Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/351

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LIFE IN THE NEW BUILDING
339


and in quantity. The methods devised, it was thought, "might prove advantageous in the study and development" of other virus infections. 4[1]

As further researches did indeed determine that other viruses could be produced by the impregnated egg method, Dr. Goodpasture's successful experiment with fowlpox began to be recognized for what it meant — a revolution in one vast field of immunology and preventive medicine through the production and use of pure, plentiful, and potent vaccines derived from the incubated egg.

Appointment of Dr. Goodpasture as Scientific Director of the Institute and head of its major Department of Pathology was not the only change in the organization and staffing that took place in the Institute's "shakedown cruise," as Capt. William M. Silliphant (fig. 109), in naval vernacular, termed the first few months in the new building. The captain, who had served as the Navy- nominated Deputy Director for 3½ years, succeeded General DeCoursey as Director in July 1955, when the latter left the Institute, after 5 years of service, to become Commandant of the Army Medical Service School at Brooke Army Medical Center, Fort Sam Houston, Tex.

Captain Silliphant, the new Director, a native of Prince Edward Island, Canada, was graduated with honors from Prince of Wales College at Charlotte-town, Prince Edward Island, and afterward was graduated cum laude from the University of Southern California. He obtained his medical degree from the Stanford University School of Medicine, and had 2 years' postgraduate study in pathology at the U.S. Naval Medical School in Washington. He was captured by the Japanese in the Philippines and for 37 months was interned in Bilibid Prison, where he served his fellow prisoners as ward medical officer, sanitation officer, and laboratory officer, simultaneously. For 5 years before his assignment to the Institute as Deputy Director, he was Director of Laboratories, U.S. Naval Medical School, National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda, Md.

In August, Col. Dwight M. Kuhns, MC, USA, became Deputy Director, serving to the end of the year 1955, when he retired for physical disability, and was succeeded by Col. Francis E. Council as the Army-nominated Deputy Director.

Meanwhile, Col. Ralph H. Thompson, the Air Force-nominated Deputy Director, retired at the end of August, and was succeeded by Col. Frank M. Townsend, USAF, MC.

Adjustment of personnel, space, and activities, to take full advantage of the new building and its facilities, went forward in the latter months of 1955 and in

  1. 4 Woodruff, A. M., and Goodpasture, E. W.: The Susceptibility of the Chorio-Allantoic Membrane of Chick Embryos to Infection With the Fowl-pox Virus. American Journal of Pathology 7: 209-222, May 1931.