Stevens on AMA’s new conservatism after 1920

“Seen from the point of view of the general practitioner who had been trained in a proprietary or university school at the end of the nineteenth century and who had begun practice at a time when there was little question of the profession’s monopoly of the whole health field, the physician was indeed threatened. He was threatened by increased specialization. He was threatened by the hospital as a potential center for a medical elite. He was threatened by the public’s growing interest in the standards of medical care. And all these threats were heightened whenever the government, particularly the federal government, hinted that it might lend them aid” (Stevens, 146-47).