that time, a series of meetings relating to the future of Medical Department research was held by the Army Medical Research and Development Board. One such meeting, held on 20 December 1948, was "occasioned by the knowledge that plans for the Army Institute of Pathology, which is and will remain an important element in the medical research program, had progressed to the point that it had become essential to establish a general plan into which the Army Institute of Pathology may fit logically and effectively." Col. Roger G. Prentiss, chairman of the Board, reported to The Surgeon General that it was unanimously agreed that there should be an Army Medical Research and Graduate Teaching Center, one of the major elements of which was to be the Army Institute of
Pathology, and that it should be located at Forest Glen. 10[1]
The basic plan of the Board was approved by Surgeon General Kirk, but to his approval there were added "reservations and understandings" that "plans for the Army Institute of Pathology must go forward without delay and no effort at implementation of plans for a Research and Graduate Teaching Center shall be permitted to interfere with the more immediate and imperative objective of a new Institute."
"Establishment of the Army Institute of Pathology at Forest Glen," he added, "is contingent on authorization for the simultaneous construction of a new hospital at that site. In the event of failure to obtain such authorization the Institute will be constructed in the general vicinity of the present Army Medical Center." 11[2]
As things turned out, failure to secure authorization for the new hospital was to cause the abandonment of the Forest Glen project, but for nearly 3 years the proposed research and graduate training program, to be located at Forest Glen, was very much to the fore in the plans of the Army Medical Department.
Speaking at a Washington preview of an exhibit prepared by the Army Medical Illustration Service for showing at the convention of the American Medical Association in San Francisco, Surgeon General Kirk made public announcement of the project on 3 June 1946 (figs. 83, 84). The 12-year program of construction at an estimated cost of $40,000,000 which was envisaged had yet to secure War Department and congressional approval. 12[3]
In December 1946, while plans for the relocation of the Institute of Pathology and the Museum were still hanging fire, Colonel Ash reached the age of
