continues to be true, such a close scientific liaison between medical officer and civilian doctor.
In the years since this was written, the Institute has not only taken on its triservice character; it has also become the central laboratory of pathology for the Veterans' Administration, the Atomic Energy Commission, and the U.S. Public Health Service, and has furnished informal consultation to the Civil Aeronautics Board and the Federal Aviation Agency.
All in all, as Dr. Esmond R. Long says in his recent (1962) book, "A History of American Pathology," the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology has "become in fact the hub of activities in the nation's pathology," in a period of activity since 1949 that "has never been matched by any organization for research and instruction in pathology."[1]
The sweep and scope of these activities of the Institute are indicated by the fact that its latest annual report, that for the last year of the first century of its life, requires 254 pages in order to outline the working organization and list in briefest form the activities undertaken and carried forward during the year. These activities included 194 registered research projects, 91 publications by staff members, n postgraduate courses with an attendance of 1,105, the distribution of 27,000 copies of fascicles published as part of the "Atlas of Tumor Pathology," and the creation of 55 new visual exhibits—to mention but a few items of work done in but one year out of the one hundred years of the life of the Museum-Institute.
In the opening years of the second century of its life, the Institute is carrying forward studies that range from the nature and behavior of the infinitesimally small subcellular particles that are revealed only in the stream of electronic waves of the electron microscope to the inconceivable vastness of outer space. For wherever man may go, and whatever he may see, pathology—the scientific cornerstone of medicine—goes with him, and its evidences are to be seen.
This volume does not undertake to treat in detail the history of the first century of the Museum and its offspring, the Institute—a multi-volume task —but seeks to tell in brief compass the story of the soil and the seed from which a great medical service has grown, with some account of the men and women who have made great the century-old Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.
- ↑ Long, op. cit., pp. 379, 381.
