Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/300



The 8oth Congress, it will be recalled, passed in June 1948 the bill which became Public Law 626— a law intended to pave the way toward obtaining a new home for the Army Institute of Pathology but which proved to be, instead, a roadblock on the legislative path toward that long-sought objective.

The genesis of the legislation was in H.R. 4122, introduced in the House of Representatives by Walter G. Andrews of New York on 9 July 1947, to authorize construction at various military installations. As introduced, the bill made no provision for the new Institute, an oversight which was corrected by an amendment proposed in the report of the Committee on the Armed Services, on 23 July 1947. In explanation of the amendment, the Committee reported that the proposed building to be erected at Forest Glen, Md., which included provision for a 1,000-bed hospital, would "be the nucleus of an Army medical research and graduate teaching center * * *." Such a center, the Committee reported, was an "urgent and immediate" need, due to the "comprehensive and global nature of modern military medicine" if the Medical Department was "to fulfill its mission of protection and care of troops, to keep pace with worldwide developments of significance to military medicine and to maintain a productive relationship with the medical profession at large * * *. The Army Institute of Pathology and medical museum are presently housed in an antiquated building which seriously limits the important functions of this institution. Plans for the replacement of this building were interrupted by World War II and further delay would limit the valuable work of the institution to both Army and civilian medicine." 1 Before Congress acted on this bill, it was decided that no additional hospital beds for Army use were to be provided in the Washington area. In view of this