When did organized periodic health screening of asymptomatic populations begin as an institutional practice?
Accounts differ on the founding moment: one traces organized periodic screening to the Life Extension Institute, formed in the United States in 1913; another dates its annual-examination program to 1914; still others point to individual physicians recommending periodic examinations decades earlier. No single year is treated as canonical across sources.
What would resolve this A history-of-medicine source that traces the specific institutional and professional-society record (AMA recommendations, insurance-industry practice, the Life Extension Institute's own founding documents) closely enough to fix a defensible first year, rather than a secondary account repeating an approximate date.
History of medicine, public health historyUnited States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Official Site