Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/182

164 sionary journey to the camps in mind, it was decided to "issue a pamphlet containing explicit directions for collecting, preserving and shipping gross anatomical material." The resulting circular, which was reviewed and revised with the help of leading pathologists, stated explicitly what material was wanted by the Museum and how it should be prepared and shipped. It was undated, but was not distributed to the hospitals whose autopsy methods it sought to improve until December 1918, after the armistice. 12

In its efforts to procure suitable specimens, the Museum did not depend wholly on either this definitive circular or the earlier promulgations of The Surgeon General or the War Department. Appeals had been addressed to "many camp pathologists personally known to members of the Museum staff," and such letters had produced some results. Dr. W. G. MacCallum, of the College of Physicians and Surgeons, for example, had sent in "a large number of pneumonic lungs which formed the sole representatives of the epidemic of 1917-1918." 13

At the same time, therefore, that it was seeking to enlist the interest and assistance of pathologists in the field, the pathology department of the Museum was building up and training its own staff in the work of receiving and caring for the specimens which were sought.

Dr. Daniel Smith Lamb, who had stood "as a lone sentinel guarding the interests of pathological anatomy, crowded into two small rooms, but faithfully performing his function day by day as he has been doing year by year," no longer stood alone. "With rare generosity," Dr. Ewing wrote, Dr. Lamb "placed at the disposal of the staff of new men his valuable museum collection of microscopes and laboratory utensils." More rooms were secured and were transformed into an active laboratory of pathology, a transformation due, says Dr. Ewing, to the efforts of Major Herrick, who had been so summarily metamorphosed into a general pathologist by Colonel Owen. 14

In assembling and training a staff for the work in pathology, Major Herrick was fortunate in being able to use the services of some of the men whom he had previously enlisted for the Medical Department's section on brain surgery. Ten of these university-trained histologists, who had entered military service by voluntary induction for neuropathological laboratory work, were assigned to the Museum, and by the time hostilities ended were giving excellent service.