The entire permanent exhibit, he said, "must be reviewed, relabeled, and modernized as soon as funds and personnel are available * * *. This Museum must be rearranged so as to tell the story of disease as well as to display its morbid processes. By so doing it would then become one of the greatest teaching institutions in its field." 8[1]
The picture of the Museum, however, was not all dark. The photographic department, which had been "functioning under the handicap of worn-out equipment, leaky plumbing, and ineffective lighting" had been aided by the installation of new sinks and the rearrangement of its layout.
The Edgar Bequest
New cases for better display of the Museum's great collection of microscopes were procured, thanks to the William F. Edgar Bequest, a fund left to The Surgeon General of the Army, to be expended for the benefit of the Medical Museum and The Surgeon General's Library. The donor of the fund was Dr. William F. Edgar who, in 1849, traveled overland by covered wagon from the Missouri River to Oregon, and thence to California. There, in Los Angeles, he prospered and accumulated a substantial estate. In a will drawn in July 1893, ne made the Museum and the Library co-sharers in the residue of his estate, after the payment of numerous bequests to individuals and to charitable, educational, and civic organizations. In 1894, by a codicil to his will, he had changed the division of his bequest to The Surgeon General by providing that the Museum should be the beneficiary of four-fifths and the Library of one-fifth of the fund bequeathed. Dr. Edgar died in 1897, but his estate could not be settled until after the termination of a life estate left to his widow. In 1931, the trustees of the estate sought to make final settlement with the Army, but this could not be done until after the Congress passed a joint resolution authorizing acceptance of the bequest. This was not done until 1933, at which time the bequest amounted to $18,309, and the four-fifths going to the Museum, to $14,647. This amount was to be spent for equipment, supplies, and services outlined in War Department General Orders No. 5, dated 8 May 1933, and was to be "available until expended." The largest items of expenditure, by far, were for new display cases, but the Edgar funds made it possible to meet such peripheral expenses of the Museum-Institute as paying the inheritance tax of the State of Pennsylvania on the portrait of Dr. John H. Brinton, the first Curator, which was given to the Museum by Dr. Ward Brinton, his son.
- ↑ 8 Annual Report of the Surgeon General, U.S. Army, 1936, pp. 145, 147.
