Description
These materials consist of the contents of a delegate's (J. B. de C. M. Saunders) packets
for annual sessions of the California Medical Association between 1964 and 1975:
documents, credentials, correspondence, memoranda, draft resolutions, agendas, reports,
handouts, notes, pamphlets and other items. Carton 1 also contains a folder of materials
on CMA annual sessions, 1925-1952, evidently collected by past Secretary of the Surgical
Section Dr. Lyman A. Brewer III. Carton 2 also contains four folders of CMA-related
materials.
Background
The California Medical Association has its roots in the American Medical Association,
founded in 1846, and in the California State Medical Society, which was founded in 1856
by members of the Sacramento Medical Society and the San Francisco County
Medico-Chirurgical Society. From the beginning, this first state medical society
reflected polarities between the northern and southern sections of the state, and feuding
among --and sometimes within --various city and county medical societies. Within a few
years personal animosities and petty squabbles had reduced the California State Medical
Society to an organization that existed on paper only. Although officers were elected as
late as 1860, factional differences around the issues of the Civil War ensured that the
California State Medical Society simply did not exist between 1860 and 1870.