Book description
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.
Author Michael Joe Dupont is a former newspaper reporter who now
writes award-winning, book-length nonfiction.
