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Fragmentary Discussions

1946–1951

“The secret of success and the course of failure lie in the mental attitude which medical officers assume as individuals; that 

is, whether they elect to be in the Army or attached to it.” 1

Brigadier General George C. Beach2 succeeded General Marietta as Post Commander 

on February 16, 1945, although the latter continued to make regular professional visits 

to the hospital to attend his old patient, George Pershing. Commissioned in the Medical Reserve Corps on September 15, 1911, and as a First Lieutenant on February 7, 1917, 

the greater part of General Beach’s military service had been on Army posts3 but 

the assignment to Washington was a return to the city where he had been attending 

surgeon and essentially the family doctor to a large contingent of Army personnel from 

1926 to 1930. It was during these years that he became acquainted with many of the 

line and staff officers who later assumed positions of leadership and influence during 

and after World War II.
354

XVII Borden’s Dream

His previous experience as commanding officer at the Brooke General 

Hospital, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, 

had provided him with a thorough 

knowledge of hospital administration, 

but General Beach was not of the militant executive type who attempts personally to regulate the infinite details 

required in directing so large an institution. Unlike “Noisy Jim” Glennan, who 

wandered restlessly about the building 

and grounds, or General De Witt, who 

prowled ceaselessly, his inquisitive fingers ever searching for a stray bit of dust and 

who, in spite of frequent attacks of gout, climbed nimbly on chairs or stooped to 

look under beds for the persistent invader, General Beach held his staff strictly accountable for the managerial housekeeping duties. It was therefore at the morning 

coffee hour that his carefully selected and highly competent assistants briefed him 

on daily problems, receiving, in turn, his wise counsel and guidance, his official 

sanction or disapproval of proposed actions or current problems. He was a gentle, 

lovable and understanding man, and his staff became a closely integrated “team”, 

one that worked for him personally as much as for the professional management 

problems which were, in the final sense, his special responsibility.

He was pleasantly gregarious without being effusive, liked dogs, horse racing and 

hot spicy foods.4

 At some undated period in his career, friends of the Beach family 

substituted the names “Sandy” and “Coral” for the more orthodox names of George 

and Jessie, and as such General and Mrs. Beach were affectionately and better known 

to their many Army friends. Time and frequent usage converted “Sandy” to Sam, 

the name by which the quiet, kindly physician was usually addressed. Ward visiting 

and hospital inspection trips were customary routines for Army hospital commanders, but “Sam” Beach added a personal touch to such visits which did a great deal to 

overcome some patients’ opinions that the visits were a routine and official inquiry. 

Daily he visited the seriously ill, and he never forsook the comforting habit of approaching the patient’s bedside counting the pulse or otherwise bringing to the ill a 

recognition of his personal interest and professional competence.

The Army Medical Center and its best-known activity, Walter Reed General 

Hospital in particular, has passed through the busiest period of its history. The 

Obstetrical Service delivered almost one hundred infants monthly in 1945,5

 and the 

Quartermaster Laundry serviced enough separate items to serve a city of 7,000.6

The Out-Patient Service maintained its reputation for being a hectically busy place 

in 1945; in 1946, 99,473 treatments were given, of which 13,915 were on military 

personnel. The service was still handicapped by the lack of continuity in personnel. 

Brig. Gen. George C. Beach
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Fragmentary Discussions XVII

It was, therefore, principally through the 

effects of key civilians that established 

policies were maintained.7

All of the hospital and school buildings showed considerably more than the 

normal wear and tear of daily use, and 

they were, like some of the patients, 

in rather obvious need of repair and 

rehabilitation. Although apparently prescribed by enthusiastic and influential 

lay friends of the hospital familiar with 

the modern trends in institutional decorating, the two-toned paint scheme used in the halls and bedrooms of the hospital8

was attributed to the wartime matériel shortage. The contrasting sections were 

separated by dado, object of some local criticism, but the results were profoundly 

satisfactory to the planners, who defended the pastels as more serviceable than 

the previously traditionally-used Army creme or tan color used throughout the 

hospital. 

Washington, DC, was, during the war, ripe with fantastic and sometimes amusing 

tales of the misuse of public buildings by newly imported personnel unaccustomed 

to modern conveniences. Such rumors were not solely applicable to civilian buildings, for Walter Reed showed many evidences that the restless youths of World 

War II had less awareness of the costs of maintaining federal property than was 

desirable. Therefore, in spite of a seventy-five per cent turnover in employees, it 

was well that the decrease from some 16,000 patients in 1945 to slightly more than 

12,000 in 1946 gave the command some opportunity to begin restorations. 

At the beginning of the year 1946, the Detachment of Patients was responsible 

for the discipline as well as the personnel administration of all enlisted patients, 

and its activities were soon extended to include officers as well.9

 War Department 

Circular 215, 1946, authorized a one-grade promotion for all patients hospitalized for eighteen months as a result of combat wounds and who had received no 

promotion since being wounded. This policy increased the recordkeeping for the 

Detachment office, whose functional departments included payroll and allotments, 

records, assignment, classification, discharge, relief from active duty, retirement, 

courts-martial, disposition, decorations and awards, patients’ funds, supplies, and 

the patient’s baggage room.

As noted, Class III, ambulatory patients, attended the various occupational 

therapy activities, but Class IV, ward patients, had a special training program. 

All patients were interviewed, counseled and introduced to the Educational Reconditioning Program. Some took the USAFI courses and a few initiated college 

extension courses, but in all cases their records must be kept up to date.

Nursery, 1950
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XVII Borden’s Dream

New Patterns

The accelerated occupational therapy training course, which started in November, 1944, was terminated in April 1946.10 In addition to this program, ninety-three 

volunteer workers in the Red Cross Arts and Skills Section worked with an average of 

306 patients each month and gave a total of 7,649 hours in volunteer service during 

the year. A year later, from May 8 to 14, 1947, one hundred twenty-three volunteer 

workers in the Arts and Skills Section gave approximately 10,627 hours of time to 

hospital patients. This was a remarkable record, for many patients were restless and 

uninterested in crafts after V-J Day, wanting only to be on their way while the civilian 

employment situation was favorable. 

In August, Walter Reed General Hospital became a center for Aural Rehabilitation,11

with all the hearing cases from the temporary war service Borden, DeShon and Hoff 

General Hospitals concentrated at the Forest Glen Section. Construction delays necessitated an improvised program until October, at which time sections in lipreading 

instruction, speech correction and conservation, counseling, an ear mold laboratory, 

a hearing-aid laboratory, audiometry and otology laboratories were established. 

A Hospital Inspector’s Office was re-established as a separate and integral part of the 

hospital organization, utilizing the services of one officer, two Warrant Officers, 

Occupational Therapy
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Fragmentary Discussions XVII

one non-commissioned officer and a civilian secretary. The Hospital Inspector 

had varied duties and responsibilities, then including those of Training Officer. 

Over 300 inspections were made during the year, and all sections of the hospital 

were inspected at least once daily. This constant sanitary vigilance, combined 

with the reduced patient load, improved the cleanliness and general appearance 

of the hospital. Further, routine interviews were conducted with ward patients, 

and clinical records were checked with a view to determining the best physical, 

mental and moral well-being of the patients. Routine checks were made of the 

narcotics register, and precious and semi-precious metals were checked for their 

issue in the medical supply depot, through the Pharmacy and to the wards. Thus 

monthly auditing of these records and the Patients’ Fund made the position of 

Hospital Inspector one of responsibility as well as one of infinite assistance to the 

Post Commander. Conscientious attempts were made to speed the discharge and 

disposition of all patients. This was an intricate and time-consuming process even 

in peacetime, but it was psychologically as well as administratively involved under 

the Army point system, for many patients with an insufficient number of points 

still believed themselves entitled to special consideration.

Insofar as permanent buildings were concerned, there was no new construction 

undertaken at Walter Reed during the year. There was, however, extensive renovation and modernizing of interiors, and a great deal of refurbishing. Ward 11B, 

on the third floor of the Main Building and proximal to the operating room, was 

completed as a new Recovery Room in February 1947. The arrangement provided 

three main sections, each with a nurse’s station and two, three, four and five-bed 

units. In June 1947, Ward 8, the Officers’ Surgical Ward on the third floor of the 

east wing, was converted into a luxurious Presidential Suite, the administration of 

which was placed under the direction of the Chief of the Medical Service. In the 

Army Medical School building the Central Dental Laboratory was reworked and 

improved equipment was added. 

On November 15, 1947, the position of Deputy Post Commander was authorized 

as a result of provisions of the Officer Personnel Act of that year, (Sec.522, PL 381, 

80th Congress, Officer Personnel Act of 1947, app. Aug. 7, 1947) and the position 

was filled by Colonel Clifford V. Morgan, Medical Corps, then Executive Officer of 

the Army Medical Center. It had long been the custom to have the second ranking 

medical officer assume command of the organization in the absence of the Post 

Commander. This arrangement was considered by many to be the administrative 

anomaly, inasmuch as the incumbent might have been continuously engaged in 

professional activities and thereby unfamiliar with the administrative activities 

of such a complicated command. Under the new arrangement the Commanding 

General was able to devote the greater part of his time to hospital activities and 

professional training programs which were Class II medical activities supervised 

by the Surgeon General’s Office. In contrast the Center activities were Class I, 
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XVII Borden’s Dream

or so-called housekeeping activities, with close administrative ties to the Military 

District of Washington. By the summer of 1948 Colonel Morgan was so thoroughly 

familiar with the current as well as the past needs of the Post that he offered the use 

of official records, historical photographs and old building plans further to facilitate 

completion of the slowly developing history “Borden’s Dream,” so long advocated by 

the Post librarian and already under way as a private project. 

Likewise in November 1947, Lieutenant Colonel Ida W. Danielson, Army Nurse 

Corps, formerly Chief Nurse of the European Theater of Operations, succeeded 

Lieutenant Colonel Gertrude Thompson as Chief Nurse. Colonel Danielson came 

to the new assignment from a tour of duty in the Personnel Division of the Office 

of the Surgeon General. Insofar as administrative preparation for this assignment 

was concerned, she had a more varied background of administrative experience 

than any other Chief Nurse previously assigned to the staff of Walter Reed General Hospital. Tactful, gracious, blessed with a sense of finesse and the ability to 

persuade others to her way of thinking, she was an immediate success with the 

hospital staff. In a thoroughly generous spirit of appreciation, she credited much of 

her success as nurse-administrator to earlier training by Miss Dora N. Thompson, 

Colonel C.V. Morgan, Deputy Post Commander, 1948
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Fragmentary Discussions XVII

Superintendent of the Army Nurse Corps during World War I, and to Miss Jane Molloy, 

Walter Reed’s first Chief Nurse.12

Outside Influences

Only 12,336 new patients were admitted to Walter Reed in 1947, this number being 659 

less than admitted during the previous year when there were no civilian nurses on duty. 

At the close of the calendar year, however, there were fifty-one civilian nurses on duty 

in addition to the 206 Army Nurses. The point-release program for Army of the United 

States personnel affected nurses as well as doctors, and the Nursing Division, Office of 

the Surgeon General, believed a too-rapid demobilization was responsible for some of the 

personnel problems which developed a year later.13 Certainly, the rapid turn-over in personnel was difficult for all concerned. National nursing policy groups strongly supported the 

principle that nurses should not engage in non-professional duties, and although the general 

ratio of employees to patients was high, some aspects of the local nurse shortage could be 

attributed to the change to the eight-hour schedule. Further, an increased amount of nursing 

time was required in the supervision of cooperative ward procedures, ward rounds and the 

orientation instruction of doctors on duty with the residency training program.

Physical Reconditioning, World War II
360

XVII Borden’s Dream

Some minor intra-service reorganizations were accomplished during 1948, but none 

which affected the primary function, patient care. The personnel situation was more 

unstable than desirable, for the staff was preponderantly residents and internes, with only 

a few duty-officers for key assignments. This was undoubtedly a necessary arrangement, 

in order to conform to the ultimate objective of the Medical Department professional 

training program. Nevertheless, many patients both in the Out-Patient Service and in 

the wards found the interruption to the traditional doctor-patient relationship more 

exasperating than otherwise.14

It would have been extremely difficult, prior to World War II, to find many medical 

officers critical of their Corps, its objectives or the quality of professional care provided 

for the Army as a whole. Some medical officers, particularly the specialists, took periodic refresher courses at the Mayo Clinic, the Johns Hopkins Hospital and other great 

civilian training institutions, either at their own or at Government expense. The three 

principal branches of military medicine – professional field and supply – provided definite 

training programs, and the average medical officer had more than an even chance of 

selecting and remaining in his preferred specialty. On the whole the morale was good, 

and if the system of promotion by seniority penalized an impatient few, it nevertheless 

provided a sound and equable base for the many who contributed the usual thirty “best 

Fever Therapy
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Fragmentary Discussions XVII

years of their lives” to public service. In general special ability was recognized, and if 

there were an insufficient number of spectacular rewards for all, the respect of brother 

officers was pleasant balm.

The Army, at least, recognized that a special type of personality was required for 

military duty – men and women willing to uproot their homes without protest, willing 

to school their children in Alabama or New York, Virginia or Wyoming, Alaska or the 

Philippines, sometimes in four or five states in the course of a few years. The “Service” 

made many demands and offered few visible rewards except superior hospitalization 

and, on retirement, a modest income. On the whole, however, Regular Army personnel 

liked their way of life, and the majority were loyal, adaptable and satisfied.15 Many, like 

Surgeon General Patterson,16 preferred to specialize, but when they found the exigencies of the Service required a change to administration, the functional transition was 

usually accepted with good grace.17 Thus as one Surgeon General noted in an Annual 

Report, “we should have (in the service) only such men as are adapted to its peculiar 

requirements.”

It is surprising, therefore, that when Secretary of War Robert Patterson delivered a 

prepared address to the American Medical Association in June 1947, there was included 

for his pronouncement a statement that “Ever since the medical profession became 

Sick Call, Station Surgeon’s Office
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XVII Borden’s Dream

officially associated with the Army more than 170 years ago...it has been evident that 

something was wrong, something was irritating the medical officer.” As noted, the 

Medical Department of the World War II period was essentially a civilian organization, 

and the Medical Department officers were civilian physicians temporarily uprooted 

from the private practice of medicine. They were, by and large, men unaccustomed to 

group activity, to regimentation and to the necessity of conforming to the management 

policies of a large organization charged with the responsibility of meeting the needs of 

thousands rather than a few. It must be assumed, therefore, that the maladjustments of 

some World War II personnel had colored the publicly expressed opinion that complaints 

were due to uncertainty and dissatisfaction over an inability to practice the profession 

in a manner professionally satisfying,18 i.e., clinical care of the inpatient. Such a viewpoint, doubtless would have surprised such loyal old soldiers as Hoff, McCaw, Straub, 

Birmingham, Arthur and Kean, who devoted their lives to the Medical Department 

and believed that on the whole, “across the board,” in peace or in war, it gave the best 

medical service in the United States, perhaps in the world, as the American standard 

of living was notably high.

Not all local management problems were confined to the uniformed group, and the 

various Post Commanders would have been at a loss without the continuing and loyal 

Physical Medicine
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support of key civilian employees. By 1948, fifty-seven civilian employees had twelve or 

more years of continuous service and of this number twelve were employed before 1925. 

Concurrently, the Civilian Personnel Section of the Army Medical Center headquarters 

contended that more than 3,100 military and civilian persons were needed to carry out 

the functions of the installation,19 which, with the addition of the usual 1600 patients, 

made the military reservation essentially a little city.

Many devotees of so-called scientific personnel management had appeared during 

the previous ten years, and such terms as “human relations”, “human understanding” 

and the “human equation” were discussed as training agencies attempted to bring 

management and the worker closer together. The Adjutant General’s Department 

had, during the war, sponsored special courses, including instruction for supervisors, 

and the stupendously large employment program of that period left an imprint on all 

government personnel agencies.

The “human relations” aspect of personnel management was, of course, essentially 

the consideration of the individual as a case, with his adjustment problems highlighted 

by a study of the social background. It was an old and simple game to the family physician, priest or lawyer, who had long employed the technique but failed to underwrite 

a specific nomenclature. As there was a very real need for this type of program in any 

Physical Medicine
364

XVII Borden’s Dream

large and impersonal organization where some unnoticed “square pegs” could rattle 

unhappily in the “round holes”, the Personnel Section at the Army Medical Center was 

divided into two principal departments. The Military Section was redivided into officer 

and enlisted, and the Civilian Personnel Section was divided into four principal sub-sections, 

which then required a staff of only thirty-nine persons to serve the 1,251 civilian employees 

of the Army Medical Center.

Fundamental Reorganization

General hospitals were transferred from the jurisdiction of the Service Command back 

to the Surgeon General in April 1946. On 11 June the War Department was reorganized; 

the nine Army Service Commands were abolished and six Army areas were created.20

In June 1946, the Surgeon General, Major General Norman T. Kirk, proposed establishing a 1,000-bed pathological hospital and a 250,000 volume library at the Forest 

Glen Section, Army Medical Center, to be operated in connection with the Army Medical 

Museum, renamed Army Institute of Pathology and still later the Armed Forces Institute 

of Pathology. Further, the Surgeon General proposed that an Institute of Research 

Medicine, Dentistry, Surgery, Radiation Therapy and a school of global medicine be 

incorporated as part of the new plan.21

Sports for the Handicapped
365

Fragmentary Discussions XVII

Many of the doctors who served in the Army during World War II were extremely 

interested, for various public-spirited reasons, in the post-war Medical Department. The 

shortage of health workers, including doctors and nurses, had harassed the constantly 

expanding community medical services all during the war, and many national program 

planners had come to believe that an equable division of such personnel was not only 

practical but imperative in the event of another war. The training of doctors and nurses 

was a slow and costly business, and the nation could ill afford to waste their services. 

Some doctors, nationally known as specialists and board members, were interested in 

increasing the academic training and board membership of Army doctors to meet the 

more competitive requirements of civilian communities; some had a special interest 

in excluding doctors from administrative positions; some were interested in closer 

identification of the military and naval services in order to provide more economical 

use of professional skills, standardization of material and to provide a roster of interchangeable personnel, the joint use of hospital facilities, etc. Some of these proposals 

grew out of dissatisfaction expressed by the Directing Board of the Procurement and 

Assignment Service for Doctors, Dentists, Veterinarians and Nurses, operative during 

World War II.22

With no immediate signs of hostilities in sight, the professional training and proper 

utilization of doctors were probably of more general interest to the average civilian 

than procurement of personnel. Consequently, one of the most overt signs of plans for 

a constructive program was the early post-war formation of The Society of United States 

Medical Consultants of World War II, which met at the Army Medical Center on October 

18, 1946.23 The consultants were former medical officers, by then returned to civilian 

life, and the group included many of the leading doctors in specialized fields.

Various plans were considered by both 

military and civilian groups which it was 

believed would please all concerned, and 

on April 18, 1947, General Kirk proposed 

a merger of the Army and Navy Medical 

Departments,24 with a director chosen 

from the senior officers of the regular 

Medical Corps. He believed such an organization could be charged with operation 

of a common hospitalization program for 

the Armed Forces, preventative medicine 

services, vital statistics, etc. Further, he 

believed a common research program was 

feasible, with joint clinical and research 

laboratories, joint utilization of The Army 

Medical Library and The Army Institute of 

Pathology. The Dignity of Man
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XVII Borden’s Dream

The Training Program

Colonel Rufus Holt, Medical Corps, succeeded General Callender as Commandant of 

the School in 1946, thereby inheriting a difficult assignment at one of the most critical 

periods in the professional history of the Medical Department. A reorganization of the 

School program was then under study which would materially strengthen the technical 

training of all personnel categories, including a return to the twelve-month training for 

enlisted technicians, and the often-repeated recommendation that the enlisted men 

should be accorded technical grades on completion of the course.25

At the hospital, the Peripheral Vascular Section became a separate section on July 1, 1946, 

and Radiology and the Radiation Therapy Section were combined to form an independent 

Radiological Service. On May 1, the Practice of Hospital Pediatricians was established by 

Walter Reed (local administration) orders, with the annual report of the Medical Service 

for that year carrying its first full report of Pediatrics as a separate section, and a fifteen 

per cent increase in patients was noted.26 Specialty sections in Dermatology, Childrens’

Orthopedics, Anesthesiology and Psychology likewise appeared.

Practical training for civilian mess attendants was begun at the hospital in July 

1946, under the direction of the Chief 

of the Dietetic Service. Further, technical training for enlisted men, previously 

conducted for eight weeks at Camp Atterbury, Indiana, or Ft. Sam Houston, 

Texas, was undertaken at Walter Reed. 

The men were supervised by the ward 

master, a sergeant or other non-commissioned officers, and the ward nurse. 

The ward doctor of the particular ward 

was named as the Training Officer for that 

specialty. In February 1947 the Surgeon 

General’s Office authorized an anesthesia course for Regular Army nurses, and 

two special thirteen-month courses in 

anesthesia were offered in addition to a 

course in ward administration for which 

thirty nurses registered. 

The early post-war refresher courses, 

such as the twenty-six-week course in tropical and global medicine, clinical pathology, 

and advanced Veterinary and Dental courses had proven insufficient to prepare Medical Corps officers to meet the professional requirements for civilian academic honors 

and board certification in some specialties. Insofar as man-hours could be evaluated, 

the staff of the various Schools were, in 1946, spending approximately five per cent of 

Norman T. Kirk, Surgeon General, 1943_1947. 

Photograph of watercolor painting made by patient 

in the Neuropsychiatric Section.
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Fragmentary Discussions XVII

the time in administration; thirty-five per cent in diagnostic and routine laboratory 

procedures; twenty-five per cent on research and development; twenty-five per cent 

in production (biological, etc.) and ten per cent in instruction.27 Additional instruction was contributed by civilian consultants and by military personnel of the Military 

District of Washington.

After one full year of experimentation with the refresher training program, General 

Beach noted some inherent difficulties such as haphazard presentation of teaching 

material and the tendency of the hospital staff to view consultants as “problem solvers” 

rather than as visiting teachers. The shortcomings, he believed, were not due to the 

system but rather to the individuals. He therefore favored affiliation with the medical 

schools of George Washington and Georgetown Universities as a smooth and easy way 

of weeding out some undesirable consultants as well as to secure better supervision and 

broader clinical facilities for the students, internes and selected residents.

Early in the twentieth century Jefferson Randolph Kean had noted the growing 

tendency of Medical Department critics, usually line and staff officers, to devalue the 

activities of Army doctors dissociated from the direct care of the sick, confiding to 

his diary that “at the time the prejudice was very strong against doctors holding any 

administrative position.”28 If reversed his observations could have been as timely in 

Corpsman as Nurse Assistant.
368

XVII Borden’s Dream

the post-World War II period as in the post-Spanish-American War period. In fact the 

degree of prejudice had increased markedly in the interviewing fifty years, although the 

criticisms now originated primarily from American physicians and from some of the 

smaller groups of allied health workers anxious to broaden their own fields of managerial 

responsibility. Thus as a result of the much touted prestige incidental to certification 

as a “Board Member,” the post-World War II demands of Army doctors for advanced 

clinical training was reminiscent of the professional stampede of a half-century before, 

when doctors began abandoning their professional for military titles, unmindful, perhaps, 

of the maxim of Theodore Roosevelt that as military men they must “supplement in 

(their) calling the work of the surgeon with the work of the administrator.”

The proposed teaching program was, therefore, of more-than-to-be expected 

significance, for it was destined to reshape some classic concepts of military medical 

preparedness. There was considerable talk of paying recognized specialists an emolument in addition to their Regular Army pay, and the possibility of such an inequity 

made many of the doctors anxious and uncertain regarding their future careers. A large 

number of the World War II Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) graduates in 

medicine, with little or no practical clinical training, then were replacing experienced 

Army of the United States personnel eligible for separation, but few of these young 

men showed interest in Regular Army commissions and by and large they could think of 

no special changes in the Medical Department which would influence them to apply.29

Many, reflecting both the dissatisfactions of some World War II personnel as well as 

the new philosophy of specialization and seemed to believe that the Army emphasized 

the vocation of soldier to the detriment of the profession of medicine.30 Medical Department planners looked forward with dread to the depleted personnel situation when 

the ASTP doctors automatically would be released from service in spite of the fact that 

their generally critical attitude, fundamental dislike of military duties and insistence on 

performance of strictly clinical duties presented real problems in meeting and staffing 

problems in the small station hospitals and field installations. The military medical 

trend, therefore, was to place administrative officers in many positions formerly 

occupied by doctors in order to safeguard 

the latter category.

Circular No. 87, Office of the Surgeon 

General, November 21, 1946, authorized 

a Basic Science course in anatomy, physiology, bacteriology, biochemistry and 

pharmacology as part of the residency 

training program for Regular Army officers then being implemented for the 

Army Medical Department by hospital 

The Traveling Post Exchange staffs. At the Army Medical Center, the 
369

Fragmentary Discussions XVII

School faculty was charged with the responsibility of organizing the course. Because of 

the shortage of trained military instructors, the work was to be presented by civilians, 

selected for their wide experience in teaching, research and interest in postgraduate 

medical education. In order to correlate the academic and the clinical, the Director 

of the Basic Science course was designated Professional Training Officer at Walter Reed 

General Hospital. An active education committee was also established which consisted 

of the Commanding General, the Executive Officer, the Training Officer, the Chiefs of 

the Medical, Surgical and Neuropsychiatric Service, and a permanent secretary. This 

was, it will be recalled, exactly the same principle and general format of the old faculty 

board, so long operative in the history of the Army Medical School. 

In the various specialties, Internal Medicine, Surgery, Radiology, Urology and Obstetrics 

and Gynecology led in popularity. An attempt was made to indoctrinate the students with 

the functional approaches to clinical medicine rather than to provide a mere accumulation of facts. Instructors were requested to emphasize this viewpoint. In an effort to 

eliminate unnecessary and unproductive duplication and to insure a continuation-type 

of instructional thought, assistant instructors were sent to the civilian laboratories 

and hospitals of the various senior instructors to secure notes and outlines. The course 

was, therefore, basically didactic. The limited amount of time precluded the teaching 

of laboratory methods and all laboratory demonstrations were prepared in advance.31

The number of civilian employees at the School increased during this period, both 

because of the requirements of the Basic Science Course and the increased production of Japanese encephalitis vaccine. As a result, physical facilities of the plant were 

strained to the utmost.32

A Residency Training Program was begun in January 1947, primarily as an improved 

refresher course and as a stop-gap until a more formal training program could be established on a firm basis. Some forty civilian consultants were appointed by the Secretary 

of War, to participate in the clinical and pathological training of first year or assistant 

residents; second year, residents; and third year, senior residents.

File Room, Out-Patient Service; Custodian of 

some 30,000 case histories

Geneva Aswell, expert orthopedic technician, 

1949
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Army Veterinary School, Class in Meat Inspection

The Army Medical School, Dental School and Veterinary School, regrouped as the 

Medical Department Professional Service Schools in 1934, became the Army Medical Department Research and Graduate School on January 10, 1947.33 The new organization included 

the commandant and his assistants, directors of the three major professional divisions 

and, until transferred to the jurisdiction of the Army Medical Center Headquarters, on 

May 25, 1947, the Photographic and Arts Unit. Effective June 30, 1947, the Central Dental 

Laboratory was removed from the Dental Division of the School and placed with the 

Headquarters organization.34 In 1927, Major Oscar F. Snyder, D.C., had taught operative 

dentistry at the Army Dental School and served as executive officer. In the summer of 

1947, he returned, first as a Colonel and later as a Brigadier General, to direct all the 

dental activities of the Army Medical Department Research and Graduate School and 

the Central Dental Laboratory.35

In May 1947, Physiotherapy and its allied functions, at the hospital, were regrouped as Physical Medicine. A special training program was instituted in the early 

part of November 1947, in order to train ASTP officers in the fundamentals of physical 

therapy, occupational therapy and physical reconditioning. Military Occupational Specialty numbers (MOS numbers) had long been in effect as a means of classifying medical 

officers, and the Surgeon General’s Office now added MOS-D-3180 to cover this new 
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Fragmentary Discussions

Brigadier General George Callender presenting medal to Colonel Harry Plotz

XVII

class. Dental internships began at Walter Reed July 1, 1947. Like other services, the 

Dental Service continued to have difficulty meeting personnel requirements, for dental 

technicians rarely reenlisted and dependents made a great inroad on the service.

In the last half of the calendar year 1947, eleven officers completed laboratory refresher courses varying from one to twelve weeks, and a few others had some refresher-type 

training before assignment to specific duties. Four enlisted men completed a twelveweek course as Veterinary Laboratory Technicians, and 352 persons, military and civilian, 

completed the five-day course in The Medical Aspects of Atomic Explosion, which was under 

the jurisdiction of The Army Medical Center for administration only.36

The Training Division and Research and Development Division of the Surgeon 

General’s Office had not produced a reorganized school program at this time and so 

there were no changes in the organization of the various schools at the Center during 

the calendar year 1948. The atomic course was run primarily by the Surgeon General’s 

Office; the Commandant of the Dental School was a Brigadier General and therefore 

senior in grade to his own superior officer, the School Commandant. Both circumstances 

tended to encourage a system that did not insure detailed and constant supervision of 

departments and sections by the commandant or his immediate assistants. As each 

department was under the direct supervision of at least one highly trained individual, 
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the director believed more detailed supervision would possibly be resented.37 This was 

not a failure on the part of the command but rather that funds, personnel, matériel and 

housing were at that time insufficient for the program as envisioned.

The production of prophylactic and diagnostic biologicals varied in proportion 

to the size of the Army and the public health problems encountered by the Medical 

Department in domestic and overseas stations. It was not possible to secure all of the 

required biological products from civilian sources, since in many instances the commercial products failed to meet Army standards. Moreover, the Army Medical Department 

Research and Graduate School could provide some products more cheaply. The director 

believed, therefore, that the laboratories should serve as a pilot plant for working out 

commercially reproducible methods for the manufacture of new vaccines needed by 

the Army.38

An active recruiting program was under way during 1947 to provide competent 

civilian personnel as replacements for military personnel needed in other activities 

and thus insure continuing programs. As “ceilings” for civilian and military personnel 

are established in overhead military agencies, they are arbitrarily affected by budgetary 

limitations, manpower availability and/or fixed rations of personnel allowed for certain 

Of Vital Importance to Research; Army Medical School Laboratories, 1950
373

Fragmentary Discussions XVII

types of installations. Shortly after the recruiting program was implemented at the 

Army Medical Center, “the organization was again upset by the necessity of releasing 

about sixty civilians and immediately re-recruiting them as a result of restoration of the 

original ceiling on civilian employees. In spite of the inevitable frustration and confusion attendant upon such a fluctuating program,”39 the functions of these important 

components of the Army Medical Center were discharged. It was, therefore, obvious to 

the Command that a long-range expansion plan should be developed, a plan that would 

provide the Medical Department in general and the Army Medical Center in particular, 

with a constant flow of adequately trained personnel. 

Colonel Harry Plotz, Medical Corps Reserve, director of the Virus and Rickettsial 

work, died suddenly on February 7, 1947. His position was filled in July 1948, by Dr. 

Joseph Edwin Smadel, likewise a well-known civilian authority in this field.40

They Call It Unification

In June 1947, Surgeon General Kirk, one-time orthopedic surgeon at Walter Reed, 

was succeeded by Brigadier General Raymond W. Bliss, then Assistant Surgeon General but a one-time Chief of the Obstetrical and Gynecological Section at Walter Reed and 

well-known in Army groups as an able specialist in this field. Likewise in June 1947, the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense was created as a military structure in consonance 

with the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947. The War Department was 

replaced in name by the “Department of the Army,” by General Order No. I, 1947. 

General Bliss therefore became Surgeon General during one of the most controversial 

periods in Medical Department history, for as a result of the war experiences, the 

encouragement of his predecessor, and the insistence of influential civilians interested 

in conservative and distributed use of medical personnel, there was a marked trend 

toward closer identification and unification of the three major services of Army, Navy 

and Air. As in the case of the War Department reorganization of 1942, which resulted 

among other changes in the formation of the Services of Supply (later known as the 

Army Services Forces), this was an exacting task.

As a result of acute interest in government studies, among many others, there were 

several actions taken in the early part of 1948 designed to facilitate unification of the 

medical services of the Federal Government. The first of these was the establishment 

by the Secretary of Defense on January 1, 1948, of an ad hoc committee known as the 

Committee on Medical and Hospital Services of the Armed Forces, more commonly 

referred to as the “Hawley” Committee (named for Maj. Gen. Paul H. Hawley, MC, 

ret., formerly an executive officer, AMC). This committee consisted of a civilian 

doctor as chairman and the Surgeons General of the Army and Navy, and the Air Surgeon, 

as members. 

In February 1948, a committee to study Federal Medical Services was appointed and 

was commonly known as the “Voorhees” Committee. It was a task force of the Hoover 

Commission, which then was making searching studies of government functions. On 
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XVII Borden’s Dream

May 21, 1948 a committee of the National Security Organization was appointed and 

was commonly known as the “Eberstadt” Committee. All of these committees made 

significant recommendations for economic reforms and reorganizations among the 

Federal Medical Services and especially pertaining to the military group. 

In the summer of 1948 an Office of Medical Services, directed by a civilian doctor of 

medicine, was formed in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. In spite of the fact that 

such an office was first proposed by the Army Medical Department, the authority of this 

coordinating and policy office immediately became a controversial subject. As progress is ever 

painful, it is inappropriate to attempt an evaluation of its activities or its accomplishments 

at the operating level until sufficient time has elapsed to permit objective appraisal of its 

problems. The Medical Department became the Army Medical Service by General Order No. 

23, 1950. Likewise in 1950, the Army dropped the nomenclature of general hospital, 

and the name Walter Reed Army Hospital made its appearance in the official records. 

The Last Year of Reign

In September 1948, ground was broken for a Post theater, to be located near the 

thirty wards, on Dogwood Street. The Post Exchange, once the officers’ Pavilion 

No. 1, during World War I, was destroyed by fire in April 1948. As a result, the 

Lt. Colonel Gertrude Thomson, Army Nurse Corps; Principal Chief Nurse 1943_1947
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Fragmentary Discussions XVII

enlisted men’s game room, then occupying unsatisfactory quarters in part of the 

“Greenhouse Theater”, on the Georgia Avenue side of the reservation, was moved 

to more desirable housing elsewhere. As it was necessary to provide commercial 

eating facilities for civilian and military employees, a snack-bar was established in 

the former recreation room.41 Plans were well under way for a splendid Rehabilitation building, including gymnasium and swimming pool, and the modernization 

of the Officers’ Club to include an air conditioned dining room. Athletic grounds 

for enlisted men were planned for the Forest Glen and the Main Sections, including two ball diamonds with backstops and bleachers, tennis courts and volley ball 

courts. In the latter case the courts erected across from the new Post Theater 

were constructed primarily through the kindness of a voluntary Engineer group 

from Fort Belvoir. The Post dial system for telephone was planned, budgeted and 

started during the year.

General of the Armies John J. Pershing, a domiciliary patient at Walter Reed after 

May 6, 1941, and for whom a special suite called “The Pent House” was eventually 

built on the third floor near the Officers’ Surgical Ward, died on July 15, 1948. 

He had been both visitor and patient since the long-ago days of World War I, and 

as such he was almost an institutional “fixture.”

Destruction of the Post Exchange, 1948
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XVII Borden’s Dream

On November 18, the Post Commander, Major General George C. Beach, died of 

a long-standing chronic complaint. This was the first time that a Post Commander of 

the Army Medical Center had died while on active duty, the only other death being 

that of a hospital commander, Colonel John J. Phillips, in September 1915. The funeral 

service for General Beach was conducted in the Memorial Chapel; the Troop Command, 

including the WAC detachment, and the Army Medical Center band formed a guard 

of honor. General Beach was a kindly and well-loved commanding officer, and patients 

and personnel alike grieved at the loss of so understanding and warm-hearted a man.

Quietly and without fanfare he had kept informed of personnel problems affecting 

key employees and with complete anonymity he reconciled situations which could 

have become morale problems. He was not the sort of man who enjoyed directing or 

commanding personnel to perform their job, for he was reasonable, quiet, judicial and 

persuasive, with the result that his staff worked for him personally as well as because 

of economic necessity.

General Beach’s wide acquaintance among top-ranking military men such as General 

Dwight D. Eisenhower had apparently left him unspoiled. In 1947, as the time approached for Norman T. Kirk’s retirement as Surgeon General,42 it was common service 

gossip that “Sam” Beach could have the position for the asking, but he stated repeatMajor General George C. Beach greeting WAC Commander Kathleen Burns and reenlistees
377

Fragmentary Discussions XVII

edly in public and in private that he preferred to remain in the Army Medical Center 

where he could maintain close contacts with patients. When he died, and the employees 

contributed for a floral offering, a charwoman on duty in the School building hesitantly 

offered a twenty-five cent donation, as much as she could afford, because he had always 

said “Good Morning” to her as he passed on his way to his office at the Army Medical 

Center headquarters. Although an able hospital commander, it was as a humanist that 

General Beach was revered and remembered. It was especially fitting that he died in 

service, that within those walls where he greeted the great and spoke to the humble, 

where pain was the daily measure for many and birth the privilege of some, “Death 

silenced the soft footsteps of a man who loved his fellow man completely.” 43

Of Local Interest

On January 17, 1949, the nineteenth Post Commander, Brigadier General (later Major General) Paul H. Streit, reviewed the troops and accepted the command from the 

interim commander, Colonel Joseph U. Weaver. Like General Beach, he came to the 

Army Medical Center from the Brooke General Hospital, Fort Sam Houston, Texas. 

Surgeon General Bliss was open in his praise of the new Post Commander’s managerial 

ability, under whose direction affairs at the Army Medical Center, as already planned, 

progressed with clock-like 

regulation and without interruption of the former 

program. The change-over 

in the Post telephone system 

was completed in the spring 

of 1949.44 The new Pediatric 

Section was opened March 

9,45 and renovations were 

begun which would create a 

separate surgical section for 

children.46 The Out-Patient 

Clinic by then employed a 

(civilian) female pediatrician. 

In 1950, a day nursery was 

established on the Post.

As a part of the expanded 

Medical Service training program, there was a fifty per 

cent increase in internships, 

beginning in July 1949. In October 1949, an experimental 

forty-eight-week course of 

instruction in practical nursMajor General Paul H. Streit, Commanding Officer 

January 1949–.
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XVII Borden’s Dream

ing was opened at the Forest Glen Section to fifty enlisted members of the WAC; a 

year later the course was opened to both men and women. The faculty was composed of 

personnel from Army Nurse Corps and the Women’s Medical Specialists Corps. General 

supervision of the course was conducted by the Education Committee of the hospital.47

Many of the buildings were repainted, and the post-war repairs were continued. On 

March 17, 1949, ground was broken for a splendidly equipped moving picture theater. 

And during the year plans were developed for converting the WAC Barracks, one-time 

home of the “Company of Instruction,” into a luxurious Out-Patient Service, the finest 

of its kind in the Army. Trees and shrubs were re-marked, as in General Glennan’s day, 

and an impressive marker calling attention to the Army Medical Center was installed at 

the 16th Street gate. 

In October 1949, when General Streit had been Post Commander less than a year, 

the consultants to the Army Medical Library met for the first time at the Army Medical 

Center. The Army Medical Library had been unsuitably housed for years, and its plight 

was a cause for grave concern. Various efforts to relocate it near or subjoin it to the 

Library of Congress had failed, and both the internal management problems and lack of 

building funds had brought criticism on the Surgeon General’s Office from librarians, 

scholars and distinguished doctors reluctant to see so fine an institution abused. 

General Streit was somewhat familiar with Dr. Borden’s plan for ultimate completion 

of the Army Medical Center, and during his first year as commandant he openly endorsed 

the four-way development of hospital, school, library and museum. Therefore in 1949 

he made a quietly effective plea for giving the Library a permanent home.48 Indefinite 

association of the Library and Museum was accepted by the majority of the Medical 

Corps of the Army as a fixed policy, and those officers interested in the completion of 

the Center considered any other disposition of the institutions sheer heresy. Any one 

of the Surgeons General after 1902 would have completed the Army Medical Center 

had the funds been available, and as late as 1947 the General Staff would have budgeted 

for the Library had the Surgeon General of that period given it a priority over other 

projects. In view of the changing “times” of the mid-century it is, therefore, interesting 

to note that in 1919 General Ireland proposed a comprehensive plan for completing the 

Center; Generals Patterson and Reynolds actively prosecuted this plan and struggled 

for funds against the insurmountable odds of an economic depression and the open 

hostility of some members of the civilian medical profession.

For many years fiscal officers in the Surgeon General’s office had objected to charging the operating costs of the Library to the Medical Department (hospital) budget, 

but none considered giving the institution away.49 At the time Surgeon General Magee 

was in office (1939_1943) the Librarian of that period was struggling desperately to 

secure a new building on Capitol Hill, and his program was completely agreeable to 

the Surgeon General. This was during the period when outside influences were openly 

stressing the civilian services provided by the Army Medical Library and emphasizing 

the national rather than the military value of the collection. General Kirk was, there-
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Fragmentary Discussions XVII

fore, often told that because the volume of inter-library loans routed to civilian doctors 

presumably exceeded the service then required by the Medical Corps, the Library was 

improperly assigned to the Army. Frustrating budget experience of his predecessors had 

convinced him that the General Staff would not support the cost of a new building and 

so he proposed that the fine old institution become a semi-military project such as the 

Rivers and Harbors and flood control projects directed by the Engineer Corps.50

Unfortunately, from late 1946 until his term ended in 1947, the movement to reassign the 

Army Medical Library as a National Medical Library gained unusually active support from 

some of General Kirk’s advisors, and the possibility of creating a National Medical Library 

in fact was discussed. Although it was the Army’s greatest source of professional material in 

the fields of preventative medicine and medical intelligence, there was little defense of the 

institution as a military asset51 or, in fact, little defense of continued military supervision. 

Meanwhile, the Museum, by then renamed in turn the Army Institute of Pathology and the 

Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, had active support from interested civilian and military 

pathologists. After formation of the “Hawley” committee for the study of Joint, Army, Navy 

and Air Force medical activities, the Surgeon General voluntarily presented the LibraryMuseum problems for consideration. In 1949, when it was apparently a question of having the 

Officers’ Club, Army Medical Center
380

XVII Borden’s Dream

Workshop Scene

Army retain responsibility for one or the other of these great institutions, Surgeon General 

Bliss reversed the position adopted by his predecessors and stated that “the Army could not 

in good conscience ask that the Library be located at the Army Medical Center.” 52 He chose 

maintenance of the Museum, or Army Institute of Pathology, and proposed consigning the 

“Army Medical Library” to the Naval Medical Center, thus separating it irrevocably from 

its parent organization and its primary function as a resource for the Army Medical Service 

Graduate Schools and the Institute of Pathology.

The matter was not immediately settled, and when the relative merits of various locations 

and stewardships later were re-studied by an objective committee selected by the National 

Research Council, the Committee proposed that the Library remain under military administration, preferably that of the Army. The Army Medical Center was proposed as a suitable 

location, with the Institute of Health, United States Public Health Service, as an alternate.53

Further, an advisory board representing medical and academic groups was proposed.54

On July 10, 1951, an ordinary hot sultry summer day in Washington, a ground-breaking 

ceremony was held at the Army Medical Center for the new building of the Armed Forces 

Institute of Pathology, and the spectators who foregathered for the exercise heard the usual 

glowing words of praise that memorialize such ceremonies. High-ranking officials of the 
381

Fragmentary Discussions XVII

Social Life For the Young Pediatrics, 1950

three medical services, Army, Navy and Air, applauded the realization of the half-century 

old plan for locating the “Museum” at the Army Medical Center, but, strangely, only one, 

a Naval officer, Rear Admiral Joel T. Boone (Ret.), the new Chief Medical Director of 

the Veterans Administration, called attention to the decrepit and neglected condition 

of the Army Medical Library and its long-standing requirements for a new building.

The occasion marked one of the first public appearances of the Army’s new Surgeon 

General, Major General E. Armstrong. In an appropriately eloquent speech he attempted 

to create for his listeners an imaginary scene at Seventh and B Streets, Southwest, location 

of the Museum-Library building since 1887. In so doing he advised that the spirit of Oliver 

Wendell Holmes was probably rejoicing that at last the Institute could be graciously as well 

as adequately housed. The ghost of the famous Major Walter Reed, he said, was undoubtedly 

viewing the scene from another world, proud of the scientific progress made in the fifty years 

since his death. One by one the shades of many of the great medical men of past generations 

were called on to witness this momentous occasion. All, said the Surgeon General, were rejoicing in the achievement in which they could take just pride – “But not Billings,” murmured 

the editor of the recently terminated Index-Catalogue sadly, to himself, as he listened to 

the oratory – “But not Billings.”
382

XVII Borden’s Dream

Drawn Map of Army Medical Center (2 Pages)
383

Fragmentary Discussions XVII
384

XVII Borden’s Dream

And so it was that eighty-seven years and two days after the Battle of Fort Stevens Surgeon General Hammond’s apparently far-fetched proposal for a military medical center in 

Washington City gave evidence of nearing completion. Lt. Colonel William Cline Borden 

was the human instrument in fact that brought about the building of the Walter Reed Army 

Hospital whose name so influenced public identification of the activity that on September 

13, 1951, the Department of the Army finally made a colloquialism an official directive, and 

the Walter Reed Army Medical Center 55 became a matter of official record. Borden’s Dream

his critics called his plans for the colonial structure which, like the hero for whom it 

was named, was the Army’s “First on the Scroll of Fame.”56

Shield, The Walter Reed Army Medical Center
385

Fragmentary Discussions XVII

References

1. Editorial, Military Surgeon, February 1910, pg 375.

2. Made temporary Brigadier General in 1943; a permanent Brigadier June 1, 1946; a Major 

General in January 1948, Service Stripe, (Jan. 31, 1948).

3. Service Stripe, July 27, 1946.

4. Ibid, March 24, 1945.

5. Annual Rpt., WRGH, 1945.

6. Service Stripe, April 21, 1945.

7. Annual Report, WRGH, 1946.

8. Interview with Maj. Gen. Shelley U. Marietta, M.C., Ret. May 16, 1951.

9. Annual Report, WRGH, 1946.

10. Ibid.

11. Service Stripe, January 25, 1947.

12. Retired in April 1951; her successor had not been named at the time the history was written.

13. Interviews with Colonel Florence A. Blanchfield, ANC, Ret., 1946_1950.

14. Based on general interviews over a four-year period.

15. Conversation with Major General Paul H. Streit, October 1950.

16. Interview with Maj. Gen. Robert U. Patterson, M.C., Ret., Aug. 29, 1950.

17. Ibid.

18. Service Stripe, June 21, 1947.

19. Ibid, July 31, 1948.

20. Sec. I, ASF Cir. 92, 11 April 1946 and Sec. III, ASF Circular 98, 19 April 1946; WD Circular 

No. 138, 14 May 1946; WD Circular No. 170, 11 June 1946.

21. Service Stripe, June 28, 1946.

22. Memo to TSW from Watson B. Miller, Adm. Sept. 5, 1946, with enclosure from Frank H. 

Lahey, M.D., Chm. Dir. Bd. P&AS. June 26, 1946. On file Office of the Adm. FSA.

23. Service Stripe, October 26, 1946.
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XVII Borden’s Dream

24. Ibid, May 3, 1947. Unification of the three combat services into a single National Security 

Organization was effected by Public Law 253, 80th Congress, approved 26 July 1947. The 

War Department was redesignated The Department of the Army.

25. Annual Report of Technical Activities of the Medical Department, 1946.

26. Annual Report, WRGH, 1946

27. Annual Report MD PSS 1946, Pt. I, pg 5.

28. Biography of Jefferson R. Kean, MSS on file, AML, Washington, DC pg 94.

29. A study on attitudes of ASTP medical officers toward service in the Regular Army, made at 

the request of the Office, Secretary of War, (by) WD Information and Education Division 

Troop Attitude Research Branch, Washington, 25, DC, 2 Nov. 1946 pg 1.

30. Ibid, pg 3.

31. Report of MD RGS, July 1, 1947 to December 31, 1947.

32. Ibid.

33. Section I, WD GO No. 5, 13 January 1947.

34. Annual Report of Technical Activities of the Medical Department, 1947.

35. Service Stripe, May 15, 1948.

36. Rpt...1 July 1947 _ 31 December 1947.

37. Annual Rpt. of the Army Medical Dept., Research and Graduate School for the Calendar 

year 1948.

38. Annual Report...FY ending 30 June 1947.

39. Annual Rpt. AMDRGS...1947.

40. Service Stripe, July 10, 1948.

41. Ibid, October 29, 1948.

42. Brig. Gen. Raymond W. Bliss succeeded to this office on June 1, 1947. He had been at 

Walter Reed during the early twenties as the Chief of the Obstetrical and Gynecological 

Section of General Surgery.

43. Service Stripe, November 21, 1948.

44. Ibid, February 25, 1949.

45. Ibid, April 8, 1949.
387

Fragmentary Discussions XVII

46. Ibid, May 27, 1949.

47. Ibid, Sept. 2, 1949.

48. Ibid, October 28, 1949.

49. Conversation with Col. E.C. Jones, M.C., Ret., May 1938.

50. Conversation with Maj. Gen. Norman T. Kirk, M.C., Ret., June 23, 1951.

51. Ibid, May 1947.

52. Memorandum for Dr. Meiling from R.W. Bliss, Major General, TSG, USA, 22 November 

1949. (MEDDA); Renamed “Armed Forces Institute of Pathology” on July 1, 1949.

53. Conversation, Major General Paul H. Streit, June 1951.

54. The large group of consultants to the Army Medical Library had proven unwieldy and 

impractical. From the functional standpoint, however, an advisory board, beyond the 

jurisdiction of military command channels appears impractical.

55. General Order #80, DA, 13 September 1951.

56. Eliza Cook, “The Englishman,” Stanza I.
388

XVII Borden’s Dream