Baltimore County Medical Association (BCMA)

The Baltimore County Medical Association is a non-profit organization. The purpose of this Association shall be to federate and bring into one society the medical profession of Baltimore County; to extend medical knowledge and advance medical sciences; to elevate the standard of medicine and secure the enactment of just laws relating to the practice of medicine and the public health; to foster friendly relations among the physicians; and to enlighten and inform the public, so that the profession shall become more useful in the prevention of disease, and in prolonging and adding comfort to life.

Five doctors from Baltimore County were in the founders’ group of the Medical and Chirurgical Faculty of the State of Maryland in 1799, well before the birth of the county society. Dr. Charles M. Ellis, in his presidential address at MedChi in 1898, noted the disparity between a city and a country practice. The city physicians had hospitals and dispensaries and could take advantage of post-graduate courses, consultations, and libraries.

The practice of medicine must have been difficult in Baltimore County early in the 1890s. Specialists did not exist, there were no hospitals, and transportation was most limited. Most doctors had little formal learning experience after medical school although a few had internships. Thus, many of these men felt the need of further medical education for the treatment of diseases for which they, as individuals, had little to offer.

To change their particular medical environment, a small group of Baltimore County medical practitioners, persuaded of the advantages of the diffusion of knowledge and the cultivation of friendly relations, constituted themselves an association for the above purposes. They agreed to be governed by an adopted Constitution and Bylaws, in addition to the Code of Ethics of the American Medical Association.