Eftft 



MINUTES 



OF THE 



FIRST ANNUAL MEETING 



OF THE 



AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION, 



HELD IN THE CITY OF BALTIMORE, MAY, 1848. 



Baltimore, May 2, 1848. 

 The Association met at eleven o'clock, A. M., when the President, 

 Dr. Chapman, opened the proceedings by the following address: 



Believe me, gentlemen, that I feel extremely gratified in meeting 

 you on this occasion, and I cannot forbear to tender to you my 

 respectful salutations. Taking the liveliest interest in the great 

 cause in which we are all embarked, I greet you with a welcome, 

 warm, cordial, and sincere. 



This assemblage presents a spectacle of moral grandeur delightful 

 to contemplate. Few of the kind have I ever witnessed more im- 

 posing in its aspect, and certainly none inspired by purer motives, 

 or having views of a wider range of beneficence. The profession to 

 which we belong, once venerated on account of its anticpiity, — its 

 various and profound science — its elegant literature — its polite ac- 

 complishments — its virtues, — has become corrupt, and degenerate, 

 to the forfeiture of its social position, and with it, of the homage it 

 formerly received spontaneously and universally. Do not suppose 

 that I comprise the whole profession in this reprobation. There are 

 numerous members of it, who still retain the qualities by which it 

 was formerly distinguished. It may, indeed, be affirmed, that never 

 in its history has it exhibited so many claims to respect as at this 

 very moment. With the present century the spirit of philosophy 

 began to be infused into it, creative of real and substantial improve- 



