"for preventive medicine and hygiene, as well as for pathology. Army officers have, since the advent of modern means of disease control, led the field in preventive medicine and hygiene. This work is largely a development of the last 25 years and was first brought to notice by Reed. It has since been ably continued by Gorgas, Ashburn, Russell, Craig, and scores of others * * *." The comparative richness of the results of Army medical research was attributed, in part, to the fact that "the civilian profession, while frequently establishing the principles
used as a basis for disease control, lack the opportunity to prove their worth which are offered the military by reason of the latter's contract with bodies of troops under discipline."
The Medical Department of the Army, moreover, "by reason of its control over 1,400 officers, including dental, veterinary and administrative corps, is in a more favorable position to collect material illustrating disease conditions. Thus, it can direct the collection of pathological and other material as it now does disease bearing insects and thus obtain results impossible for an independent institution without the expenditure of enormous sums of money and the sending of details of scientific men to all parts of the globe."
Balancing various considerations, without closing the door on any of the suggested plans, Major Callender concluded that under any plan of organization there still would be need for a museum aimed at both educating the lay public in preventive and hygienic measures and also at the further education of medical personnel. "I believe that eventually there will be a large national medical museum," he said in his memorandum for The Surgeon General, "and I am sure that the military medical aspects of such a museum must be an integral part of the Army Medical School. Otherwise it will be a curio shop appealing only to morbid interest while its real value is purely educational for graduates in medicine, more particularly officers of the Medical Department." 22[1]
For yet another quarter of a century after Major Callender finished his first tour of duty as Curator, the Museum would continue in its same quarters, combining under one roof its functions as a place for professional study and research and as a place for interesting and informing the lay public in matters medical. But already, in the years just after the First World War, the differentiation in objective and function was emerging. The Museum was becoming, more and more, an Institute.
- ↑ 22 Memorandum, George R. Callender, Curator, for The Surgeon General, U.S. Army, 13 February 1922. On file in historical records of AFIP.
