a means of improving this situation, The Surgeon General issued a circular letter of instructions on preparation and shipment of materials for die Museum. Before such a circular of precise and detailed instructions was issued the question of military authority for the making of post mortem examinations had to be cleared up.
The Autopsy Question
In an opinion of the Acting Judge Advocate General of the Army, issued on 6 October 1917, it was held "that there can be no question but that military authority over all persons who are members of the Army of the United States is sufficient to authorize the performance of a necropsy * * * if there is sound military reason therefor." But, he added, "it is not within my province to express my opinion upon the question whether such military reason exists."7[1]
On 25 February 1918, The Surgeon General of the Army advised the War Department that while it was "impracticable to state in detail the specific circumstances which would justify post mortem examination in each case," he regarded such examinations as essential in the management of epidemics and in cases where medicolegal questions were involved, and as desirable in all cases. Even in cases where the cause of dealth was from well-recognized processes of disease, The Surgeon General said, an autopsy "almost invariably yields information which is instructive and of great value and importance in the treatment of the living," and that "great good to the service and [to] medical science would result" if it were "practicable to hold post-mortem examination after all deaths."
In publishing this correspondence to the medical officers, on 1 March 1918, The Surgeon General added the requirement that commanding officers of hospitals would be held responsible for the determination of the necessity for performing post mortems, for the manner in which they were performed, and for the proper preparation of the bodies thereafter, as required by Army regulations. 8[2]
The question of whether or not autopsies should be performed was dealt with again on 12 June 1918, in a circular letter from the War Department in which The Adjutant General, noting that there had been complaints that "autopsies have been held on [the] bodies of deceased soldiers in various camps and cantonments," ruled that while military authority was sufficient to authorize them, "if there be sound military reason therefor, they should not be
