Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/251

236 reduced, it having been found that the display had a "greater appeal to the laity if it is not confusingly overcrowded." The great bulk of the collections were relegated to storage, but in such form that the material was always available for study. The Museum had taken its place "as one of the more popular sights in Washington," having had, for the first time, more than 100,000 visitors in a year. 12

Substantial evidences of ground gained were found in the number and distinction of the medical collections given to the Museum in the years of its resurgence (fig. 75). Important contributions during 1938 included a collection of models, pictures, and actual specimens covering comprehensively the history of appliances used in maxillofacial surgery, assembled by Dr. George Morris Dorrance of Philadelphia, and described as "an unique collection of great historic value"; a collection of historic and modern bronchoscopes and esophagoscopes devised by Dr. Chevalier Jackson of Philadelphia and his son, and of hundreds of foreign bodies removed by their use; a collection of models and drawings developed in the postgraduate course in otolaryngology at the Harvard Medical School under the supervision of Dr. Harris Peyton Mosher, together with material representing Dr. Mosher's original research in diseases of the esophagus; and several types of artificial larynxes, with which persons who have lost their larynx can talk, presented by Dr. LeRoy Allan Schall of Boston.

The most notable gift of this period was the world-famous Huntington collection of anatomical material, perhaps the largest collection in the world in its field. The collection had been gathered by Dr. George Sumner Huntington of the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, the first full-time professor of anatomy in this country, in the years between 1889 and his death in 1925. It includes some 5,000 specimens, illustrating the form, development, and evolution of most parts of the body in many species, including man. These specimens, presented to the Museum for display and study, were an important educational resource of the Museum, particularly in the field of comparative anatomy.13

Still more encouraging for the days ahead was the passage by Congress of a bill authorizing the Secretary of War to construct a new building to "replace