Dr. Billings asked authority to purchase, for not more than $410, a dynamo to be driven by an 8-horsepower steam engine, already connected with the boilers, and urged action in time to have the lights working during the evenings when 1,500 members of the A.M.A. were expected to be in the city." 9[1]
Special and specific authority had to be sought from the Office of the Surgeon General for items of far less consequence than the dynamo needed to replace one which had been borrowed from the National Museum and had been recalled by its owner. "I have the honor to state that the following articles are required for use at the Army Medical Museum and request authority to buy them as emergency purchases to be paid for from the Museum appropriation: 5 gallons of Benzine, Estimated cost, $.75" read a typical formal letter of the sort, duly signed by "Your obedient servant, John S. Billings, Major and Surgeon, U.S. Army, Curator Army Medical Museum." Other such letters request authority to purchase items as minute as 30 cents' worth of flour, 10 cents' worth of resin, and a half a dozen washers for a dime. 10[2]
The degree of financial stringency involved in operating the Museum on an annual appropriation of $5,000— and that not always forthcoming without a struggle— is indicated by a letter of 30 December 1890 from Major Billings to M. Jules Talrich, Officier de l'lnstruction Publique in Paris, from whom Billings had purchased some anatomical models during a visit to Paris, and who had offered others for sale.
I greatly appreciate your kind offer to let me have the two figures: "Une premiere attaque d'hysterie chez une jeune femme de la race caucasique" and "une jeunne fille de Zouzouland," for the sum of $4,000.00 but the means at my disposal will not allow me to purchase them. The yearly appropriation made by Congress for this Museum is very small, and after reserving the amount absolutely necessary for the current expenses of this Institution, there remains less than a thousand dollars available for the acquisition of new preparations and specimens. 11[3]
The Prime Source of Specimens
How nearly complete was the reliance placed on contributions for specimens is shown by the pamphlet catalog of the Museum's portion of the Army Medical Department's exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1892-93. 12[4] In its "Description of Selected Specimens," the pamphlet lists 82
