Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/214

THE INSTITUTE IDEA

In June 1921, there was initiated another and more active form of cooperation between the Museum and important segments of the medical profession. The first such arrangement— there are now 27— was outlined in a joint letter of Major Callender, representing the Museum, and Doctors Harry S. Gradle and Ira Frank, of Chicago, representing the Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology. In substance, this undertaking reflected the realities of a situation in which the Academy's members could furnish pathological materials which the Museum did not have, while the Museum could supply the home for the Academy's collections and the technical staff for the preparation of specimens. The arrangement thus entered into was confirmed by the Academy at its meeting in October 1921.

It was noted that the Army Medical Museum, at that time, did not have on its staff anyone well versed in the pathology of the special fields covered by the Academy and qualified to do the consultative diagnosis, which was to be a major feature of the active cooperative work contemplated under the new arrangement. It was necessary, therefore, to set up a committee of the Academy's specialists, to whom all specimens on which there was any doubt in diagnosis were submitted. Most active in this work were Dr. Frederick Herman Verhoeff of Boston, the committee chairman, and Dr. Harry S. Gradle of Chicago. Both men were prompt in reporting on the doubtful cases and specimens submitted to them by Major Callender, who did much of the work on the easier specimens himself. 13

At first without a name or title, the new arrangement finally came to be called the Registry of Ophthalmic Pathology and became the first of the registries which make up the American Registry of Pathology. This great collaborative endeavor is housed and administered by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, but draws its strength and substance from the memberships of the 17 medical-specialty societies which sponsor the 27 individual registries now in operation.