Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/208

THE INSTITUTE IDEA Bulletin No. 6, August 1914. This special interest, demonstrated ever since the time of the Spanish- American War, was further evidenced by his post-retirement career as professor and chairman of the Department of Tropical Medicine at Tulane University.2

His successor at the Museum, in 1920, was Maj. George Russell Callender (fig. 62), a native of Massachusetts and a graduate of Tufts Medical College, who had served as Assistant Curator during Colonel Craig's administration. Major Callender was the first practicing pathologist to head the institution which was foremost in the Nation in the collection, preservation, and presentation of the raw materials of pathology and which, a quarter of a century later, was to become in name as well as in function an institute of pathology. The problem which the Museum faced in the years after the First World War was three-pronged, with an enormous increase in the quantities of materials received, a diminishing work force to accession, catalog, and process the materials, and rigid limitations in the space available. During and just after the First World War, the collections of the Museum more than doubled, rising from fewer than 48,000 to more than 100,000 specimens. The new specimens had to be accessioned and given numbers in a filing system which contemplated bringing together and keeping with each specimen all available pertinent information such as clinical histories, protocols of autopsies, photographs, X-ray plates, tissue blocks, microscopic slides, and anything else which might shed light on the pathological condition of the specimen.

Keeping up with the routine of accessioning and cataloging these materials as they came in "entailed a very large amount of work upon a very small clerical force," which was "the more difficult because of the constant decrease of personnel and the constant increase of work due to the material received from France," as well as that which came in from the hospitals in the United States as they were closed after the War.3

More difficult to deal with than the problem of doing more work with fewer people was the problem of finding space in an already overcrowd.