Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/281

PATHOLOGY WORLDWIDE Medical Illustration Service, the American Registry of Pathology, and the Array Medical Museum. The head of the organization was to bear the title of "Director"; the heads of the pathology department and the registry were to be "Scientific Directors"; the head of the illustration service bore the title of "Chief" ; and the head of the Museum section, the title of "Curator." A Scientific Advisory Board of Consultants was provided for, with not more than 25 members, serving 5-year terms, to be appointed by The Surgeon General upon recommendation of the Director.

The year 1946, the last of the 10-year tour of Colonel Ash, saw an unusual tribute to the retiring director in the publication of an entire issue of The Military Surgeon devoted to Colonel Ash and the Army Institute of Pathology. The issue opens with a Foreword from Surgeon General Kirk, in which he wrote that Colonel Ash's "diligence, foresight, professional knowledge, and undeterred devotion to duty have led to the organization of the most extensive service in tissue pathology ever known in the world." General Kirk's Foreword is followed by an Appreciation by Col. James M. Phalen, long associated with the Library; by a sketch of the Institute during World War II by Col. Balduin Lucké; by an account of the American Registry of Pathology and its relation to the Army Institute of Pathology, by Dr. Howard T. Karsner; by a paper on the dental and oral pathology registry, by Dr. Henry A. Swanson and Lt. Col. Joseph L. Bernier; and by 10 scientific papers prepared by 16 scientists connected with the Institute and published as a tribute to the retiring director.

After summing up the advantages favoring an institute located in the National Capital as a site for the registries of national scope, Dr. Karsner summed up the situation of the organization in 1946 in his Military Surgeon article. "This Institute," he said "is unique in the world. Nowhere else has there ever been a concentration of pathological specimens that is comparable. Nowhere else is the pathology of the entire Army of a great country so concentrated. Nowhere else have the civilian pathologists and other interested physicians taken such a great part in organization and operation. Nowhere else has there been, as continues to be true, such a close scientific liaison between medical officer and civilian doctor." 32

From a civilian source, the Journal of the American Medical Association, comes confirmatory comment on the place of pathology in the accomplishments