Dr. A.C. Kinney's Baby Turns 150: How the Oregon Medical Association was born

By Ken Bilderback

When Alfred Coleman Kinney was born in 1850, the Wapato band of the Atfalati people still roamed the prairie where his family lived near what today is Newberg. Doctors traveled by horse and buggy. Many members of the profession considered some of their colleagues to be under-educated and unqualified to hold the title of doctor.

By 1874, young “A.C.” Kinney had graduated from medical school in New York and was one of the founders and first President of the Oregon State Medical Society, later to be known as the Oregon Medical Association.

Although he was just 24 when the Society was founded, Dr. Kinney’s life was not an easy one. By his early teens he was hauling flour more than a dozen miles round-trip in a cart drawn by mules.

After graduating from Bellevue Medical School in New York City he quickly established himself as one of the top surgeons in Oregon, trekking up and down the muddy or dusty roads of the Willamette Valley wherever his skills were needed. He called the multitude of gunshot wounds he treated the bane of his practice, but he also delivered babies and performed surgeries other doctors refused out of fear, he said, because malpractice suits were very common in the 1800s. He also fought contagious diseases such as smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria, diphtheria and typhoid.

The Oregon that Dr. Kinney returned to after medical school was a hodgepodge of medical standards. Some doctors had been apprentices, some were itinerant healers, some were self-taught, while others had attended some of the best medical schools in the country. Treatments varied from prescribing what then were state-of-the-art medicines to prescribing a stiff shot of whiskey and morphine for what ailed a patient. Some surgeries were performed in operating rooms while others were in homes or on the muddy fields after accidents.

In 1867, Willamette University opened a college of medicine, and Salem became the center of medical activity in Oregon. The Dean, Dr. Horace Carpenter, set out to standardize medical practices across the state. Dr. Carpenter and his colleagues organized medical societies for physicians in Linn, Marion, Polk and Yamhill counties, but Oregon lacked a statewide organization. In 1874, Dr. Carpenter called for all doctors to meet to form a state medical society.

Dr. Carpenter invited only doctors who had attended medical schools and sought to establish professional standards in line with the American Medical Association. On September 1, 1874, the doctors met at Willamette University and by the end of the day had created the Society. The next day 14 doctors each paid five dollars in dues and set out to elect a President. Initially, the group was split in selecting the ideal candidate for President. In his book The Doctor in Oregon, Olaf Larsell wrote that “(Dr.) Carpenter called Dr. Alfred C. Kinney to one side and persuaded him to allow his name to be presented as a compromise candidate.”

Dr. Kinney was one of the youngest doctors at the meeting, but he had the support of the other doctors present, and at the age of 24 was elected president of the Oregon State Medical Society. The Medical Society members had many priorities but no power to enforce standards in a state with no government authority regulating the practice of medicine. Dr. Kinney was credited with helping to establish St. Vincent Hospital in Portland and advocating for the Oregon State Hospital in Salem, but his true passion was public health. He worked for decades to establish a state Board of Health, largely to eradicate typhoid fever.

In 1876 one of Dr. Kinney’s colleagues, Dr. E.R. Fiske of Portland, submitted a resolution to the Medical Society to petition the state Legislature to create a Board of Health, but his effort went nowhere.

In 1881, four years into the fight for higher standards, a frustrated Dr. C.H. Merrick of Canyonville offered an impassioned plea to the legislature asking them to address the dubious training of doctors in the state.

The founding members of the Society shared more than a passion for medicine. Nearly all felt a commitment to community service. Dr. Kinney, for example, served as mayor of Astoria, while other early doctors served in the Legislature. As Dr. Kinney reflected in an interview in 1921, “If you will look over the list of doctors of the state during the past twenty years, you will find that most of them have been willing to devote time to the advancement of their communities and of the state. I believe the doctors of the state realize as much as those of any other profession their civic responsibilities, and respond accordingly.” In the early years of the Society, doctors played an influential role in politics, including Dr. Andrew Smith of Portland.

For many years the Society had debated resolutions to establish a Board of Health but Oregon remained one of only a few states without such a body. Several piecemeal laws had been passed to control who could prescribe medicine and call themselves “Doctor,” including the establishment of the State Board of Medical Examiners in 1889 that would examine the educational credentials of physicians and issue licenses. Despite these advancements, there still was no official agency charged with regulating medical practice and combatting still-rampant contagious diseases.

Finally, Dr. Smith ran for the Legislature and led the successful effort create a Board of Health in 1903, nearly 20 years after the Medical Society was created.

With his dream of a Board of Health now realized, Dr. Kinney turned his sights back on his own private practice. In 1924 Dr. Kinney still was active in medicine and the Medical Society elected him for his second term as president, 50 years after his first. In his acceptance speech, Dr. Kinney recalled the zeal he felt while launching the Society half a century earlier. “The first day it was talked over pro and con,” he recalled.“ He discussed the problem of poorly-educated and poorly- trained doctors practicing in the state and whether the Society could be a success. Dr. Kinney also promised to visit every physician in Oregon during his year as president which took a good deal of time as he had to travel part of the way on foot. Every physician in the state of Oregon, excepting two or three that lived at an extreme place, was met within the year.

In an interview with The Oregonian in 1941, Dr. Kinney recalled that members also committed to electing him again if he still was practicing in 1949 when he would turn 100 years old.

More than 60 years into his practice, the decades of horseback and buggy rides, along with a bout of tuberculosis and a stroke, forced Dr. Alfred C. Kinney to retire. He didn’t live to see the Medical Society change its name to the Oregon Medical Association in 1963, nor did he live to serve his third term as president, dying at the age of 93, six years short of the Association’s 75^th year. However, Dr. Kinney did live to witness nearly half of the OMA’s 150 years. He watched as horses and buggies were replaced by cars. He saw typhoid fever, smallpox, and other diseases eradicated in his beloved Oregon. And his legacy lives on. The Oregon Medical Association will turn 150 years old on September 1, 2024.