THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS—ITS GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT

Abstract

Next month—January 1948—the first issue of the Academy's new journal, Pediatrics makes its appearance. In a way this marks a milestone in the developmental history of our organization. It seems appropriate that on this occasion we should pause for a quick look back over our record of the past sixteen years, and for a somewhat more detailed examination of the expanded program of activities in which we are now engaged. We may well ask ourselves to what extent the Academy has succeeded in carrying out the purposes which our founders had in mind. Also, it seems pertinent to inquire how effectively and how completely we are utilizing the individual and collective potentialities contained within our organization to find solutions for the many troublesome problems now existent in the socio-economic phases of medical practice. According to our historian, Dr. Marshall Pease, the Academy was conceived sometime in 1922, although its actual birth did not occur until some eight years later. It is a matter of history that at a meeting of the American Medical Association in 1922 the Section on Pediatrics passed a resolution favoring the Sheppard-Towner Act. On the same day the House of Delegates of the American Medical Association passed a resolution condemning the Act and later on passed another resolution that Sections of the American Medical Association should confine their activities to the scientihc aspects of medicine and leave matters of policy to the House of Delegates. From then on there was agitation for an independent and national