The History of Medicine Part 8: The Cogs of AMA Reform 1900-1920

The AMA grew up in a libertarian America, but chose to change its nature during a top-down Progressive America, where experts and scientifically based rules were determined to be crucial to any viable reforms.  Working with corporate foundations, Progressive reformers, and German-inspired Progressive academic doctors, the AMA shifted course and transformed into a top-down organization that sought to control all aspects of American medicine, including education.  It changed its structure to rely on a very narrow board of "experts," it adapted a German ideology of care, it worked with corporations and drug companies to increase its base of money and power, and it started to survey medical schools and determine which ones were capable of surviving in a new Progressive age.  All of this foreshadowed the Flexner Report, which would vault the AMA into total domination over the medical landscape, normalize German medical thinking, and create a formulaic dogmatic medical script that would be templated upon all medical schools and all licensing requirements.