Busy as he must have been with the launching of such a variety of new and valuable prospects, Major Callender was faced, in 1922, with proposals for combining the Army Medical Museum with the Smithsonian Institution. This
movement had what probably was its fullest and most elaborate exposition in a letter from Dr. Arthur MacDonald of Washington, sent to many scientists and inserted in the Congressional Record by Representative Melvin O. Mc-
Laughlin of Nebraska under the title "Consolidation of Government Science Under the Smithsonian Institution." 21[1]
Dr. MacDonald's letter was not directed solely at the Army Medical Museum. His plan contemplated placing 33 bureaus of government organizations having to do with scientific matters under the jurisdiction of the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institution. Among the agencies which would have been affected were the Geological Survey, the Reclamation Service, the Bureau of Mines, the Patent Office, the Census Office, the Bureau of Standards, the Bureau of Fisheries, the Public Health Service, the Army Medical Museum and Library, the Library of Congress, the Government Hospital for die Insane (St. Elizabeths), the Coast and Geodetic Survey, the Naval Observatory, and all the scientific bureau of the Department of Agriculture.
The advantages claimed for this wholesale transfer of government agencies was that under it government science would develop to the highest efficiency, by correcting illogical and haphazard arrangement of bureaus or departments, and by reducing to a minimum political influence in scientific bureaus. The plan was likened to the administration of a university, with the Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution being analogous to the president of the university, and the Board of Regents, consisting of die Chief Justice, the Vice President of the United States, and three members each from the Senate and the House of Representatives, corresponding to the university trustees.
Possible Courses of Action
The movement for consolidation of all governmental scientific activity does not appear to have developed any great popular strength, but coming as it did, just as the Army Medical Museum was changing its direction so as to expand its services to medicine in general, as well as military medicine in particular, such public discussion of the plan led Major Callender to give serious and concentrated thought to the position and the future course of the Museum.
Possible courses of action, as outlined in a memorandum of 13 February 1922, for The Surgeon General, were fourfold: (1) The Army Medical Musuem
- ↑ 21 Congressional Record, 67th Congress, 1st session, volume 405, pp. 8833-8835, 26 October 1921.
