service, Mrs. Foerster, as she then was, was presented by her associates at the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology with a bound collection of her published contributions to an increasing knowledge of pathology and ophthalmology. The collection covered a span of 32 years, from 1922 to 1954. It included 35 articles, appearing in 17 different publications. In 18 of the articles she was the sole author; in 17 she had as collaborators some of the outstanding authorities in the field covered. Speaking in 1952 of the early days of what is now the
oldest medical registry in the United States, General Callender gave the "highest credit" for its success to the woman who served it so brilliantly for so many years, and whose scientific attainments were such as to lead to her election to membership in professional medical societies, despite her lack of the college degrees ordinarily required for entrance. Mrs. Wilder made "two of the most eminent discoveries in ophthalmology of the past two decades" by her demonstration of toxoplasmosis in many cases which had previously been diagnosed as tuberculous, and her finding that the larvae of nematodes are "a not infrequent cause of endophthalmitis" or inflammation of the inner structure of the eye.18[1] By her outstanding achievements, she well merited the honorary degree of doctor of laws conferred upon her in 1955 by Mills College, Oakland, Calif.
Varied New Activities of the Museum
Another new service of the Museum, evidencing its increasingly close relations with the medical profession in general, was its designation as the institution entrusted by the Society of American Bacteriologists with the custody and maintenance of its type cultures. Under this arrangement, which went into effect in May 1922, the Museum became the depository of the "purebred" strains of every differentiated bacterium of interest to medicine, from which subcultures of particular strains were supplied upon request. This arrangement, valuable alike to the medical profession and to the Museum, continued for 3 years until, adequate funds having been obtained, the activity was transferred to the National Research Council, with the type cultures located at the McCormick Institute for Infectious Diseases in Chicago. During the time the cultures were maintained at the Medical Museum, the subcultures distributed came to number as many as 4,000 a year, in response to 700 re-
- ↑ 18 (1) Idem. (2) AFIP and Ophthalmology. Archives of Ophthalmology 67: 31. May 1962. (3)AFIP Centennial. Archives o£ Ophthalmology 67: 177-178, May 1962. (4) Lebenson, J. E.: The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. American Journal of Opthalmologv 53: 695, April 1962. (5) Zimmerman, Transactions of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, 65 (1961) PP-.78. 79.
