Arkham Medical Society

Arkham Medical Society
Abbreviation:	AMS
Group Numbers:	All doctors and scientists residing in Arkham borough
Leadership:	Zmflavius | talk | AMS
Goals:	The AMS seeks to continue its tradition of providing effective psychiatric care to all residents of Arkham Borough, defined as being the suburbs of Old Arkham and New Arkham.
Recruitment Policy:	leave a message on Zmflavius's talk page
Contact:	Zmflavius | talk | AMS

Arkham Medical Society Mandate

Prior to the zombie outbreak, the Malton suburbs of Old and New Arkham, sometimes referred to together as 'Arkham Borough' was the primary center for Malton's burgeoning psychiatric research commmunity. The six hospitals of Arkham, Emma General Hospital, St. Timothy's Hospital, Zephyrinus General Hospital, St. Humphrey's Hospital, and St. Luke's Hospital, together with the medical campus of Miskatonic University located at the juncture of the two suburbs, were the center of this community, providing a high degree of both clinical and research expertise. While these hospitals had all originally been established as sanitariums in the 19th century, the gradual expansion of Malton's borders during the urbanization of the 70s, converting the placid fields and rolling hills of Arkham into commuter suburbs led to an increased demand for medical care that saw the conversion of the 'Arkham Asylums' into full-service hospitals. The Arkham Psychiatric Society, the local professional society of the doctors staffing these hospitals, was thus renamed the 'Arkham Medical Society.'

Rumors have abounded since they were first established that far from being peaceful sanitariums, the asylums were in fact the site of horrific abuses and terrifying experimentation, including some dabbling in the occult, charges that the Arkham Medical Society has always firmly and categorically denied. The uncovering via a mass escape from St. Luke's Hospital of what could only be described as a 'torture chamber' in in the secure containment facilities of the basement during the 1920s, and the subsequent discovery of similar facilities in other Arkham hospitals' basements, certainly did not help matters, and led to a wholesale process of not entirely successful reform. While the hospitals' modern medical track record was distinguished mainly by its ordinariness, being neither exceptionally good nor bad, current and former patients frequently claimed to be disturbed by supernatural nightmares and frightening visions during their stays, not exactly desirable qualities for a psychiatric hospital. It was this, it is widely believed, in addition to the widespread expansion of demand for more ordinary medical services, which was a major impetus for these hospitals' conversion to full-service medical hospitals and the de-emphasis on the original psychiatric mission. Reform continued apace and by the 1990s, Arkham Asylums were no longer (solely) a byword for how not to provide psychiatric care...with a few notable exceptions.

Zeno Marcus Flavius, on the eve of the outbreak, was the newly elected head of the Arkham Medical Society, a surgeon, not a psychiatrist by training, and committed to a steady program of growth and expansion in the suburbs, particularly focused on deepening the Arkham Medical Society and Miskatonic University's close research ties with the burgeoning NecroTech Corporation, which in recent years had rapidly grown to become one of the city's largest employers. The sudden outbreak resulted in a considerable change in his priorities however.

Society Information

• Zmflavius is the current chairman of the society and primary contact person.
• St. Luke's Hospital is the headquarters of the AMS. A radio transmitter, powered generator, and suitable level of barricading is to be maintained there at all times.