Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/264

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ARMED FORCES INSTITUTE OF PATHOLOGY

as having been recently completed dealt with pathology. 12[1] " As Colonel Ash said, the organization "suffered under the connotation museum, an institution still thought of by many as a repository for bottled monsters and medical curiosities. To be sure, we have such specimens. As is required by law, we maintain an exhibit open to the public but in war time, at least, the museum per se is the least of our functions, and we like to be thought of as the Army Institute of Pathology, a designation recently authorized by the Surgeon General." 13[2]

A New Name for a New Organization

This authorization, made informally in the closing weeks of 1943, is reflected in the printed heading of Office Order No. 18 of the Curator, dated 1 January 1944, which outlines the functions of the organization and assigns responsibilities for the various segments of activities. On this heading, the new name of "Army Institute of Pathology" appears as a subordinate division of the Army Medical Museum— a relationship which was to be reversed 2 years later when the "Army Institute of Pathology" was to become officially and formally the general designation of the entire operation, with the Army Medical Museum as a subordinate division. Under the new dispensation, the head of the whole organization was known as the Director instead of the Curator.

The organization outlined in Office Order No. 18 of the Army Medical Museum consisted of four divisions or "services"— Administrative, Professional, Photographic and Medical Arts, and Museum and Medical Arts.

The Museum proper was relegated to the status of a subdivision of the Photographic and Medical Arts Service, headed by Capt. Frank H. Netter. Besides the Museum, this service included all forms of medical art, including photography other than clinical and motion pictures. The latter types of photography were assigned to the Museum and Medical Arts Service, headed by Capt. Ralph H. Creer. Organization and training of units to be sent over- seas were assigned to the Museum and Medical Arts Service — to be known for short as the "MAMA's" (fig. 78).

Lt. Col. Balduin Lucké, in civil life a distinguished Philadelphia pathologist and professor of pathology at the University of Pennsylvania, was named in the office order as Deputy Curator and also as the officer heading up the Professional Service, which was primarily the pathological division of the Museum-

  1. 12 Memorandum to Officers, Army Medical Museum, Army Institute of Pathology, and Photographic and Medical Arts Service, 3 January 1944. On file in historical records of AF1P.
  2. 13 Ash, Southern Medical Journal, 37 (1944), PP. 261-266.