix II "Psychic Phenomena: Unusual Activities of the Marginal Consciousness (The Subconscious Mind)".

He did not serve as a trustee of the Urantia Foundation formed in 1950, and was never an officer in the Urantia Brotherhood. Even though he desired anoymity, it was not possible. William worked diligently, studying the Urantia book after publication, and produced the following works, "Urantia Doctrine and the Theology of the Urantia Book," "Urantia Book Quotations from the Teachings, Sayings, Miracles, and Parables of Jesus, "Worship and Wisdom, Gems from the Urantia Book," "History of the Urantia Movement," "Study of the Books of the Bible," "The History of the Bible," "A Short Course in Doctrine," "Analytical Study of the Urantia Book, "Science in the Urantia Book," and "Topical Studies in the Urantia Book."

[edit] References

[1] Carnegie, Dale: How to Stop Worrying and Start Living p 195, Simon and Schulster, 1948, New York.

• "Dr. William S. Sadler: A Self-made Renaissance Man", published in Pervaded Space (a Chicago Area Newsletter), Spring, 1979
• Sprunger, Meredith. "A Short Biographical Sketch of Dr. William S. Sadler".