Our story begins at eleven o'clock in the morning on July 17, 1866, when 24 Cumberland County physicians arrived at the Court House in Carlisle. This was the largest gathering of physicians in the county up to that time and, in addition to seven doctors from Carlisle, included practitioners from Shippensburg, Newville, Mechanicsburg, New Cumberland, West Fairview, and a number of other smaller points in the county.
The first order of business was to choose officers, and Dr. Joseph Crain from Hogestown was elected the Cumberland County Medical Society's first president. Dr. Crain was a graduate of Dickinson College, and had served a three-year apprenticeship with Dr. Whiteside in Harrisburg, before attending a year's series of lectures at the newly opened Jefferson Medical College. Dr. William W Dale, in a report of Dr. Crain's death in 1876, wrote that "at the time [Dr. Crain] commenced the practice [of medicine] in 1830, the life of a country practitioner was emphatically a life of toil, exposure, and self-denial. Modern conveyances were not in use, the travel was done entirely on horseback [and Dale had often] met him with a miniature drug store in his medical bag jogging along the road paying his daily visits to his patients." Dr. William Rankin from Shippensburg, who was not present at this first meeting of the Society, was, however, elected to the position of first vice-president. Born in Center County in 1795, he was, at the age of 71, probably the oldest physician in active practice in the county at that time. Dr. Rankin graduated from Washington College at the age of 18 and received his M.D. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1819 after attending two eighteen-week series of lectures and serving a preceptorship with Dr. Dean in Chambersburg. Dr. Dale, one of Carlisle's most active physicians, was chosen as second vice-president. He was a graduate of Jefferson Medical College in 1838 and had served as a surgeon during the Civil War. In addition to being a successful medical practitioner, he was a Mason, a trustee of Metzger College, director of the Carlisle Manufacturing Company, president of the Carlisle Gas, Water & Electric Company, director and vice-president of the Carlisle Bank, and vice-president of the State Medical Society on two occasions. Dr. George Haldeman from Newville, who later emigrated to Kansas, became recording secretary, and Dr. S. B. Kieffer, an 1851 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania practicing in Carlisle, was made corresponding secretary. Three censors were chosen, whose duties were "to inquire into the character and standing of applicants for membership and to investigate disagreements among members and charges brought against any member.'
Committees were formed during that first meeting to write a constitution, by-laws, code of ethics, and a fee bill. Qualifications for membership had already been laid down by the State Medical Society. A member of a County Society "had to be a graduate in Medicine of some respectable Medical School or been a practitioner for at least fifteen years; was in good moral and professional standing in the place where he resided and was a regular practitioner." Physicians who dealt in patent remedies or who held a patent for an instrument of surgery were disqualified. The County Society had to observe the Code of Ethics adopted by the State Society, had the right to fix a fee bill for regulating the charges of its members, and had “full authority to adopt such measures as they may deem most efficient for mutual improvement, for exciting a spirit of emulation, for facilitating the dissemination of useful information, for promoting friendly intercourse among its members, and for the advancement of medical science." Most of the afternoon of the first meeting was spent in discussing the fee bill and much of the discussion in the subsequent September meeting was also concerned with the fee bill and deviations from it. By the end of its first year, 49 doctors had been enrolled, and Dr. Kieffer was able to report to the State Society that "four-fifths of all the regular physicians in the county were members."
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