Modern Medicine in New Mexico: The State Medical Society From 1949-2009

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Sixty years ago, modern medicine finally made its way to New Mexico. As World War II wound down, the state was a quaint backwater filled with aging quacks, Grade C medical graduates, and a vest-pocket professional organization. A group of young-gun doctors and an ex-Marine from Oklahoma changed all that. The state boomed with postwar specialists and patients seeking the sun, and the New Mexico Medical Society (NMMS) quarterbacked the sea changes in state health care. At any number of tipping points–physician shortages, malpractice nightmares, and the crisis of managed care–the state Society played a pivotal role.

Based upon archival research and extended interviews with more than fifty past presidents of the NMMS, this volume issued in 2010 describes how the New Mexico Chapter of the American Academy of Family Physicians became a national leader on medical-legal matters, clinical prevention, and continuing education. Rich with anecdotal detail, this work uses the careers of physician-leaders as a prism to present the evolution of state medicine from World War II into the new millennium.