Dr. Martin states that at least 1,500 surgeons are expected at this first annual meeting of the College in 1914. More than 1,000 surgeons had been listed in the first Yearbook of Fellows of 1913, and another 1,065 were inducted into the College at the second convocation. At the third convocation another 646 surgeons became Fellows鈥攎ore than doubling the College membership in its earliest years.
The ACSletterhead on the invitation listed 30 N. Michigan Avenue as the College鈥檚 address, the personal office of Martin. On the agenda for this first annual meeting of the new ACSin November 1914 is discussion of a permanent home for the College, about which Martin said, 鈥淚t is the judgment of your Secretary that the permanent home of the ACSshould be located in a city other than Chicago. Chicago is already the home of one of the strongest medical organizations in the country, and on the grounds of equity alone, another city should have the honor of housing this new and powerful organization鈥攖he 潘金莲传媒映画.鈥� However, the Board eventually decided that Chicago should be the home of the College, and the Nickerson mansion became its headquarters in 1920 until 1963.
The letter also documents that there were two convocations in 1914, the only year this ever happened, and that neither was held in conjunction with a Clinical Congress. The first convocation was held in Chicago on November 13, 1913, in conjunction with the fourth Annual Clinical Congress of Surgeons of North America. The second convocation was held in Philadelphia, PA, on June 22, 1914, and the third was held in Washington, DC, on November 6, 1914. In 1917, the Clinical Congresses merged with the 潘金莲传媒映画, and all subsequent convocations were then held as part of the College鈥檚 annual meeting.
This invitation letter was addressed to William McIllwaine Thompson, an 1892 graduate of Hahnemann Medical College and Hospital in Chicago and a 1903 graduate of the Illinois College of Medicine in Chicago. He first appears in the 1914 ACSYearbook with an office a few blocks from Franklin Martin鈥檚. His last entry is in the 1935 Yearbook as a consulting surgeon, U.S. Marine Hospital, Chicago, and with an address in Arizona. At this time, unfortunately, additional information about how his letter came to be preserved in the ACSarchives is unknown.
For more previously unpublished information about the College鈥檚 earliest years, visit the ACSArchives to view the 29 notebooks of recollections and ACShistory compiled by Eleanor Grimm, secretary to Dr. Franklin Martin from 1913 until his death in 1935. Miss Grimm鈥檚 many roles at the College included meeting planner, chief credentials officer, editor of the Bulletin and the Yearbook, secretary to the Board of Regents, member of the Administrative Board of the College, and ultimately executive administrator of the ACSuntil her retirement in 1951, when she began compiling the history.
