CHAPTER XIII
Pathology Worldwide
Decrepit the old building may have been, and dingy, too, but it was in its crowded and cramped quarters that Col. James E. Ash and the Museum staff somehow managed to carry the heavy wartime routine of pathology services for an Army which was expanding explosively, not only in numerical strength but also in geographic dispersion throughout the world, and at the same time to turn out a program of productive research which, in view of the conditions, was nothing short of prodigious.
The rapid expansion of the Army dates from 16 May 1940, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt, addressing the Congress on the fast-deteriorating military situation in Europe, recommended the appropriation of an extra billion dollars for purposes of defense. The strength of the Army was then under 270,000. By the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, it had grown to 1,680,000, a sixfold growth which continued until, at the end of hostilities in August 1945, it numbered more than eight million men and women. 1[1]
Such an increase in the military population, which was the primary constituency served by the Museum, was enough in and of itself to have called for an increase in the Museum's peacetime staff. To this multiplication of the numbers to be served, however, there was added another factor in the buildup of the pathological workload— a change in the applicable Army regulations. Since 1922, these had been set forth in the War Department's AR 40-410, which "solicited" the sending in of pathological materials and "requested" Medical Department personnel to "make special efforts to procure and forward the desired specimens." In August 1942, AR 40-410 was superseded by another bearing the same number which was shorter, broader, and sharper than the original 1922 regulation. The 1942 regulation did not "solicit" support or "request" Medical Department cooperation. Instead, it spoke in the imperative,
- ↑ 1 Figures for June 1940. December 1941. and August 1945. on file in the Adjutant General's Office Department of the Army.
