The American Medical Association

The American Medical Association (AMA). 

It wasn’t created to save patients lives, it was created to save Doctors lives. 

Normally people assuming doctors want to save lives. People who make assumptions are easily exploited. 

The year was 1818. The setting was Transylvania. Not the homeland of Dracula, but Transylvania in east-central Kentucky. It’s a forested region bounded by the Ohio, Kentucky, and the Cumberland Rivers. Two doctors flipped a coin. After it landed, one doctor went left, the other right. They marched off 10 paces. Then they turned, raised their pistols, and prepared to kill each other.

In 1818 brawls between doctors were alarmingly common. 

One doctor in Philadelphia during that era agonized over how his colleagues, quote, “lived in an almost constant state of warfare.”

The reason for this warfare was simple and the same as today: Competition. The United States then turned out five times as many doctors per capita as most European countries, so there was fierce competition for patients. Doctors beat each other bloody all the time for stealing each others business.

But this duel in 1818 was especially noteworthy. That’s because it kicked off a series of events that led to the formation of the most powerful medical society in the United States.

That’s right. The American Medical Association itself traces back to this scuzzy skirmish and the backlash it provoked to find somehow, some way to prevent doctor-on-doctor murder.

It had zero to do with patience care. It had everything to do with doctor care, market controls and profits.

On the consumption of Spirits

 “Three bowls of wine only do I mix for the sensible: one is dedicated to health (and they drink first), the second to love and pleasure, the third to sleep—when this is drunk up wise guests go home.

The fourth krater is ours no longer but belongs to hybris (outrage), the fifth to arguments, the sixth to drunken revel, the seventh to black eyes, the eight to the bailiff’s, the ninth belongs to bitter anger, and the tenth to madness that makes people throw things.”

~ Eubuleus

The wisdom of Kings

 

After he conquered all he could see and made himself King. Cnut was at the height of his power, he took his chair to the edge of his lands as the tide was coming in. He said to the rising water, "You are subject to me, as the land on which I am sitting is mine, and no one can resist me with impunity. I command you not to rise on to my land or wet my clothing for I am your master." But the water came up as usual, and disrespectfully drenched his feet. Jumping back, the king cried, "Let all the world know that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of that name save that by whose will heaven, earth and the sea obey eternal laws."