CHAPTER IX
The Museum in a World at War
With the entry of the United States into what was then called simply the World War, there being as yet no need to identify such conflicts by number, there came a profound change in the affairs of the Army Medical Museum.
In his annual report for the fiscal year ending 30 June 1917— a report which reflected for the most part conditions before the declaration of war on 6 April of that year— Surgeon General William C. Gorgas noted that the Museum, with its nearly 48,000 specimens, was "one of the largest, most instructive, and valuable collections in existence." A year later, in a report prepared at about the time the "bridge of ships" was beginning to move American combat outfits into France in significant numbers, The Surgeon General reported that in the past year the Museum had "taken on new life." 1[1]
At first, however, the rush of preparing for a war, which was to see the size of the U.S. Army increased nearly fortyfold, seems to have bypassed the Museum and left it in a quiet backwater, with its annual appropriation for the "preservation of specimens and the preparation and purchase of new specimens held down to the $5 thousand-a-year figure which had come to be customary. 2[2]
"With this meager sum," Dr. Charles H. Mayo of Rochester, Minn., said in addressing the Surgery Section of the American Medical Association, the officers in charge of the Museum had, over the years, "accomplished much," maintaining a record of the "progress of medicine of past ages" and accumulating "many valuable historical specimens," while materials accumulated during the war would "make the collection modern, and one of the best in the world." These medical records of the war," he added, "will be of the greatest value, not only to the glory of medical accomplishment, but also as a means of interesting and educating the public in scientific matters pertaining to health and disease." 3[3]
- ↑ 1 Annual Reports of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, to the Secretary of War, for fiscal years ending 30 June 1917, p. 325, and 1918, p. 434.
- ↑ 2 War Department Bulletin Number 30, 22 May 1917. In The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War. Washington: Government Printing Office. 1923. vol. I. p. 532.[Hereinafter cited as Medical Department History, World War I, volume I.]
- ↑ 3 Mayo, Charles H.: Educational Possibilities of the National Medical Museum. Journal of the American Medical Association 73: 411-413,9 August 1919.
