Armed Forces Institute of Pathology: Its First Century 1862-1962/Chapter IV

by Robert S. Henry

CHAPTER IV

Broadening the Base

The Ford's Theater building was at best a makeshift home for the Museum, the Library, and the historical records of the Surgeon General's Office, and with the passage of time and the growth of the collections, it became less and less suitable. By 1880, it has ceased to be adequate for the Museum alone, even if all its space had been available for museum purposes. As it was, the Museum was confined to the crowded and cluttered third floor, the books of the Library were packed two and three rows deep on the shelves on the second floor, and the hospital records of the Civil War, with the clerks at work on them, filled the ground floor to overflowing. "In time," wrote Maj. Charles Smart, Surgeon, U.S. Army (fig. 31), who was assigned to complete the work on the medical volumes of the History after Dr. Joseph J. Woodward's disability, "there came to be no room for even the storage of books and specimens, not to speak of facility of reference or advantageous display." 1 ^[1]

There was, moreover, distinct danger of utter destruction of irreplaceable records and materials by fire. The floors were of noncombustible materials, it is true, but the roof was not, and the walls were so weak and so much out of plumb as to threaten imminent collapse in case of fire. Indeed, the ordinary use of the building was limited by a prohibition "against putting heavy articles in the upper floor for fear of pushing out the west wall." 2^[2]

Inadequate Quarters

In his annual report for 1880, Surgeon General Barnes "invited attention to the overcrowded and unsafe condition" of the 10th Street building. Growth of the collections, he wrote, had made "the space available for their preservation quite inadequate, not merely for their proper display, but even for satisfactory

Figure 31.—Maj. Charles Smart, Surgeon, U.S. Army.

storage." The Surgeon General earnestly recommended an appropriation for a building which should be "absolutely fireproof, but no expenditure for mere architectural display is required."

Pursuant to The Surgeon General's recommendation, President Rutherford B. Hayes, in his last annual message to Congress, urged such an appropriation. "The collection of books, specimens, and records constituting the Army Medical Museum and Library are of national importance," the President said. " * * * Their destruction would be an irreparable loss not only to the United States but to the world * * *. These valuable collections are now in a building which is peculiarly exposed to the danger of destruction by fire. It is therefore earnestly recommended that an appropriation be made for a new fireproof building, adequate for the present needs and reasonable future expansion of these valuable collections. Such a building should be absolutely fireproof; no expenditure for mere architectural display is required. It is believed that a suitable structure can be erected at a cost not to exceed $250,000." 3^[3]

The movement for a new building was furthered by Surgeon General Barnes in a letter of December 1881, to Secretary of War Robert T. Lincoln, son of the President. The Library, he said, contained 51,500 volumes and 57,000 pamphlets, while the 22,000 specimens of the Museum were "unique in the completeness with which both military surgery and the diseases of armies are illustrated." These collections, he added, "although originally founded chiefly" for purposes of military medicine, "have proved to have manifold uses in connection with the general progress of medical science in the United States, especially in relations to the public health, uses which are perhaps of equal importance to the nation."

As to the worth in money to be placed on the collections, The Surgeon General wrote that the value of that part of the Government property collected in the old building "which could be replaced by money" could not be less than $250,000, but that "much of it could never be replaced, either by time or money."

Surgeon General Barnes had the satisfaction of seeing his recommendation approved by Secretary Lincoln on 6 January 1882, and made the subject of a special message to Congress by President Chester A. Arthur, on die 19th of the same month. 4^[4]

On 28 February 1883, almost at the end of the second and final session of the 47th Congress, and too late for further action, the House Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds reported favorably on the bill, H.R. 7681, appropriating $200,000 for a building in the vicinity of the National Museum and the Smithsonian Institution:

The collections of records, books, and museum specimens, * * * in imminent danger of destruction, are of great national importance * * *. The Library now contains about 70,000 volumes * * *. The museum is by far the best collection of materials relating to military medicine and surgery in existence. They number over 20,000 specimens * * *. Some 40,000 persons visited the museum during the year 1881 * * *.

The medical profession throughout the country have presented to the committee a large mass of testimony commending the unequaled collections, both of the Library and Museum, and have earnestly requested that suitable provision be at once made for their preservation * * *.

The building proposed is plain, fireproof, with a large amount of floor space the building would cover an area of about 21,000 square feet, contain about 1,350,000 cubic feet, and at a cost of $200,000, recommended by the bill, or about 15 cents per cubic foot. 5^[5]

Support From the Medical Profession

Before the new Congress, the 48th, opened its first session, the medical profession made further representations favoring a new building for the Museum and the Library. Professors Samuel D. Gross of Philadelphia, Austin Flint of New York, and Oliver Wendell Holmes of Boston, three giants in American medicine, addressed a letter to members of the American Medical Association calling attention to the need for a new building as a subject of great importance to the medical profession and to the public welfare. They wrote:

There has been formed at Washington, under the direction of the Medical Department of the Army, a Museum of Military Medicine and Surgery, and in connection with this, a Medical Library, each of which is believed to be the largest and best of its kind in the world.

The building in which these invaluable collections are stored, collections which can never be replaced if destroyed, is insecure, not fire-proof, in the midst of highly inflammable buildings, and overcrowded. At the close of the last session of Congress, too late for action, a bill appropriating funds for a fire-proof building * * * was reported It appears to the undersigned in the highest degree desirable that this bill should become a law at the next session of Congress, and to further this end, that the physicians of the United States should explain to the members of Congress * * * the great importance of these collections of books and specimens, the propriety of granting the funds necessary for their maintenance and preservation, the inexpediency of separating them, or removing them from the management under which they have so successfully been conducted, and the necessity of a fire-proof building, that they may be handed down safely to coming generations.

Responding to his communication, the American Medical Association, meeting at Cleveland, Ohio, on 5-8 June 1883, adopted a strong memorial and named a special committee to present the matter to Congress and to call the attention of State medical societies to the importance of action. To the distinguished medical men who had originated the action, there were added on the special committee Doctors D. W. Yandell of Louisville, T. G. Richardson of New Orleans, and H. F. Campbell of Augusta — all three ex-Confederate surgeons and future presidents of the American Medical Association. Action in support of the new building taken by local, county, and State medical societies in at least 19 States was reported to the Congress by the special committee of the American Medical Association, which also addressed its own communication to Congress on behalf of the national association, stressing "the urgent need to secure the preservation and full benefits" of the Museum and Library. "These collections," the committee said, "already the largest and most valuable of their kind in the world, are of the greatest importance, not only to the physicians of this country but to all whose welfare and lives depend on medical skill; and hence what we ask is emphatically for the general good." 6^[6]

A New Surgeon General Presses for a New Building

Before further action toward a new building was taken, Surgeon General Barnes, who had retired in 1882, died in April 1883. His successor in office, Charles H. Crane, who had been Assistant Surgeon General since 1863, also died in October 1883, and was succeeded as Surgeon General by Robert Murray. 7^[7]

General Murray continued to press the movement for a new building, filing with Congress a printed document setting forth the "imperative need of such a building" and the "pressing necessity of placing in security these collections, probably the most valuable of the kind in the world." 8^[8]

General Murray's submittal was in support of bills introduced in the Senate by Senator Joseph R. Hawley of Connecticut (S. 403) and in the House by Gen. William S. Rosecrans, Representative from California (H.R. 48), in December 1883, in the early days of the first session of the 48th Congress. 9^[9] On 13 December 1883, Secretary Lincoln, renewed his recommendation, remarking that he did so the more strongly because the appropriation of $200,000 provided by the bill was $50,000 less than the amount originally proposed. On the 17th, President Arthur again submitted the documents in the case to the Congress, and the bills and the recommendations were referred to the respective Committees on Public Buildings and Grounds of the two houses of Congress, to which also went the numerous petitions and memorials of the medical profession. 10^[10]

On 28 May 1884, William Mahone, late major general in the Confederate service but then Senator from Virginia, reporting for the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, submitted an amended bill for S. 403, carrying an appropriation of $200,000, which the Committee recommended for passage and which, on 3 June, was passed by the Senate and sent to the House. 11^[11]

It was not until the second and final session of the 48th Congress was nearing its close, however, that final action was taken. On 16 February 1885, H.R. 48, the bill introduced by General Rosecrans, came before the House of Representatives. The bill, appropriating $200,000 recommended for passage by the Committee, was submitted by its chairman, Representative Strother M. Stockslager of Indiana.

Objections to Proposed New Building

Opposition was expressed on the grounds that the medical records of the Civil War should be housed in the Pension Building or in the State, War, and Navy Building, both of which were then under construction ; that the medical library should be merged with the Library of Congress in the building then in contemplation; and that the Medical Museum could be accommodated either in the new State, War, and Navy Building or in the Smithsonian Institution. One opponent, Mr. Potter of New York, went further, saying that he did not believe in "preserving the relics and bones or wounds caused by the war at any place in our capital" and expressing the wish that "they were all buried and covered all over with green grass and hidden from sight forever."

To meet objections, proponents of the new building pointed out that the buildings then being constructed for other purposes would not be adequate to house the collections and the records of the Surgeon General's Office ; also, that these features should be kept together, and that the present building, in the words of Representative Stockslager, was a "mere tinder-box" and in an "absolutely dangerous condition." In the course of the debate, Representative Lyman, of Massachusetts, expressed the views of an informed layman on the state of the medical art and the contributions of the Museum to medical progress. "Most of the progress" in medicine and surgery, he said, "has been made during the last half century, and the next fifty years promise a great advance * * *. There is no subject more baffling, and yet it is yielding to study. Already the studies of disease have rendered it highly probable that these plagues are caused by the fertilization of microscopic germs within the body; so that these diseases are a death struggle between man and a parasitic fungus. But already we discern a hope that these germs may be used for inoculation and may protect us from such diseases, just as vaccination protects against smallpox."

"These profound studies, so essential to the welfare of our people, are carried on under the fostering care of our National Medical Museum, whose library, now the first in the world, and whose not less admirable collection of military pathology are placed at the disposal of all investigators."

After an hour's vigorous debate, H.R. 48 was passed by a vote of 181 to 23. Transmitted to the Senate, the bill was recommended for passage by the Committee, which reported its action through Senator Lott Morrill of Vermont, and was passed without objection. On 3 March, the last day of the session, President Arthur reported to Congress that, on the day before, he had signed the bill, which thereby became law. 12^[12]

The bill, as finally passed, authorized the construction of a brick and metal building upon the government reservation in the vicinity of the National Museum and the Smithsonian Institution, the exact site to be selected by a commission composed of the Secretary of War, the Architect of the Capitol, and the Secretary of the Smithsonian. The building was to be in accordance with plans and specifications submitted by The Surgeon General of the Army and approved by the above Commission. Construction was to be under the direction and superintendence of the Secretary of War, and at a cost not to exceed $200,000.13^[13]

John Shaw Billings Becomes Curator

During the years in which the matter of a new home for those institutions was before Congress, a noteworthy change in the organization and personnel of the Museum and Library took place when, on 28 December 1883, the two

were consolidated into one division to be known as the Museum and Library

Figure 32.—Dr. John Shaw Billings, famed Librarian, fourth Curator of the Museum (1883-1893), and father of its collection of microscopes.

Division of the Surgeon General's Office, and Maj. John Shaw Billings (fig. 32) was named as Curator of the Museum as well as Librarian.^[14]

Dr. Billings was 45 years of age when he was detailed for the double duty of Librarian-Curator. Born in Indiana in 1838, he was educated at the "old" Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, and received his M.D. degree at the Medical College of Ohio in Cincinnati. Four years of wartime service as a brilliant operating surgeon and medical administrator led to his detail in the Office of the Surgeon General where, among other duties, he was assigned to the care of the little library of that office. This library, started in 1836, had grown, by 1865, to fewer than 2,000 volumes. When, 30 years later, Colonel Billings relinquished his post as Librarian, the collection had grown to 115,000 bound volumes and 184,000 unbound pamphlets and papers.^[15] Moreover, this vast collection of medical information had been made accessible and usable by the publication of the "Index-Catalogue," started by Dr. Billings in 1880, in which both subjects and authors are listed alphabetically and "every article from every issue of every journal from every country" was indexed. ^[16]

On 17 August 1884, Dr. Woodward died in a hospital near Philadelphia at the early age of 51. In announcing his death, Surgeon General Murray outlined the highlights of a distinguished professional and scientific career which had culminated with his election as president of the American Medical Association for 1882, being the first medical officer of the Armed Forces to be so honored. The "confinement, anxiety and labor" to which he "was subjected in his attendance upon the late President Garfield during his long illness proved too much for a mind and body already over-strained by incessant labor," said The Surgeon General, "and precipitated the illness which finally terminated his life." ^[17]

As was anticipated when the enabling legislation was before Congress, the Commission charged with responsibility for the erection of the new building for the records, library and museum, on 25 March 1885, selected a site fronting 270 feet on the north side of B Street, SW. (now Independence Avenue), and extending back 170 feet on the west side of 7th Street.^[18] Three weeks later, on 15 April, The Surgeon General was called upon to furnish plans and specifications.

The plans (fig. 33) were drawn by Adolph Cluss, architect, according to the ideas of Dr. Billings, acting for The Surgeon General, and after Commission approval, the contract was let, on 18 August, to the firm of Bright & Humphrey. Completion was, as usual, delayed beyond the contract date, making it necessary for the Government to pay rent for 2 additional months on quarters on F Street, occupied by 156 clerks of the Record and Pension Division, and to threaten heavy penalties if the rented quarters were not vacated by August 1887. In a letter to Col. John M. Wilson, the officer in charge of public building and grounds for the Secretary of War, the new Surgeon General, John Moore, on 20 June 1887, outlined a proposed schedule of partial completions with appropriate moves of units into portions of the new building. He concluded with a proposal for a 3-month extension if by 1 August Bright & Humphrey had "so forwarded their work that there is a reasonable certainty" of carrying out the schedule proposed. Otherwise, Surgeon General Moore recommended that the Government take steps to have the work completed by others and be reim

Figure 33.—Fifth home of the Museum. The view of the building shown here is from the architect's drawing.

bursed for losses and extra charges incurred. Apparently, the work was "so forwarded" by the original contractors, and on 9 November Colonel Wilson formally transferred the building to Surgeon General Moore.^[19]

The Museum Moves

From November 1887 until 15 February 1888, the Museum was in the process of moving into the new building. The process was somewhat complicated by the fact that the display cases were found to be a little too high to go through the doors and had to be taken through a large window on the front end of the second-floor Museum Hall.

In copy prepared by or for Colonel Billings for use in a guidebook which was never issued, the building is described as "exceedingly plain, without ornamentation," while to Major Smart is was "severely simple in style." To a lady writing for Godey's magazine in 1898, the building was a "plain red brick structure." The profusion of brick and terra cotta embellishment on the ex terior of the building raises a question as to how much ornamentation would have been required in the 1880's and the 1890's to cause a building to be considered elaborate.

The structure, according to the proposed guidebook, consisted of a center building 112 by 55 feet, with wings 60 by 131 feet on either end. Thus the building had a front of 232 feet on B Street, with wings jutting back 81 feet beyond the rear line of the center building. In the courtyard thus formed, there was an annex 52 by 24 feet, connected with the rear of the center building by a covered passageway.

The central and western portions of the first floor were largely occupied by the clerks of the Record and Pension Division, while the east wing was given over to appanages of the Museum — a dissecting room, an anatomist's room, a darkroom, a room containing the outfit for a post hospital, and a room for genitourinary specimens considered unsuited for display in a museum open to all comers.

The east wing on the second floor was given over to the specimens of the Museum, the west wing to shelf stacks of the Library, while the central portion of the floor was occupied by library offices and reading rooms. The Library and the Museum wings were built so as to form fireproof compartments separated from the other parts of the building. Both were open from the second story to the roof, forming halls 31 feet high to the eaves and 47 feet to the ridge of the lantern skylights by which they were ventilated and lighted. The Museum wing also had, on the level of the third floor, a gallery 14 feet wide, extending clear around the hall.

Rooms on the third floor were used as offices, a microscopy room, and a room equipped for anthropometry. The fourth floor, found in the central building only, contained the photographic gallery and several storerooms, two of which were filled with appliances, for transporting the sick and wounded in the field, for which no space could be found in the exhibit hall of the Museum. The anatomical and biological laboratory was contained in the annex, in which were found also the utilities and the limited and somewhat primitive sanitary facilities. 20 ^[20] The office rooms were graced with fireplaces and mantels, while the large library and museum halls were warmed by air passed over steam-coils in the basement and supplied by ducts, in addition to steam radiators. Corridors and stairways were heated by radiators.

Such was the building which was destined to be for nearly 70 years the home of the Army Medical Museum and its successors, the Army Institute and then the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, and which after an absence of 7 years was to be reoccupied by the Museum and the overflowing activities transferred from the main building of the Institute.

A Shift in Emphasis

With a new home and a new curator, there was a shift in emphasis in the work of the Museum. The new concept of that work attributed to Dr. Billings in a dispatch of 18 September 1886, in the Medical News of Philadelphia, was as follows:

1. To illustrate the effects, both immediate and remote, of wounds and of the diseases that prevailed in the Army.

2. To illustrate the work of the Army Medical Department; models of transportation of sick and wounded, and of hospitals; medical supplies; instruments; etc.

3. To illustrate human anatomy and pathology of both sexes and of all ages.

4. To illustrate the morphological basis of ethnological classification, more especially of the native races of America, including anthropometry, and craniology.

5. To illustrate the latest methods and apparatus for biological investigations and the various methods of preparing and mounting specimens. 21^[21]

Surgeon General Moore, in a circular letter issued 15 September 1888, after the move to the new building was completed, "respectfully invited" the attention of all physicians to the fact that the Museum was "now arranged in a convenient fire-proof building which affords means for the proper preservation and display of specimens" and requested their aid in making it "a complete representative collection covering all branches of medicine." To that end, the circular outlined in great detail the types of specimens especially desired and the methods of "preserving them so as to make them most useful." 22^[22]

The "Old" and the "New" Museums

In keeping with this broader concept, there gradually developed a separation in the exhibits of the Museum, with lessening emphasis on the "missiles, weapons, fractures, excisions, amputations, and other specimens of the Civil War," which tended to be placed in the gallery. "In fact," Major Smart wrote (in 1895) "the museum of the old Ford's Theater building may here [in the gallery] be recognized, while that on the floor of the hall is relatively a new institution." 23^[23]

The central space of this "new institution" was occupied by flat-topped glass cases in which were displayed various surgical instruments, including the beginnings of the collection of microscopes, started by Dr. Billings in 1884 with 17 instruments obtained in Europe— a collection which has grown to number nearly 500 microscopes. These instruments date from the earliest times, including a replica of the single-lens microscope through which Van Leeuwenhoek first saw the "little animals" in a drop of water— generally recognized as the beginning of the microscopic era — and extending to the most elaborate optical types and the ultra-modern electron and phase-contact instruments (fig. 34).

In a series of display cases projecting from the walls, the Museum displayed anatomical and pathological specimens so arranged as to tell, for each organ and region of the body and for the human organism as a whole, the story of normal development, abnormal deviations, disorders and diseases, and repairs and restoration, including that by surgery.

The displays of the Museum, together with the specimens held for study but not on display, were designed to broaden and deepen the lessons learned in the Library by adding to the reading of die printed word the impact of the tangible and visible object, the thing itself.

Dr. Billings' Appraisal

The Museum, which was moved into the new building, contained nearly 27,000 specimens, probably more than there were in any other like museum in the world. Comparison of the number of specimens, however, in the opinion

of Dr. Billings, "would give an exaggerated and erroneous idea of the value of this collection" in relation to others. "The most important medical museum in the world," he said in his presidential address before the Congress of American Physicians and Surgeons on 20 September 1888, "and the one which has exercised the greatest influence in giving direction to anatomical and pathological studies * * * is undoubtedly that of the Royal College of Surgeons of London, the foundation of which was the collection made by John Hunter, purchased by the government in 1799 * * *. At first the Army Medical Museum was limited to military medical subjects, but of late years its scope has

Figure 34.—Foundation and evolution of the microscope collection. A. The instruments shown are from the original 17 sent by John Mayall of the Royal Microscope Society of London.

been greatly broadened, and is now clearly the same as that of the Royal College of Surgeons."

Speaking "On Medical Museums, with special reference to the Army Medical Museum at Washington," Dr. Billings declared that the "object of this address is not to boast of what we have, but to indicate what we want." The Museum, he said, had "only a beginning of such an anatomical collection as I have indicated is desirable * * *. We are accustomed to think that human anatomy is exhausted as a field for original research," a view to which the speaker did not subscribe. "There is ample material and scope for original work for half a dozen skilled anatomists for many years to come to supply the demands of this museum for illustrations of human morphology * * *," he added.

"The pathological section of a Medical Museum is its main feature," he said. "No doubt much of the ancient pathology, and some of that which is quite recent, is comparable to the looking in the dark for a black spot which is not there, but those who despise pathology, and devote their entire time to

Figure 34.—Continued. B. A part of the famous microscope collection displayed in the Medical Museum.

symptoms and treatment, err as much on one side as those who talk and act as if a knowledge of pathological anatomy could take the place of clinical experience do on the other."

Although Dr. Billings was the author of "A Report on the Hygiene of the United States Army," published by The Surgeon General in 1875, and believed that "an ideal medical museum should be very complete in the department of preventive medicine, or hygiene," the collections of the Army Museum did not cover the subject except "in their immediate relations to the military medical service." Partly accounting for this was the existence of the Museum of Hygiene, under the direction of the Medical Department of the U.S. Navy.

"The objects of a medical museum are to preserve, to diffuse and to increase knowledge," Dr. Billings said in his presidential address. "Its conservative function is to form a permanent record of what has been demonstrated and to fix the meaning of terms. Even in my brief experience of thirty years the terminology of anatomy, physiology, pathology, chemistry, and of most of the specialties has greatly changed * * *. To get useful results from the older literature we must know the precise significance of the old words and, in some cases, the best way to learn this is to examine the specimens prepared by those who use such terms in their descriptions."

One of the advantages of the Medical Museum, which it enjoyed "in common with several of the largest, and most important museums, more especially those of the Royal College of Surgeons and of the Faculty of Medicine of Paris," pointed out by Dr. Billings, was its close association with "a large medical library which is in the same building, and at present under the same direction. The increased utility and attractiveness which this gives to both library and museum are very decided."

In the first place, in a "very condensed statement of the wants of our National Medical Museum," Dr. Billings listed "the intelligent interest and friendship of the medical profession * * *. To a very considerable extent it has had that; were it otherwise it would not be what it is, nor where it is. But it needs more of it, and it can never have too much."

Referring to the fact that a large proportion of the pathological specimens "were gathered during a great war * * * when antiseptic surgery, as now understood and practiced, was unknown," Dr. Billings predicted that this group, showing the "effects of pyogenic microorganisms on gunshot wounds," would never be duplicated. These and other Civil War relics, he said, "have an interest beyond that which is purely professional * * *. The fact that we are physicians does not imply that we look upon them from a medical or scientific stand only. Those of the combatants who survive are now better friends than ever, and the museum specimens coming as they do from the sick and wounded of both armies, and contributed by both Union and Confederate surgeons, enforce the lesson of the unity of the profession and of its interests, as well as that of our country."

And, with prophetic vision, the Curator saw ahead to the idea of an institute of pathology cooperating with "earnest and well trained students" working on the museum's collections "so as to advance knowledge * * *.To all such students we shall endeavor to afford opportunities for this work. Precisely how this is to be effected is not yet clear, but here is abundance to be done, and there are quite a number of men coming on the stage who want to do such work for its own sake * * *. Sooner or later, we shall have half a dozen or more of specially trained men busy in the laboratories and work-rooms of the museum, each engaged on his own problems, and the whole for the common good." 24^[24]

1. 1 Smart, Charles: The Army Medical Museum and the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office. Journal of the American Medical Association 24: 577, 20 April 1895.
2. 2 Congressional Record, 48th Congress, 2d session, p. 1767. [That fears for the safety of the Ford's Theater building were not exaggerated was demonstrated on 9 June 1893, when the floors fell through to the basement with a loss of 22 lives and 68 injuries.]
3. 3 Documents with Reference to Proposed Building for the Army Medical Museum and Library of the Surgeon General's Office" — Copy of Report No. 1991, annex B, Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds, on H.R. 7681, 47th Congress, 2d session, 28 February 1883.
4. 4 Senate Executive Document 65, 47th Congress, 1st session.
5. 5 H.R. Report 1995 (H.R. 7681), 47th Congress, 2d session.
6. 6 (1) Congressional Record, 48th Congress, 2d session, p. 1768. Documents, Proposed Building, loc. cit., pp. 3-6. (2) Scrapbook of clippings. On file in historical records of AFIP.
7. 7 In announcing General Barnes' death, the Adjutant General's office ascribed to him the founding of the Medical Museum and the launching of the History. Dr. Hammond called attention to the error, which resulted in a change in the general order, which was made to read "Under the fostering care of Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of War, he (General Barnes) accomplished the successful establishment of the Medical History of the War and the Medical Museum." Taking the word, " 'accomplished' in its primary signification of 'completed'," Dr. Hammond was satisfied with the amendment. General Barnes, he said, " 'completed' their successful establishment." (From the official correspondence between Surgeon General William A. Hammond, U.S. Army, and the Adjutant General of the Army, relative to the founding of the Army Medical Museum, and the inauguration of the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, New York, 1883).
8. 8 Senate Executive Document 12, 48th Congress, 1st session.
9. 9 Congressional Record, 48th Congress, 1st session, pp. 37, 59. [General Rosecrans was in command in West Virginia where the future General Hammond, founder of the Medical Museum, made his first reputation in the Civil War.]
10. 10 Senate Executive Document 12, 48th Congress, 1st session.
11. 11 Congressional Record, 48th Congress, 1st session, pp. 4603, 4766.
12. 12 Congressional Record, 48th Congress, 2d session, pp. 1767-1770. 2117,2177, 2569.
13. 13 (1) Public Law 62, 48th Congress. 2d session. (2) 23 U.S. Statutes at Large, ch. 315.
14. "National Archives, Accession Number 421, SGO Circular, 1881-1885, p. 162.
15. Smart, Journal of the American Medical Association, 24 (1895), pp. 579-580.
16. Hume, Edgar Erskine: Victories of Army Medicine: Scientific Accomplishments of the Medical Department of the United States Army. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Co., 1943, pp. 48, 49.
17. Memoir of Joseph Janvier Woodward, 1833-1884, by J. S. Billings. (Read before the National Academy of Sciences, April 22, 1885.) War Department Records, Office of the Surgeon General. On file in National Archives. (2) Biographical Memoirs, National Academy of Sciences, volume 2, 1886.
18. Original letters in File 4938, Office (if the Surgeon General, National Archives.
19. Idem.
20. 20 (1) Lamb, D. S.: A History of the Army Medical Museum, 1862-1917, compiled from the Official Records. Mimeographed copy in historical records of AFIP, pp. 93-95. (2) Lamb, D. S.: Army Medical Museum, Washington, D.C. The Military Surgeon 53: 129, 130, August 1923. (3) Smart, journal of the American Medical Association, 24 (1895), pp. 579-580. (4) Smart, Charles: The Army Medical Museum and the Library of the Surgeon General's Office. Journal of the Military Service Institution of the United States 19: 277-279, 1896. (5) Kyle, Joanna R. N.: The Army Medical Library and Museum. Godey's Magazine 136: 408-418, 1898.
21. 21 Medical News, Philadelphia, volume 49, p. 330.
22. 22 Memoir of Joseph Janvier Woodward, 1833— 1884, by J. S. Billings. (Read before the National Academy of Sciences, April 22, 1885). War Department Records, Office of the Surgeon General. On file in National Archives.
23. 23 Smart, Journal of the American Medical Association, 24 (1895), p. 580.
24. 24 Medical News, Philadelphia, volume 53, number 12, 22 September 1888, pp. 309-316.