Army, he was called to New York where he worked out the consolidation of the Astor, the Lenox, and the Tilden Libraries to form the great New York Public Library, of which he became the first director, heading not only the main library, housed in a building erected in accordance with his ideas, but also the whole library system with some 80 branches in Greater New York. 18[1]
Among Dr. Billings' last official services to the Museum was his initiation of a movement to have the dental profession adopt the Museum as a repository for study materials in the field of dentistry (fig. 40), "just as other sections of the Museum and Library are considered to be their national collections by the physicians, surgeons, and specialists of the country," as Dr. Billings wrote Dr. Williams Donnally, D.D.S., of Washington, on 10 December 1894. The suggestion bore fruit when, in 1895, the American Dental Association accepted the suggestion when offered by Dr. Donnally. This action, the first such formal acceptance of the Museum as a national repository, may be regarded as a step toward the system of national registries of pathological materials and case histories of the various specialized medical groups which is such an important factor of today's Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. 19[2]
Animal Experimentation at the Museum
Upon the retirement of Lieutenant Colonel Billings, Col. David L. Huntington, Deputy Surgeon General, was placed in charge of the Museum and Library Division, with Major Reed continuing as Curator of the Museum. As Curator, he was called upon to deal with charges of unnecessary cruelty to animals, said to have taken place in the Museum some years earlier. These charges were contained in a letter from Dr. L. E. Rauterberg to the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia, in connection with an investigation of the practice of vivisection in the District. Dr. Rauterberg wrote :
It was my lot for a number of years to be engaged in the Microscopical Division of the Army Medical Museum, and I saw practiced the most inhuman and barbarous mutilations of the dumb animal, under the supervision and with the sanction of the United States officers in charge. A desired part or section of the animal would be removed, not under anesthesia, and the poor beast would be then placed back in its cage or vessel until it suited the convenience of the operator to help himself to another portion, so long as the animal
- ↑ 18 Who Was Who in America, 1943 edition, "Billings, John Shaw."
- ↑ 19 Lamb, op. cit., pp. 109-111. The invitation extended by Dr. Billings through Dr. Donnally was published in Dental Cosmos, June 1895, p. 519- Dr. Donnally's eloquent and persuasive presentation of the reasons for acceptance of the invitation appears in the Transactions of the American Dental Association, 1895, pp. 134-I49.
