do with disease, etiology, pathogenesis, morbid anatomy, microscopic histology, parasitology, functional changes, chemical alterations, indeed any topic except treatment.[1]
Or, to put it more briefly and even more broadly, Dr. Esmond R. Long, practitioner and historian of pathology, describes pathology as "the basic informational science in the understanding of disease" and "a science that makes use of all other biological and medical disciplines in its development."[2]
In arriving at this broader concept of pathology and the place of the pathologist in the scheme of things medical, the Institute has played a major part. During the first half-century of its life, while it still was the Army Medical Museum, it contributed to medical research and education through compiling and publishing the massive "Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion," and through the introduction and development of such techniques as photomicrography and the use of aniline dyes in staining slides for microscopic study. Through its Curator, Maj. Walter Reed, it contributed to the conquest of yellow fever, and through another curator, Maj. Frederick Fuller Russell, it helped mightily in stamping out typhoid fever. Under the curatorship of Maj. George Russell Callender, the Museum broadened its work of education and research through its linkage with civilian medicine in the Registry movement.
Through the work of more recent curators, the Museum, while retaining its distinctive character as a place for exhibition of medical lore and historic materials to a large and increasing number of visitors, has had its greatest growth through the enlargement of its services of education and, increasingly of late years, of research.
Unique in the World
Writing in 1946, when the Institute was still an Army organization and had not taken on its triservice character, Dr. Howard T. Karsner, then of Western Reserve University, described it as "unique in the world." He continued:[3]
* * * Nowhere else has there ever been a concentration of pathological specimens that is comparable. Nowhere else is the pathology of the entire Army of a great country so concentrated. Nowhere else have the civilian pathologists and other interested physicians taken such a great part in organization and operation. Nowhere else has there been, as
- ↑ Transactions of the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology, September-October 1952, p. 715.
- ↑ Long, Esmond R.: A History of American Pathology. Springfield, 111.: Charles C Thomas, Publisher, 1962, pp. 133, 147.
- ↑ Karsner, Howard T.: The American Registry of Pathology and Its Relation to the Army Institute of Pathology. The Military Surgeon 99: 368-369, November 1946.
