York Medico Ethical Association

This Association (called variously York Medico Ethical Association and York Medico Ethical Society) grew out of the York Association of General Practitioners, and the first meetings in the minute book at YMS 2/1/1 are of the York Association of General Practitioners. At a meeting of 26 January 1855 it was resolved to contact the Manchester Medico Ethical Association to obtain their rules. At a meeting of 18 January 1856, the rules of other Medico Ethical Associations having been obtained, it was recommended that the York Association of General Practitioners be dissolved and a Medico Ethical Association be founded to cover York and neighbourhood. The reason for the dissolution was the “altered circumstances of the profession since the formation of the York Association of General Practitioners”: the new association included physicians as well as general practitioners. The last meeting of the York Association of General Practitioners was on 25 January 1856 and the first meeting of the York Medico Ethical Association was on 2 April 1856. The minutes are sporadic and very few meetings of the Society (which it increasingly called itself) were held in the 1870s. In 1888 it disbanded and amalgamated with the York Medical Society, handing over to the Medical Society the surgical instruments which it had collected for members’ use. The York Medical Society appointed a Medico Ethical Committee on 13 October 1888, to carry out the objects of the former association.

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