Back to Front PageVOLUME 6, NUMBER 4
 

It is June 1876 and America prepares to celebrate its first century as a nation. The Centennial Exhibition features demonstrations by Thomas Alva Edison of his new automatic telegraph and by Alexander Graham Bell of his telephone. The massive Corliss steam engine at 750 tons and 1,400 horsepower heralds America's industrial fervor and transformation from an agrarian society. Not seen at the Exhibition, however, is Thomas Eakins' painting "The Gross Clinic," which is denied installation because of the shocking nature of its explicit medical detail.

Mark Twain's "Tom Sawyer" is hailed as "the best boy's story I ever read" in the Atlantic. In Cincinnati, the Republican convention nominates Rutherford B. Hayes, and two weeks later the Democrats select Samuel Tilden. The results of this election are not known until the following March when Hayes is inaugurated as president, despite the fact that Tilden wins the popular vote by a margin of 250,000. Also in 1876, Colorado is about to be admitted to the Union as the 38th state, and in Montana, George Armstrong Custer leads the 265 men of the Seventh Cavalry into the Battle of Little Bighorn.

In Philadelphia, representatives of 22 medical schools meet at Jefferson Medical College and form the provisional Association of American Medical Colleges. The call for the meeting states, "The object of the convention is to consider all matters relating to reform in medical college work." Over the course of several days, the group considers eight questions and one resolution, and adopts a constitution, by-laws, and articles of confederation. The secretary is authorized to assess each member an annual sum not to exceed $10 to cover the Association's costs.

From this modest beginning 125 years ago, the AAMC began its existence, firmly grounded in the notion that it should lead its members "in the advancement of medical education in the United States, and the establishment of a common policy among medical colleges in the more important matters of college management." It would be nice to think that the noble purposes espoused by the founders were sufficient to unite them in a common cause, but the founders were no less subject to disagreement than today's medical education community.

Just a few years later, the Southern Medical Journal reported that "some very hard things are now being said" about the new organization, although that journal itself claimed, "We never abused the Association, although we did not regard the plans adopted as the best to accomplish the important objects sought."

More critical was the Michigan Medical News, writing, "The late meeting of this association at Richmond was a pronounced failure and the indications are that it was the beginning of the end of the organization." And Gaillard's Medical Journal charged, "There are some queer facts in the life and gradual death of this remarkable Body … It practically died in the hands of its parent; a clear case of infanticide; for the offspring was never other than infantile in development."

And yet 125 years later the AAMC survives and thrives, a testament to academic medical centers' impetus to provide the best possible education for tomorrow's doctors. Although improvement of medical education remains its core purpose, the AAMC's agenda now also encompasses the biomedical research that underpins that education, the health care system that supports it and reaps its benefits, and the management of the medical schools and teaching hospitals where that education occurs.

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