Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/289

THE IMMEDIATE, IMPERATIVE OBJECTIVE proposed center should be on the northern outskirts of Washington, where ready communication with the new medical centers of the U.S. Public Health Service and of the Navy would be available. Forest Glen was suggested as an "excellent site for this project." 8 In connection with the studies for the future location of the Institute and Museum, Colonel Ash suggested still another alternative— the physical separation of the historical portions of the Museum's collections, which would be turned over to the Library to be housed in its new building near the Capitol, and the more strictly medical functions of the Museum, which should go with the Institute of Pathology, to be located at either Walter Reed or Forest Glen. The Army Medical Museum, Colonel Ash wrote in a letter to The Surgeon General, "is a responsibility that cannot be lightly overlooked in spite of the facetious onus that has been attached to it through the years, 'the pickle factory.' It constitutes a part of the cultural background of medicine at least equal to that of the incunabula and rare books of the Army Medical Library. It contains the largest collection of historic microscopes in the world, and the collections of medical coins, models and stamps, ophthalmoscopes, stethoscopes, and so on, are equal, if not more comprehensive, than any others. This material should have its place in the so-called cultural development in which the Library is to share and not be transferred to a comparatively inaccessible place * * *. At present there are about two hundred thousand visitors a year to the Museum, and while it is true that many of these come out of curiosity, the possibilities to the medical department of acquainting such a large group of civilians of all walks of life with its activities cannot be taken lightly." Just as he felt that much of the Museum was more closely related to the new Library, Colonel Ash felt that the Institute of Pathology was more "logically concerned with the teaching and research programs of the medical department than it is with the activities of a hospital." After all, the colonel pointed out, "the Institute at present serves the Twentieth General Hospital in Assam, India, in the same way that it serves Walter Reed Hospital in Washington," since the Institute "should not have to be concerned with 'run of the mill' pathology." The pathology of a i, coo-bed hospital, he said, would add little to the teaching or research resources of the Institute, which had "the material from all the army hospitals and the large amount from the civilian specialists with which to work * * *." 9

So matters simmered for 6 months, while consideration was being given to the place of the new building in the scheme of things in a postwar world. In