A. M. A. Congress

A.M.A. Congress

Ray Lyman Wilbur, M. D., President of Leland Stanford, Jr., University, was elected President of the American Medical Association, to succeed Dr. George E. DeSeweinitz, of Philadelphia, at its 74th annual session in San Francisco. Dr. Wilbur is 48 years old, and is an educational product of the Pacific Coast and of European universities. Almost his entire professional life has been associated with Stanford and its medical schools, though he was a practicing physician for a few years.

The program of the Scientific Assembly presented an almost complete cross-section of present currents in scientific medicine, organized in 15 sections: practice of medicine; general and abdominal surgery; obstetrics and gynecology; ophthalmology; laryngology, otology, and rhinology; pediatrics; pharmacology and therapeutics; pathology and physiology; stomatology; nervous and mental diseases; dermatology and syphilogy; preventive and industrial medicine and public health; urology; orthopedic surgery; gastroenterology and proctology.

Among the distinguished medical men on the program were Friedrich Wenckebach, Viennese heart specialist; F. G. Banting, of insulin fame; E. V. McCollum, vitamin expert of Johns Hopkins; A. B. Luckhardt, Chicago physiologist; Walter Timme, neuroendocrinologist of New York; Fred H. Albee, surgeon. The business of the Association was transacted by the House of Delegates, which has representatives by population from the affiliated medical societies of each state. The A. M. A. is widely known as a model of efficient administration under the direction of Dr. George H. Simmons, whose headquarters are in Chicago. With 88,000 members--the majority of American physicians,--with a number of first-class medical publications, with an extensive plant and equipment, a large staff and a powerful central executive committee, it represents the best contemporary thought of orthodox medicine. These very qualities have incurred for it the opposition of medical independents of various cults, who claim that, as a political machine, Tammany Hall can't hold a candle to the A. M. A.