means, was done for the Museum-Institute, as the Laboratory, presided over by Roy M. Reeve, became, in effect, the photographers for the Surgeon General's Office.
The work of medical illustration in the oversea theaters was provided for by the detachments sent out by the other branch of the Medical Illustration Service—the MAMA's—but until as late in the war as mid-1943, no Plan for central supervision of clinical photography in the hospitals in the Zone of the Interior, or the "homefront," had been adopted. On 15 June of that year, Colonel Ash proposed to The Surgeon General a plan for such supervision, with centralization of the resulting materials in the Museum, where they would be available for teaching, scientific, and historical purposes.
Upon inquiry, it appeared that only 6 out of the 22 general hospitals queried had photographic equipment and supplies. In November, therefore, The Surgeon General approved in its essentials the plan for centralized direction of photographic activities in the Museum. This action was followed by a circular letter of 22 December, directing that, beginning with 1 January 1944, monthly reports be made to the Museum, with prints of all photographs. When prints were found to be worthy of preservation or wider circulation, the Museum was to request the negatives for copying, after which the negatives were to be returned to the hospital. Under this plan, the Institute was to handle in an average month 5,000 still prints from 60 hospitals in the United States.[1]
Figure 80.—Continued.
- ↑ Correspondence on file in historical records of AFIP.
