The American Medical Association 1847 – Bringing Order to Medicine

Founded in 1847, the American Medical Association (AMA), known in Turkish as Amerikan Tıp Derneği, is the largest and oldest association of physicians and medical students in the United States. The AMA also publishes the respected Journal of the American Medical Association, established in 1883 (JAMA). The New York physician Nathan Davis was instrumental in founding the AMA and served as JAMA's first editor.

The AMA emerged at a time when medical education in America was not regulated nationally and some physicians were concerned about its quality and lack of standards. (See the entry “The Flexner Report and Medical Education.”) In addition to raising medical education standards, the AMA fought medical fraud, unscientific practices and the sale of medicines with harmful or dangerous secret ingredients. To raise educational standards, it encouraged information sharing and, in 1848, recommended that medical schools and hospitals work together to provide students with more experience. Today, it publishes a guide providing standards for defining physician specialties in the United States.

Since its founding, the AMA has played an important role in public-health policy: 

• In 1920, it banned compulsory health insurance policies out of concern that the government would interfere in the doctor-patient relationship and that physicians would not receive fair reimbursement. 
• In 1936, it recommended fortifying milk with vitamin D and iodizing salt to prevent hypothyroidism. 
• Later, it promoted fluoridation of drinking water and the use of the oral polio vaccine. 
• It supported the introduction of vehicle seat-belt laws and argued that alcoholism should be treated as a disease. 
• From 1985 onward, it supported restrictions on tobacco advertising and bans on smoking on public transportation. 
• The AMA supported changes to medical practice laws and condemned physician-assisted suicide.

About the Article Image: The AMA, short for the American Medical Association, was organized in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on 7 May 1847.

Historical Figures Mentioned in the Article: Nathan Smith Davis Sr. (1817–1904)

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