old quarters and into the new in such fashion that the Museum was never closed down and remained open to visitors throughout the move.
International Efforts
Colonel Minns, the Curator under whom this successful move was made, reached the statutory age of retirement in June 1961, and after some delay, was succeeded as Curator by Col. John W. Sheridan. The new Curator was also of the Medical Service Corps of the Army, the third Curator in succession to be chosen from this source. As had been the case of his predecessor, he was to be called upon to move the Museum — this time from Tempo S to the "old red brick" that had been its home for 60 years prior to 1947.25[1]
While the Museum had from its early years attracted a degree of international attention — winning the praise of Virchow himself for the contributions of the "Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion" — its lack of facilities for advanced experimentation had severely limited its participation in international study efforts. Occupancy of the new building by the Institute opened up new avenues for such participation in the worldwide war against disease which knows no national boundaries. Such a war calls for a common medical language for international communication of the results of research in both the clinic and laboratory.
The Museum and its successor, the Institute, had participated in this international effort, notably through the publication of the fascicles of the "Atlas of Tumor Pathology," devoted to developing a nomenclature of tumors in the communication of the results of medical research which could surmount the barriers of ordinary language differences.
A further step in this direction was taken on 2 December 1958, when the World Health Organization, the National Research Council, and the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology signed a three-way agreement for the establishment of the International Reference Center for Soft Tissue Tumors. Pursuant to the agreement, the Institute selected from its collection a general histologic reference set of tumors of the soft tissues, with an accompanying syllabus and classification of tumors of these tissues.
This material was sent to the headquarters of the World Health Organization at Geneva, Switzerland, where a meeting of an Expert Committee on Cancer was held in the last week of June 1959. This meeting, attended by pathologists from various parts of the world, agreed upon a tentative classification of soft tissue tumors, and plans for future operation of the Reference Center.
- ↑ 25 Annual Reports, Museum sections, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, 1955-1961. passim.
