Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/324



During the decade of determined effort to procure and occupy the new building, there had been no cessation or slackening of the work which went on in the cramped and crowded corridors and rooms of the building, which for nearly 70 years had been the home of the Museum and its offspring, the Institute (fig. 99). On the contrary, sharp increases in the output of the staff were necessary to meet the rising demand for the fundamental services of consultation, education, and research in pathology. In 1947— the first year in which the change of emphasis from "Museum" to "Institute" became fully effective— newly accessioned cases numbered 21,764. Two years later, after the field to be covered had been broadened from the Army to the Armed Forces, the number of new cases rose to 36,029— and the real rise in the flow of materials into the Institute had just begun. 1 Already, however, the "heavy and unrelenting pressure of the daily routine" was imposing a "serious hardship on all members of the professional staff." As the Director of the Institute said, in his report for 1949, it was "barely possible to keep up with the incoming material during the working day when ancillary personnel is available, study and scientific research must be relegated to nights and week ends."

In the year 1950, the first full year of operation as the Armed Forces Institute, the number of cases received went up to 49,518, despite the fact that 13 histopathology centers had been established for the dual purpose of facilitating diagnosis and consultative services by providing them "in closer geographic relationship to Armed Forces Hospitals" and reducing the pressure upon the Institute by screening out commonplace specimens before submittal. Under the new regulation, materials from all completed autopsies were still to be sent in, but surgical specimens sent in were to be limited to those which had "future administrative, scientific, or follow-up value." 2 Instructions were made more specific in a special regulation issued on 8 June 1950, which required that all specimens derived from surgery on tumors