C o m pa s s P o i n t s
THANK YOU
for your Membership Dr. Albert Rhoads Timothy J. (T.J.) Huckleberry, MPA Executive Director
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s many of you already know BCMS has decided to move from our office in the Berks Visiting Nurses Office Building to 875 Berkshire Boulevard, Suite 102B. We will officially be operational on April 1. Once again on behalf of the Medical Society we thank BVNA for housing us for so many years and I look forward to partnering with them in our future initiatives. In the meantime, Betsy and I are hard at work packing, purging, and prepping for our move. Being the new guy this move once again gave me another opportunity to review our files and other accumulated documents to get a better sense of who we were and what we can build on. I was particularly interested in our fabled BCMS hutch. For members who are unaware, our hutch houses some of our Society’s most historic artifacts and documents. It holds rare medical books donated throughout our 192-year history, antique medical equipment, minutes of meetings and rosters of countless past members and councils, and archives of our Medical Record dating back as far as 1918. It’s our most tangible link to our Society’s great lineage. As I kept diving into the seemingly endless amounts of cabinet space I was half expecting to find Benjamin Rush’s last will and testament or some etching in the back walls illustrating a caveman doctor’s first attempt at collecting an insurance claim ( I imagine a big spikey club was involved). I was sure I was going to uncover something special as I continued my “excavation” ...and I did. Neatly standing in the lowest and last cabinet I cleaned out was an old heavy cardboard poster tube with a 15 cent stamp and a South Chicago return address. Its contents was a perfectly intact and incredibly illustrated membership certificate with the enrollment date of 1896. The name on the certificate was Dr. Albert Rhoads, M.D. It reads:
Instituted for the promotion of Medical Knowledge for the mutual improvement and social intercourse of Medical Practitioners, and for supporting the character of the Medical Profession; reposing confidence in the knowledge, skill, and integrity of
Dr. Albert Rhoads, M.D.
have constituted him as an active member thereof. Elected July A.D. 1883 In the testimony where of are hereby affixed the names of the proper officers this 14th day of January A.D. 1896. After reading this, I hope you too feel how remarkable and enduring these words are and how eerily similar our values and goals are to that of our forerunners. It certainly gave me some thought. I imagine what Dr. Rhoads would think of medicine today, with all of our advancements and technology and yet all of the hurdles that physicians have to undergo to simply practice;
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