Historical health fraud and alternative medicine
The nation's finest collection on medical quackery is the result of nearly seventy years of activity by the AMA's Department of Investigation. The collection contains close to 1,000 boxes of advertising pamphlets, letters, product containers, and actual equipment relating to more than 3,500 practitioners, products, and businesses that the AMA investigated between 1906 and 1975. Frequently used to compare present and past quackery practices, the collection has provided vital information for countless books, papers, and documents.
Access to the Historical Health Fraud Collection is provided at no charge to AMA members. This is the only AMA Archive collection that is open to collegiate and historical researchers from the public. Public access to this collection will be provided according to an established fee schedule.
Photographs, memorabilia, and other artifacts
Used for AMA Archives exhibits at the Annual and other selected meetings, this collection contains photographs, posters, and artifacts that tell the story of the AMA and American Medicine. Artifacts range from founder Nathan Davis's microscope and 19th century surgical kits to member badges worn at Annual Meetings.
The extensive photograph collection records medical events and AMA activities from the late 19th century until the present and is highly utilized by members, medical societies and AMA staff researchers for videos, documentaries, slide presentations, publication illustrations and exhibits.
Photos are only available to members and medical societies. Use policies and reproduction fees apply.
Rare AMA books and publications
Extensive collections of historically significant AMA publications, such as the complete holdings of Hygeia, the consumer health magazine (1923-1949); Transactions and Proceedings of AMA meetings from 1847-present; and the Journal of the American Medical Association (1883-present), one of the few bound sets in the nation containing advertising pages that provide a social as well as a medical history. Rare books range from Nathan Davis's 1855 "History of the American Medical Association" to an 1898 report by Walter Reed on typhoid fever in US military camps during the Spanish-American War, to the 1910 landmark "Medical Education in the United States and Canada" by Abraham Flexnor.
Films, videos, and audio tapes
Some AMA-produced films have been converted to VHS format and are available for loan to AMA members and medical societies. Among these is the 1962 film of Dr. Edward Annis (AMA president, 1963-64) responding in an empty Madison Square Garden to President Kennedy's Medicare speech presented in the same amphitheater. Other films include Bac Si My, about the Volunteer Physicians for Vietnam project (1967-73); Quackery, an interview with longtime AMA Bureau of Investigation director Oliver Field; and Caring for the Country, a celebration of the first 150 years of the American Medical Association.
Some audio tapes are also available for loan to AMA members and medical societies. Audio tapes chronicle public health issues, graduate medical education, lives of well known doctors, and the first Conference on Ethics and American Medicine held in 1997 as part of the AMA sesquicentennial celebration.
Content provided by: Archives