of a solution of formalin followed by alcohol, in Berlin on 8 July 1896.7[1] The process, with some modification, was introduced into the Army Medical Museum in June 1897, and had been used for wet specimens "with much satisfaction" since that time. With the adoption of the Kaiserling method, the use of alcohol, except as part of that process, was almost entirely discontinued. 8 [2]
The stature of the Museum and of its Curator, Maj. James Carroll, was recognized by the election of Carroll as the first president of the International Association of Medical Museums, a new organization whose truly international character is evidenced by the election of professors at an American, an English, and a German university as vice presidents, and of Dr. Maude E. Abbott of McGill University, a Canadian institution, as secretary-treasurer. Major Carroll was unable to attend the meeting, at which he was elected, because of illness from which he never recovered sufficiently to enable him to serve actively as president of the new association. At the second stated meeting of the Association, deep regret was expressed at the death of "one of the heroic figures in the history of this country" whose passing was a loss to the scientific world. 9[3]
Changes in Classification
In the last year of Carroll's curatorship, a new classification of the Museum's materials was begun, under the direct charge of Dr. D. J. Healy, anatomist of the Museum. The new system followed closely that adopted in 1899 by the Pathological Museum of McGill University in Montreal. It superseded, largely, the system of classification which had been developed by Dr. Daniel Smith Lamb, the pathologist of the Army Medical Museum. 10[4]
The advantages claimed for the McGill system of decimal numbers to designate classes were that it followed an anatomical classification, with "the different morbid processes affecting each organ subclassified under it, general and regional pathology being provided for by cross cataloguing." In criticism of the Army Medical Museum system, submitted with deference to that Institution's general excellence, it was said that the arrangement of descriptive numbers, made up of capital and lowercase letters and numerals, which was the
- ↑ 7 Abbott, M. E.: On the Classification of Museum Specimens. (A paper read before the Canadian Medical Association, Montreal, on 18 September 1902.) In American Medicine. 4 April I903. P- 541.
- ↑ 8 Lamb, D. S.: The Army Medical Museum — A History. Washington Medical Annals 15: 4, January 1916. (A paper presented before the Medical Society of Washington, 1 November 1915.)
- ↑ 9 Bulletin Number 1, International Association of Medical Museums, Washington, D.C., 15 May 1907. The death of Major Carroll was noted in Bulletin Number 2, Washington, D.C., 15 January I909-
- ↑ 10 Lamb, Washington Medical Annals, 15 (1916), p. 14.
