254 
American  Medical  Association. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm 
June,  1907. 
gentleman  from  Nebraska,  who  came  to  this  meeting  for  the  same 
purpose.  He  had  considerable  experience  in  his  own  State  with  the 
same  kind  of  work — reorganizing  his  State.  He  was  determined  that 
efforts  should  be  made  at  this  meeting  to  bring  to  an  end  this 
chaotic  state  of  medicine  as  a  profession.  This  man  was  Dr.  George 
H.  Simmons,  now  at  Chicago,  and  secretary  of  the  American  Medi- 
cal Association  and  editor  of  its  Journal. 
Dr.  W.  W.  Keen  presided  at  this  meeting,  and  the  resolution  was 
adopted,  and  Drs.  McCormack  and  Simmons  were  placed  on  the 
committee.  Six  months  after  Dr.  Foshay,  of  Cleveland,  was  made 
a  member.  The  labor  of  this  trinity  of  good  men  was  the  means 
of  leading  the  profession  in  its  quest  for  a  better  mode  of  organiza- 
tion. 
The  committee  made  its  report  at  the  St.  Paul  meeting,  June, 
1901,  it  was  accepted,  and  the  committee  continued,  with  instruc- 
tions to  prepare  a  uniform  constitution  and  by-laws  to  be  recom- 
mended for  adoption  by  all  State  and  county  societies. 
At  the  Saratoga  meeting,  June,  1902,  the  plan  became  operative, 
and  the  whole  profession,  practically,  has  been  bound  together  into 
one  compact,  interrelated  organism.  That  the  importance  of  all 
this  was  realized,  that  the  profession  was  at  last  ready  and  ripe  for 
reform,  was  shown  by  the  prompt  and  unanimous  acceptance  of  the 
entire  plan  of  reorganization,  and  except  Maine  and  Virginia,  by 
every  State  society  of  our  Union. 
With  this  brief,  sketchy  and  incomplete  history  of  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  medical  profession,  I  will  now  consider  the  second  part 
of  my  essay. 
THE  LOCAL  SOCIETY  AS  THE  UNIT  OF  THE  AMERICAN  MEDICAL 
ASSOCIATION. 
When  speaking  of  medical  societies  the  local  society  nearly  always 
means  the  County  Society,  yet  every  local  society  is  not  always  a 
County  Society.  In  many  of  the  large  cities  there  are  sometimes 
one  or  more  local  societies  whose  objects  and  aims  are  not  always 
in  harmony  with  the  work  of  the  County  Society  of  that  particular 
county,  and  the  profession  would  be  benefited  by  their  extinction. 
This  is  one  of  the  causes  which  has  delayed  the  reorganization  of 
our  profession.  Fortunately  for  us  these  conditions  and  societies 
are  rapidly  disappearing. 
