Birmingham state herald. (Birmingham, Ala.) 1895-1897, 1896-05-07
PHYSICIANS STIRRED UP.
First Over the Question of Changing the Sec
rotary and Then Over President Bey-
erly Coles Address.

Atlanta, May 6-The feature of the
American Medical associations proceed
ings this morning was the fight made on
the venerable secretary, DR.. Atkinson,
who has been in charge of the records of
the association for the last thirty years.
Quite an opposition has been developed,
but he won and will hold his place for an-
other year at least.
An invitation from the Louisiana State
Medical society for the members of the
American association to visit the annual
convention, to take place on the 18th of
May, was accepted.
DR.. William Osler, professor of medi-
cine in the John Hopkins university at
Baltimore, read an interesting paper on a
study of the fevers in the south. He
dwelt on yellow fever, typhoid fever, ma
arlal fever and simple continued fever.
The special order for the morning was
the question as to whether or not DR..
William b. Atkinson, the secretary of the
association, should be deposed and a
younger and more active man put In his
place.
Last year a resolution was introduced
that there should be change in the con-
stitution of the association so that the
secretary should be elected annually. 1t
was necessary, under the rules, that this
motion should be laid over until the next
annual meeting, and that it should take
its place on the programme that was to
Is what was not done, as no mention of
the resolution to change the constitution
was made in the published programme.
DR.. L. N. Love of ST. Louis, who intro
duced the resolution last year, called up
the matter, stating that the resolution
had not been placed on the programme.
He now asked that the resolution be read
a second time and be placed on its pas
sage, as he thought the constitution
should be changed before the report of
the nominating committee was made.
The nominating committee, consisting of
member from each state in the union,
he said, felt that the secretary of the as
ISOLATION should be a younger and more
vigorous man.
DR.. Isaac Quimby of New Jersey moved
that the whole matter be laid on the ia
BILE. and after some delay a vote was
taken and the resolution was laid on the
table.
AS soon as this was done DR.. Love
arose in an excited manner and said
Mr.. President, 1 move that we declare
that this association cannot change its
secretary"
There were cries of SHAME" SHAME"
from different parts of the hall and the
president refused to put the motion.
DR.. Ellis of California referred to
resolution he had introduced last year,
which had not appeared in the pro-
gramme, and called for q reading of the
minutes of last years meeting. Secre-
tary Atkinson took up a copy of the
Medical Journal and began to read from
that, when the point of order was made
that the Journal was not the official or
gan of the association. The chair was
asked IL there was any official record
of the association and he replied that he
did not know, as he was not the custo-
dian of the records. Things were begin
ming to look very embarrassing for the
old secretary, who had not a word to say,
when the hour of adjournment arrived,
and the chair declared that the matter of
change in the constitution would not be
considered again until next year.
This afternoon the doctors were enter
tanned at a barbecue at Lithia Springs.
President Beverly Cole Of the associa-
tion stirred up some of the members by
his address yesterday when he declared
that there Is too great a tendency In the
profession to use the knife when 1t is not
necessary. a.
He criticised the avidity with which
doctors nowadays rushed into the secular
papers with any important discovery
they had made, the tendency to bring the
profession to commercial basis, the
loose manner in which prominent clergy
men gave their unqualified Endorsement
to patent nostrums with the component
parts of which they were not familiar,
the eagerness with which young doctors
seized upon even the slightest pretext to
operate for appendicitis and the readi-
ness with which certain surgeons used
the knife on women, changing their ma
ture, without making an examination of
sufficient care to see If there were not
other remedies besides the knife. I'D
DR.. Joseph Price of Philadelphia de-
Tended the specialists, while admitting
that 1t may be true that young doctors
are too quick to use the knife.