This lectureship is supported by a sum of money bequeathed to the Association by its namesake in 1960. In 1963 the Council decided to use the income from the fund created from the bequest to support a 30-minute lecture given at the annual meeting by a member selected by the President. The first lecture, entitled “Urinary Stone,” was given by Dr. John Eager Howard of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in 1965.
Dr. Metzger, a prominent Tucson physician, died on May 26, 1958, in a local hospital, after some seven years of semi-invalidism following three heart attacks. He was born in Oak Harbor, Ohio, attended Ohio State University for one year and the University of Michigan for three years, before graduating from Rush Medical College in 1901.
He first practiced medicine in Toledo, Ohio, but ill health (presumably tuberculosis) caused him to move to Monrovia, California in 1909, where he worked as an assistant physician at the Pottenger Sanatorium until 1911. He then moved to Tucson and opened the city's first tuberculosis sanatorium. Several years later he traveled to Leysin, Switzerland to study “sun therapy.” On his return to Tucson, he helped found a second sanatorium, the Desert Sanatorium, which later evolved into the Tucson Medical Center, the largest private hospital in Southern Arizona today. During the Spanish-American War, he served in the medical corps and remained in the Army medical reserve corps during World War I.
In 1941, Governor Sidney P. Osborn appointed Dr. Metzger superintendent of the Arizona State (psychiatric) Hospital, a post he held for a short time before becoming chairman of the hospital board. When Dr. Metzger arrived as director, the institution was poorly managed, in large part because of a long history of political interference. Dr. Metzger provided the necessary leadership to transform it into a first-class hospital for the mentally ill.
Dr. Metzger was a member of the county and state medical societies, as well as the AMA and the New York Academy of Medicine. He was elected into ACCA in 1922.
The Jeremiah Metzger Lectures
| 1964 | John Eager Howard, MD. Urinary Stone. |
| 1965 | Grant W. Liddle, MD. Analyse Circadian Rhythms of Adrenal Secretions. |
| 1966 | John P. Merrill, MD. What Can We Do for the Patient with Renal Failure? |
| 1967 | Steward Wolf, MD. Neural Mechanisms in Sudden Cardiac Death. |
| 1968 | Robert W. Wilkins, MD. Clinical and Climatological Observations of Hypertension. |
| 1969 | James B. Wyngaarden, MD. The Pathophysiology of Hyperuricemia in Gout. |
| 1970 | A. McGehee Harvey, MD. Myasthenia Gravis—The First 100 Years of Perspective. |
| 1971 | Marvin D. Siperstein, MD, PhD. The Relationship of Cholesterol Bio-synthesis to Cancer. |
| 1972 | George F. Cahill, Jr., MD. Ketosis. |
| 1973 | Richard B. Hornick, MD. Salmonella Infections—Newer Perspectives of an Old Infection. |
| 1974 | Jacques Genest, MD. The Renin-Angiotensin System. |
| 1975 | Victor A. McKusick, MD. New Genetic Insight into Old Diseases. |
| 1976 | Robert M. Bird, MD. Information Transfer in the Service of Medicine. |
| 1977 | Robert Austrian, MD. Gold and Pneumococci. |
| 1978 | Carl W. Gottschalk, MD. The Nephrons in Bright's Disease: Their Structure and Function. |
| 1979 | Sheldon M. Wolff, MD. The Pathogenesis of Fever in Human Subjects. |
| 1980 | Charles C. J. Carpenter, MD. Myths, Mandarins and Molecules: The Cautionary Tale of Cholera. |
| 1981 | Leighton E. Cluff, MD. The Climate of Patient Care and Medical Education. |
| 1982 | Daniel D. Federman, MD. The Determinants of Human Sexuality. |
| 1983 | Purnell W. Choppin, MD. Membrane Proteins and Virus Virulence. |
| 1984 | Jack M. Gwaltney, Jr., MD. Climatology and the Common Cold. |
| 1985 | Louis Tobian, MD. High Potassium Diets Strongly Protect Against Stroke Deaths and Renal Disease: A Possible Legacy from Prehistoric Man. |
| 1986 | Richard S. Ross, MD. Thrombolysis and Dilatation in Coronary Occlusion. |
| 1987 | William N. Kelley, MD, and Thomas D. Palella, MD. Current Status of Human Gene Therapy. |
| 1988 | John A. Oates, MD. Participation of Eicosanoids in the Syndromes of Myocardial Ischemia. |
| 1989 | David G. Nathan, MD. The Regulation of Hematopoiesis by Growth Factors. |
| 1990 | Michel Chrétien, O.C., MD. From POMC to Functional Diversity of Neural Peptides: The Key Importance of Convertases. |
| 1991 | Gerald L. Mandell, MD. Microbial Defenses Against Killing by Phagocytes. |
| 1992 | Jeremiah A. Barondess, MD. The Future of Generalism. |
| 1993 | John D. Stobo, MD. Academic Health Centers: Change Agents for Health Care Reform. |
| 1994 | J. Claude Bennett, MD. Academic Medicine: Building on the Strengths of the Past as We Approach a Cloudy Future. |
| 1995 | Stuart Bondurant, MD. On the Climate of the City. |
| 1996 | Edward W. Hook, MD. Humanities in Medicine: Treatment of a Deficiency Disorder. |
| 1997 | R. Gordon Douglas, Jr., MD. Vaccine Prophylaxis Today: It's Science, Application and Politics. |
| 1998 | James R. Gavin, III. Academe Confronts a Future of Growing Diversity: Will We Lead or Will We Follow? |
| 1999 | John Mendelsohn, MD. Targeted Cancer Therapy. |
| 2000 | Ralph L. Nachman, MD. Hypercoagulable States: Challenges and Opportunities. |
| 2001 | Jared J. Grantham, MD. Polycystic Kidney Disease: Old Disease in a New Context. |
| 2002 | R. Wayne Alexander, MD, PhD. Pathogenesis of Atherosclerosis: Redox As a Unifying Mechanism. |
| 2003 | Merle A. Sande, MD, MACP. The Terrible Impact of AIDS on Africa—The Case for Prevention & Treatment Now. |
| 2004 | C. Richard Conti, MD. The Evolution of Management of Acute Coronary Syndromes. |
| 2005 | John G. Bartlett, MD. Avian Influenza. |
| 2006 | James A. Fagan, MD. Intelligent Design of Cancer Therapy: Trials and Tribulations. |
| 2007 | Stephen B. Greenberg. Osler-Web-Rendezvous: Impact of the Information Explosion on Medical Education. |
| 2008 | Katherine A. High, MD. Gene Therapy for Inherited Disorders: From Christmas Disease to Leber's Amaurosis. |
| 2009 | Eric G. Neilson, MD. The Origin of Fibroblasts and the Terminality of Epithelial Differentiation. |
| 2010 | Antonio M. Gotto, MD. Cholesterol, Inflammation and Cardiovascular Disease: Is It All LDL? |
| 2011 | Martin JL. Blaser, MD. Global Warming Redux: The Disappearing Microbiota and Epidemic Obesity. |
| 2012 | Nancy J. Brown, MD. Developing Physician-Scientists: A perspective. |
| 2013 | Christopher Plowe, MD. New Additions to the Toolbox for Glosbal Malaria Eradication. |
| 2014 | Raymond N. Dubois, MD, PhD. Inflammation, Immune Modulators and Chronic Disease. |
| 2015 | Anne A. Gershon, MD, and Michael D. Gershon, MD. Varicella Zoster Virus: From Outside to Inside. |
| 2016 | Edward J. Benz, Jr., MD. Cancer in the Twenty-First Century: An Inside View From an Outsider. |
| 2017 | Ronald Crystal, MD. Novel Therapeutic Strategies for Allergic Disorders. |
| 2018 | Allen Spiegel, MD. A Brief History of Eugenics in America: Implications for Medicine in the 21st Century. |
| 2019 | Joseph Fins, MD. Disorders of Consciousness & the Normative Uncertainty of an Emerging Nosology. |
| 2022 | William G. Kaelin, Jr., MD. von Hippel-Lindau Disease: Insights into Oxygen Sensing, Cancer and Drugging the Undruggable. |
| 2022 | Katherine A. High, MD. Turning Genes Into Medicines: Highlights and Hurdles in the Development of Gene Therapy for Genetic Disease. |
| 2023 | John M. Carethers, MD. Environmental Influences on Colorectal Cancer. |
| 2024 | Philip A. Mackowiak, MD. The First Quarter of ACCA's Second Century…“Warts and All.” |