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[1]
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
- ↑ 23 Smart, Journal of the American Medical Association, 24 (1895), p. 580.
