Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/344

CARRYING ON IN THE "OLD RED BRICK" Avenue in Washington, and from a warehouse on Columbia Pike in nearby Virginia.

A year after the occupation of Chase Hall, the Director reported that "the initial post-war stage of chaos with hundreds of boxes of items of unknown type, number, location or condition has given way to a stage of concentrated storage of items of generally known type, condition and location." For the Museum to get "started on its return to its rightful place as an unparalleled working body of scientific and historical medical data in the Western Hemisphere," he added, would require "time, patience, and persistent attention to innumerable details * * * coupled with an adequate staff ." 29

At the end of another year, it was possible to report that reorganization of the Museum was completed for practical purposes with "transporting, cleaning, repairing, sorting, preliminary cataloguing, temporary storage, final cataloguing, cross referencing, indexing, filing, accessioning, wrapping, packing and final storing of over 126,000 museum items and the salvage or discard of damaged medical items and a great bulk of unrelated or distantly related material." 30

Three years after the move into Chase Hall, the Director's report for 1950 noted that "the Museum proper has changed from a large vacant recreation hall and assorted smaller rooms to an organized exhibit area with over 300 displays which reflect broad medical interests of value to the public, junior medical officers and specialists."

Back of the transformation, there was devoted and intensive work by the Museum staff, headed by Dr. Ruell A. Sloan, whose outstanding service to the Museum-Institute was soon to end with his untimely death on 17 June 1951. Between 21 March 1947, when Dr. Sloan became Curator, and the submittal of the Annual Report for 1950, the staff had grown from "one physician and a few inexperienced enlisted men to a staff of 21," forming the nucleus of the professional, technical, and administrative personnel necessary to the basic operation of a comprehensive medical museum. 31

The Pathology, Anatomy, and Embryology Division was headed by Dr. Henry W. Edmonds. A new Information Section was formed with Mrs. Evelyn Drayton as its Chief. The General Service Division, of which Miss Helen R. Purtle was Chief, had reviewed, physically inventoried, partially indexed, and filed over 250,000 museum items of widely assorted types. After storage of some and disposal of other items seriously damaged by hasty war