William S. Sadler

William S. Sadler, MD, FAPA (1875 - 1969) was a well-known American psychiatrist 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, Lena Sadler, MD. The doctors were involved in the origin of The Urantia Book.

Education
The Sadlers 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
William 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, the American College of Surgeons, the Illinois Psychiatric Association, the Chicago Medical Society, the Chicago Society for Personality Study, The Illinois State Medical Society, Board Member, W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Battle Creek, The Eugene Field Society, International Mark Twain Society, the National Association of Authors and Journalists and a Founder Member of the Gorgas Memorial Institute in Tropical and Preventive Medicine. 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, 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.

Both Sadlers 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, William Sadler 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.

Family
The Sadlers' 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, 33 years of age, was accepted as a member of the Sadler family.

History
William Sadler was born in Spencer, Indiana, son of Samuel Calvins Sadler and Sarah Isabel Wilson, MD on June 24, 1875. Upon moving to Battle Creek Michigan, he was raised as a Seventh-day Adventist. At age 14, he worked as a bellboy and later a salesman for the Battle Creek Sanitarium. In 1895 he began to instruct Christian doctrine, preach the gospel, and serve as an administrator for the San Francisco and Chicago Medical Mission and Benevolent Societies. In addition he was an editor, author, and creator of Life Boat Magazine. In 1897 Sadler married Lena Kellogg. By 1989, the Chicago Medical Mission had grown to comprise of eight institutions and twenty-five distinct lines of mission and rescue work. William became an ordained minister and he and his wife worked for twenty years in rescue ministry.

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.

Death
Dr. William S. Sadler died on April 26, 1969, at 93 years of age.

The Urantia Book
In 1923 a group of interested persons said that the contents of The Urantia Book physically materialized from 1924 until 1936. Sadler wrote a paper detailing the types of methods that he said were not used in the reception of the papers. "How We Did Not Get The Urantia Book" and Psychic Phenomena: Unusual Activities of the Marginal Consciousness (The Subconscious Mind).

William Sadler was a participant among another 486 interested persons. He was not the founder of The Urantia Book movement, he just lived longer than most becoming the elder statesman. He and his wife were an exemplary team, both medical doctors, who worked side by side as partners in business as well as spiritual pursuits. He did not serve as a trustee of the Urantia Foundation formed in 1950, and was never an officer of the Urantia Brotherhood. He was Chair of the Committee on Education and worked after the book's publication to produce, with his committee, curriculum materials for the Urantia Brotherhood School. The titles were, 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.