a multitude of specimens, upward of 6,000 pathological specimens were collected, preserved, and shipped to the Army Medical Museum. 55[1]
With the signing of the armistice on 11 November, the tremendous flow of men and materials across the Atlantic had to be reversed, with consequent confusion and delays. Recognizing that the specimens being shipped home- ward would be subject to unpredictable delays, Col. Walter D. McCaw, who had succeeded General Ireland as Chief Surgeon of the AEF, when he had become Surgeon General on 14 November 1918, upon the retirement of General Gorgas, issued, on 2 December, his Circular No. 58 supplementing and reinforcing Circular No. 42, and giving specific directions as to methods of packing and shipping specimens so that they would not deteriorate even if they should not be delivered for a couple of years. 56[2]
The flow of materials collected in France had little more than begun to reach the Museum, and most of the eager young men whom Colonel Owen had sent overseas were still over there, when the colonel reached the statutory age of compulsory retirement. Regretfully, in mid-January 1919, he yielded the curatorship to become, after his retirement, professor of anatomy at the Georgetown University School of Medicine.
Succeeding him as Curator was Col. Charles Franklin Craig, who was to be called upon to deal with the problem of handling the incoming flood of specimens and materials with no increase in the space in which they were to be processed and exhibited, and with a staff which, almost daily, was shrinking toward pre-war levels as the wartime additions were demobilized.
