Medicine: A. M. A. Audit

In preparation for the annual meeting of the American Medical Association in Atlantic City next month, the officers last week published in the A. M. A. Journal an audit of their activities. A noteworthy item revealed that at last the Association had stopped losing members. On April 1, 99,536 of the country’s 164,514 doctors belonged to the A. M. A.

As usual the A. M. A. was richer. This was due almost entirely to the earnings of the A. M. A. Journal which Dr. Morris Fishbein, editor, has made greater in size, earnings and influence than any other medical publication on earth. Last year the Journal had 85,535 subscribers. They paid $603,192 in subscription fees (which also covered fellowship dues in the A. M. A.). Advertisers last year paid the Journal $727,112. Smaller items made the Journal’s total 1934 income $1,439,751. Cost of operating was $825,781 (including $399,598 for wages paying 518 employes). Profit: $613,969.

With its other publications, the A. M. A. has not been so successful. Hygeia, the health magazine, which Dr. Fishbein also edits, last year lost $2,059. (In 1933 it lost $30,127.) Special publications—including the erudite Archives of Internal Medicine, the stupendous Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus (cumulative index of significant articles in 1,300 medical publications), the 11-lb. Directory of U.S. and Canadian doctors—piled up a total deficit of $72,458 last year.

Other big A. M. A. expenditures: operating the organization. $99,993; inspecting and boosting the efficiency of U. S. medical schools and hospitals (the American College of Surgeons duplicates this expensive work), $67,537; testing the purity and efficacy of drugs, $37,328; legislative lobbies, $30,081.

Income from the Journal more than covered all those A. M. A. expenses last year. When the bookkeeper totaled every kind of A. M. A. income and expenditure, he had $252,528.02 to hand over to the A. M. A.’s treasury. That treasury now contains $851,972 in land and buildings, $1,181,405 in Government securities, $1,043,375 in railroad, municipal and other bonds, and enough minor assets to make a grand total of $3,686,443.72.