This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Reply to article  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in this journal  Topic Collections  • Informatics/ Internet in Medicine  • Informatics, Other  • Ophthalmology, Other  • Alert me on articles by topic

An Appreciation

Arch Ophthalmol. 2006;124:1332-1334.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP) will shortly go out of existence. The Department of Defense Base Closure Commission has recommended that the AFIP be closed, with outsourcing of selected components as part of its plan to pare its budget by realigning and reducing the number of US military facilities. Closure of the AFIP will end the precedent-setting alliance between military and civilian medical specialties that began in October 1921 with a partnership between the American Academy of Ophthalmology and Otolaryngology and the Army Medical Museum, as the AFIP was then known.¹

The museum was founded in 1862 as a repository for specimens obtained from Civil War casualties. Two young Union surgeons who contributed significantly to the development of the museum through their pioneering work with photomicrographs were William Thomson, MD, and William F. Norris, MD—later the first ophthalmology professors at Jefferson Medical College and the University of Pennsylvania . . . [Full Text of this Article]

AUTHOR INFORMATION
William H. Spencer, MD; Daniel M. Albert, MD, MS