CHAPTER XVII
Life in the New Building
Occupancy of the new building made it possible, for the first time, said Brig. Gen. Elbert DeCoursey, to formulate and carry through "a comprehensive program of pathology" 1[1]—which the Institute lost no time in undertaking.
The first step in this new program was to complete the organization and staffing of the Department of Pathology, which previously had been limited to the Pathology Division. Under the new organization, effective in March 1955, this division was joined by the Basic Laboratories Division and the Dynamic Pathology Division, to make up the new department. 2[2]
To head the expanded department, the Institute secured Dr. Ernest W. Goodpasture (fig. 108), professor of pathology at Vanderbilt University, who joined the staff as the first Scientific Director of the Institute on 1 July 1955, and forthwith "engaged in planning the professional program so as to take full advantage of the facilities of the new laboratories." 3 [3]
The new Scientific Director was one of pathology's greats. A native Tennessean, he had taken his academic work at Vanderbilt, and had graduated in medicine from the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He had taught at Hopkins and Harvard; had served on the faculty of the School of Medicine of the University of the Philippines; had studied in Vienna; and had returned to Vanderbilt where, for 31 years, he had been professor of pathology, and for 5 years, dean of the Medical School.
In May 1931, Dr. Goodpasture and his associate, Dr. Alice Miles Woodruff, published a report on the results of 3 years of research and experiment in the inoculation of chick embryos with a virus, inserted through a tiny window in the shell of an unhatched egg. The virus was that of fowlpox, a poultry disease commonly called "sorehead." The tiny droplet of virus grew and multiplied, producing abundantly the pure and uncontaminated virus from which a protective vaccine could be derived. Such a virus, the report suggested, should be "valuable in immunological experiments."
