There had been earlier efforts at the Museum to produce true color reproductions of pathological specimens, as reported by Major Callender, Major Coupal, and Mr. F. E. Prior, in an article published in Bulletin No. X of the International Association of Medical Museums. Effective results were produced by a method which involved accurate photographic prints which were colored by hand, with the resulting picture reproduced by lithography. The 1932 experiment, carried on by Roy M. Reeve, photographer for the Museum, and Joseph Carter of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, sought to secure correct coloring by making three color separation negatives, from which prints were made in blue, red, and yellow. The prints were superimposed upon one another, checked for accurate registration, and true color values, corrected by differential printing of the three images, and then mounted — yellow image first, red second, and blue third, to complete the picture. The Reeve-Carter process produced effective color prints, even though it required much patience and a high degree of manipulative skills, and was a distinct advance in the development of today's simpler and more rapid systems of producing photographs in color. 10[1]
The Museum at Threescore Years and Ten
In 1932, the 70th year of the existence of the Army Medical Museum, its exhibits were viewed by 67,689 visitors. Because of a lack of space, only about half its collections could be placed on exhibition. The collections "combined exhibits of historical value and interest to the Medical Corps of the Army, to the medical profession at large, and to the general public." There was, however, a "great volume of material of a purely pathological character"— for it could never be forgotten that the Museum was, above all else, "the active central unit of pathology in the Army." As such, it received, in its 70th year, protocols and specimens from nearly 1,000 autopsies performed at Army hospitals, representing more than 56 percent of all deaths in these hospitals. 11[2]
Major McNabb was succeeded as Curator by Maj. Virgil H. Cornell in IQ 33 (fig- 7 1 )- The new Curator was a native of Brooklyn and received his medical degree at the Long Island College of Medicine in 1913. Thirty years later, after serving as pathologist and chief of the laboratory service at major
- ↑ 10 (1) Callender, G. R., Coupal, J. F., and Prior, F. E.: True Color Reproduction of Pathological Specimens. International Association of Medical Museums Bulletin X, April 1924, pp. 38-41. (2) Reeve Roy M.: Color Photography in the Medical Museum. Journal of Technical Methods and Bulletin of the International Association of Medical Museums 19: 12-19 October 1939. (3) Reeve, Roy M.: Color Prints by the Carter-Reeve Color Process. The Journal of the Biological Photographic Association 4: 132-136 1936.
- ↑ 11 Memorandum, Maj. P. E. McNabb, for The Surgeon General, U.S. Army, 1932. On file in historical records of AFIP.
