Scope of activities and research in pathology laboratories from 1920 to 1940

The ideal of a pathology institute consisted of a large autopsy department and a wide collection of specimens for the training of students and clinically active doctors. Additional departments supporting the autopsy department were a chemical and bacteriological laboratory. Other departments were experimental laboratories for biology, immunology, and cell research as well as an animal facility. The main pillar of the training was the understanding of the concept of disease and the development of disease. In this context, the final state of a disease was usually presented in the context of the autopsy. The special contribution of Rudolf Virchow was the additional consideration of cellular changes using microscopic preparations. In contrast, in England and America, clinical care on patients was carried out within the institutes in addition to autopsies. For this purpose, some institutes had their own wards with patient beds. The areas of research were accordingly different. The analysis of journal articles from 1920 to 1940 in two German-language journals, Virchows Archive and Naunyn-Schmiedebergs Archiv fur experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie (today: Naunyn-Schmiedeberg's Archives of Pharmacology), and two English-language journals, Journal ofPathology and Bacteriology and American Journal of Pathology, showed different scopes and numbers of publications. On the basis of these publications, it was found that the German journals published a huge variety of diseases, especially series of identical tumors and often the first description of the disease. The British Journal of Pathology published mainly infectious topics and numerous animal experiments. The American journal covered a very broad spectrum of publications, including many on clinically relevant histological techniques.