have followed. Physicians assigned to the U.S. Army were finally accorded military rank in 1847, although the old Regimental Surgeon system of additional designations ("Assistant Surgeon", "Surgeon") was also retained until 1908. In 1862, Surgeon General William Alexander Hammond proposed establishment of an "Army Medical School" in which medical cadets and others seeking admission to the MC could receive such post-graduate instruction as would better fit them for military commissions. It was over 30 years, however, before Surgeon General George M. Sternberg would found (1893) the Army Medical School (AMS), the precursor institution to today’s Walter Reed Army Institute of Research. 20th century Congress made official the designation "Medical Corps" in 1908, although the term had long been in use informally among the Medical Department's regular physicians. World War I brought a realization of the need to provide more than the “finishing school” approach of the AMS to military medical education and indoctrination and in 1920, the Medical Department first established hospital internships as a method of acquiring new officers for the MC. Meanwhile, part of the role of the AMS (which would become part of the Army Medical Center in 1923) was taken over by the new Medical Field Service School which opened at Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania in 1921. Its purpose was to train both new medical officers and newly enlisted medics in the practice of field medicine. (This school was transferred to Texas in 1946, became the Academy of Health Sciences in 1973, and became the AMEDD Center & School in 1991). The first woman to receive a Regular Army commission in the MC was Major Margaret D. Craighill in 1943. She was assigned as Chief Surgeon to the Women’s Army Corps. In 1946, Army residency programs for MC officers were introduced into the Medical Department, providing for the first time the full spectrum of graduate medical education (GME) to prospective MC officers. In 1954, a prominent thoracic surgeon and Harvard graduate, Frank Berry, was appointed as the second Assistant Secretary of Defense (Health Affairs). Upon assuming office one of his first acts was to propose a plan for young military physicians to follow one of three pathways after completing their internship: Enter the armed services immediately and return to their residencies after fulfilling their obligated service; Enter the armed services two years after medical school and complete their residencies after service; Enter the service after the completion