Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/263

PATHOLOGY WORLDWIDE The basic idea, Colonel Ash said, was "to concentrate all the significant data and material pertaining to pathologic processes occurring in the Army at the Medical Museum, where it will be available for current professional use and future scientific investigations, for teaching, and for historical purposes."

Still another value of this centralization of records and materials grows out of the exceptional mobility of military life. Frequently, it is necessary or desirable to transfer military patients from one hospital to another— as for example, from a post hospital to a more commodious and better-equipped general hospital, or perhaps to a hospital with unusual facilities for the treatment of a particular disease. In any such case, the Museum would have the tissues, the diagnosis, and other pertinent facts, and could furnish from its files "a life history of such a patient's condition, a record of his treatment, and of the outcome of the disease," all readily and quickly available in a single file. 9

The tremendously increased workload at the Museum made necessary substantial increases in the staff. From the prewar number of three, the number of professional pathologists at the Museum went up to more than 20. Twelve of them remained at the Museum for more than 2 years; eight for more than 3 years. The average number employed at any one time was 14. In addition to the staff of professional pathologists, the work of the several departments of the Museum required the services of some 30 enlisted men and Wacs, and about 60 civilians. 10

Reinforcing this full-time staff was a succession of distinguished resident consultants who were invited by the Curator to participate in the work of the Museum for brief periods. Seventeen such consultants were at the Museum, first and last, staying for periods of from 2 weeks to 3 months, in which they acted as advisers in the workup of pathological materials and participated in the researches which were going forward. 11

Overwhelmingly, the greater part of the activities of the organization, still entitled the Army Medical Museum, had come to center in the pathology service. For example, in a list issued at the beginning of 1944, 37 out of 47 projects currently underway were in the field of pathology, while 11 of the 17 projects shown