fitted with airtight tops, the crocks allowed evaporation of the preserving fluids, so that it was necessary to inspect and refill the crocks at intervals to prevent spoiling of the specimens. 4[1]
Some slight relief from the pressure for space was found in the discontinuance, on 1 March 1919, of the production of moving pictures, because of a lack of funds and personnel. This closing of the production end of the Museum's motion-picture activity did not stop the circulation and showing of films already made, which was continued both by the Museum and by the U.S. Public Health Service. Much of the demand for showings came from civilian sources, including medical colleges, medical associations and societies, and educational institutions. 5[2]
Before 1 May 1919, exhibits in the Museum were open to all the public. Feeling that the lay public would neither understand nor profit by viewing many of these exhibits, the Museum began on that date a systematic rearrangement of exhibitions, insofar as available space permitted, under which preparations and specimens not regarded as suitable for indiscriminate showing were to be removed from the floor of the main museum hall to the gallery and to rooms on the first floor which were to be open only to the medical profession, including students and research workers. 6[3]
"It is hoped eventually," Colonel Craig wrote, "to replace all pathological material on the main museum hall floor with material of general public interest, as specimens of ordnance, missiles, gas masks, sanitary appliances and apparatus used in the Army in the prevention of disease."
By the middle of 1920, gross pathological specimens, wax models illustrating skin diseases, and anatomical models and sections, had been removed to rooms on the first floor, as part of the plan of segregating material of interest primarily to physicians and medical students. At the same time, but for reasons involving the more effective use of available space, the exhibits illustrating the method of transmission and treatment of the hookworm disease, and the collection showing the historical development of the microscope were also removed from the main hall to the first floor.
The material removed from the main hall was replaced by material showing diseases from which both military and civil communities suffered, including malaria, typhoid fever, dysentery, and tuberculosis, displayed in such fashion
- ↑ 4 Memorandum of Maj. J. F. Coupal: Activities of the Pathological Section of the Army Medical. Museum During the World War. On file in historical records of AFIP.
- ↑ 5 Annual Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, 1920, pp. 246, 247.
- ↑ 6 Annual Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, 1919, pp. 1067,1068.
