Recognition of the character of the institution by others was abundantly forthcoming. Thus, Dr. Henry W. Bettmann, Curator of the Cincinnati Hospital, wrote the Curator of the Army Medical Museum on 13 July 1895, seeking information as to the literature dealing with the best methods of preserving and mounting anatomical and pathological material, or a detailed account of the "methods employed in your own famous collections." Dr. Billings, who replied on 20 July, observed that the literature on the subject was "very limited, consisting principally of isolated hints scattered in various medical publications," but gave, in a nine-page memorandum, a "general summary" of the methods employed at the Museum which "after many futile experiments, have to some extent proved successful." 14[1]
The memorandum describes the steps in the process of cleaning, degreasing, and mounting bones showing disease or injury, and in even greater detail the processes of preparing wet specimens, preserved in ethyl alcohol or formalin. Special precautions were taken with specimens intended for microscopic or bacteriological work. For the latter, tissues were kept apart, handled as little as possible and with every care to prevent access of foreign bacteria.
Bacteriology and Roentgen Rays at the Museum
With George Sternberg as Surgeon General and Walter Reed as Curator, bacteriology was bound to expand in importance in the world of the Museum, but the main emphasis of the laboratory work, if we may judge by the correspondence files of the period, continued to lie in the pathological examination of specimens sent in from Army posts and Indian agencies. Indeed, when the Health Officer of the District of Columbia asked Major Reed if he could conveniently make bacteriological examinations of specimens of water from public wells of which the health officer was suspicious, Major Reed was compelled to reply that "with every desire to assist" it would be impossible to "give you at present any material assistance," his own time and that of his assistants being "so completely taken up with the routine Museum work." 15[2]
Routine work of the Museum did not, however, keep Major Reed from taking a keen interest in medical developments. For instance, Wilhelm Roentgen's discovery of X-rays was announced to the world on 6 January 1896. Within 3 months, Reed had applied to The Surgeon General for authority to obtain apparatus for the purpose of experimenting with the new rays, and had been turned down on the ground that it was "not probable that any
