Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/106

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BROADENING THE BASE
87

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