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On 21 May 1962, the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology entered upon the second century of its life. It had started one hundred years before as an item in Circular No. 2, of the Surgeon General's Office, in which Brig. Gen. William Alexander Hammond, The Surgeon General, announced his intention to establish an Army Medical Museum, for which medical officers were directed to collect specimens of morbid anatomy.

The collections with which the Museum started consisted of three dried and varnished bones resting on a little shelf above the inkstand on the desk of Brigade Surgeon John Hill Brinton, the young medical officer who was to become the first curator of the Museum which was to be established.

The Museum thus launched evolved into the Army Institute of Pathology which became the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology—a veritable treasure house of medical knowledge and an active center for consultation, research, and education in the effects of disease and injury upon the form and function of living cells and tissue.

For back of the announcement in Circular No. 2 was an idea—the idea that by careful collection, comparison, and study of the anatomical wreckage of the great war in which the United States and the Confederate States were then engaged, there might emerge a body of knowledge and understanding which would, in time, lead to the lessening of human suffering and the saving of human life.

To that end, the Museum and its successor Institutes have followed General Hammond's admonition, "diligently to collect" specimens of morbid anatomy and other materials of value and interest to the study of military medicine or surgery until, at the opening of the second century of its life, the Institute had in its collections more than 1,000,000 specimens—and is continuing to receive such specimens at the rate of 200 per day.

The institution which has grown to such proportions in its first century is unique in its organization and mission. It was founded and for 87 years