Day Dean Coffin was born at Montebello, Washington State in the year 1893, and was the youngest son of William Henry Coffin. He had three brothers, but two died during childhood. Day’s family lived for a number of years in Nebraska, then moved to Washington State, where Day was born. Around this time a neighbor, Will Kenney, shared his Seventh-day Adventist beliefs with the Coffins’ father continued to teach in both public and church schools. The elder Coffin sometimes also worked in literature evangelism in any case, the boys early learned to work hard to supplement the family income.
The Coffin family moved to a home on west Queen Anne hill, Seattle. It was a block beyond the end of some graded streets and Glen and Day would plan among the bushes and trees as well as tend to their vegetable gardens.
At about that time Alfred Shryock, MD, recently graduated ( in 1899 ) from American Medical Missionary College, arrived from Battle Creek, Michigan. He set up an office and treatment rooms in downtown Seattle. He had two ladies working for him: one was his sister Belle, and the other was Ella Camp. These ladies enjoyed visiting the Coffins, and came frequently, as also did the doctor and his wife. Day studied a home until he was nine before starting formal school. By the second day he was promoted to the third grade. He was one of the first students enrolled at Columbia academy at Meadow Glade, Washington. He worked as a logger to earn his expenses. After graduating in 1912, he spent two years teaching in SDA schools, but his real goal was to further his education and study medicine.
He attended Pacific Union College on his savings, and then it was on to the College of Medical Evangelists in Loma Linda, California. To earn his way, he worked as an orderly at the San Bernardino county General Hospital, six miles away from Loma Linda. Transportation was his bicycle. Old family friend, Dr. Shryock, who was by now on the faculty of CMC, was also able to help by providing jobs in the anatomy laboratory. Dr. Coffin was also able to work to earn his tuition by help in dissecting and embalming cadavers in a corrugated iron building on the far side of an orange orchard enigmatically named “ Jericho. “ Even the local undertakers knew this building by name. Other necessary money was earned by donating blood for the then-innovative treatment of blood transfusions, and even once by donating about 120 square inches of skin for a severely-burned patient.
Just prior to finishing his medical course in 1919, he married his college schoolmate, Edyth Gruber. Their son, Galen, was born the next year. By that time Dr. Day Coffin was in internship at the Wabash Valley sanitarium in Indiana. While there he wrote to the General Conference offering his services as a medical missionary. He e was contacted in 1924 with a call to India. Having always dreamed of an overseas posting, he and Edyth quickly accepted. A few weeks before time to depart for India, the call was changed to south China for a seven-year term. The Coffins with their four-year-old son bade farewell to their family and friends and set sail from Vancouver, B.C. to their new destination. Three weeks later they reached Hong Kong, changed ships, and continued on to Wuchow. Then it was up the West River by a small boat to Nanning, Kwangsi.
There was a mission headquarters at the Nanning compound with a home for the overseas pastor and another for the physician, and their respective families. The medical facility was named “The Little Eden Hospital “in the Cantonese dialect, Dr. Coffin write in his journal:
“We found a small hospital with one private room and two tiny wards, enough for six patients. We realized that we had a tremendously task before us to break down the superstition and customs of the people and build up the medical work in this faraway place. The appropriations from our union mission were small and we had to be contented with native- made equipment ---- operating room furniture, beds, tables, chairs, etc.
“We had no nurses. We sent a call to our churches throughout the province for Christian young men and women to come and train. The first few months there were very few patients, and these were men. Because of custom and superstition, and his knife!” This superstition was a great barrier, like a great wall, and it was a great hindrance to the progress of the work. We earnestly sought the Lord for ways to reach these needy people. After a number of years with the Lord’s blessing on our work we began to see changes. People saw their friends recover after being treated at our hospital, and they began to gain confidence in Western medicine. They were becoming better educated, and superstition was crumbling. Each year more patients came, and a large percentage were women and children. Our Chinese young people proved to be very efficient nurses and very faithful workers.
“During our sixteen years at the Nanning Hospital it was enlarged twice, until we had a fifty-bed hospital. The last few years we had twenty-five thousand patients a year through our clinics. Inpatients numbered ten thousand a year, in addition to four hundred obstetrical cases. “
“The institution became self-supporting, and a great deal of charity work was done. We feel that God wonderfully blessed us. With some of the earnings of the hospital we were able to build churches in needy places. “
Dr. Coffin was the only physician at the Little Eden Hospital most of the years he was there. It became an almost overwhelming task to single-handedly carry the load. He additionally established a nursing school and did most of the teaching in Cantonese. The Division headquarters had conducted a correspondence school in Mandarin, and after completing the course, he was able to read and write in this medium. He picked up Cantonese locally from his associates. He was to later translate into Mandarin at least two of his favorite books on doctrines and evangelism.
He seldom complained about the work-load, and did his best under the circumstances. Several times physicians were called out from the United States, and were on their way to join the institution, but would be diverted to other “more needy?” hospitals when they reached the Division headquarters in Shanghai. This was very discouraging to him, but there was no abandoning the work.
Several time civil war broke out between the local provinces. The political instability resulted in his having to evacuate his family several times to Hong Kong, and endure considerable periods of separation. During this tumultuous time, the Coffins welcomed a second son Harold, who later taught biology at Canadian Union College and Walla Walla College, and served 27 years as senior research scientist for the Geo-science Research Institute in Loma Linda.
On one occasion Dr. Coffin was asked to attend a wounded general. A surgical operation was performed, but during the general’s recuperation, the battle line between the opposing forces changed and he was now in enemy territory! When soldiers entered the Little Eden Hospital looking for the general, he was nowhere to be found. Dr. Coffin had been warned when the change was about to occur and he had moved the patient into the attic where he hid until he was again in friendly territory.