Report of Recording Secretary
The association year just closed has been unusual in our history in several respects. Several years of economical experience such as few, if any, have encountered, have left their blight on the medical profession along with others. Fortunately for the people, the general health throughout the United States has been unusually good.
By increased efforts, your officers have endeavored to meet the tide of human affairs. The consummation of the reorganization and continuance of our mother school is being realized. The loyalty of our membership has been severely tested, but has proven itself. We must carry on. Difficulties should only increase our determination.
(a) If progress means change, we must do our part in the restoration and continuation of progress. The world moves, and we must move forward with it. Backward or retreating steps must not be made.
(b) New remedies, new uses for old ones, with better understanding of their curative effects, must characterize our research. The world, especially the medical world, must not overlook the fact that Eclecticism consists in the careful selection and application of remedies to existing conditions in a given patient. Diagnosis is essential (as diagnosis develops remedies should suggest themselves), but diagnosis alone, or the naming of a disease, can not scientifically or empirically direct choice of remedy, since many varying conditions prevail in different patients who may be suffering from the same disease.
(c) We can not afford to aid in popularizing a remedy only to see it, and our honest efforts, compromised by cheap newspaper or radio advertising. No little advantage has been taken of the profession in this manner. We can not too roundly denounce such practices which in the name of medicine serve unscrupulous, unfair, and misleading advertising.
(c) In order to be respected, we must be respectable. This applies personally and collectively. We can hardly hope to rate others if our association condones or permits questionable methods. We are clean, or we are not clean. Our decisions must be in harmony with our laws and the best of established usages.
(d) Our expenditures this year have somewhat exceeded our income for the first time in twenty-eight years, chiefly due to the redoubled efforts to encourage and enlist the support of increased numbers, yet we would be open to severe criticism should we accept new blood which has not been proven compatible.
(f) The unfortunate change made in the dates fixed for our convention was due to conditions over which we had no control, and to this change no small amount of expense was attached, saying nothing of the extra work involved thereby, and doubtless substantial loss in attendance.
A list of collections and expenditures is submitted herewith for the use of the auditing committee.
(g) On account of the difficulties we have previously encountered, we trust that the committee on credentials will not report favorably upon any application for membership until the full record of the applicant is known.
(h) We now have a tentative list left over from last year on account of lack of information attending the applications, and because of the fact that, with one exception, none of the members of this list responded to our efforts to establish their worthiness, we must therefore recommend that the applications in this list be refused.
On account of the existing conditions, as above related, we offer the following standing resolution:
Whereas, The credentials committee has access to little or no data by which to judge the eligibility of applicants for membership;
Be It Resolved, That the committee on credentials, an annual committee, shall consist of five members, two of which shall be the secretaries of the National Eclectic Medical Association, and no two of which shall reside in any one state, to act on applications for membership and reinstatements. Said committee shall reserve the right to make final report at the next annual meeting following the year of application.
Respectfully submitted,
- (Signed) WM. P. BEST, Rec. Secy, N. E. M. A.
(This report was referred to the House of Delegates.)
