Each specimen in the collection will have appended the name of the medical officer by whom it was prepared."[1]
Three weeks earlier, on 1 May, General Hammond had procured, from the Adjutant General of the Army, orders for Assistant Surgeon Joseph Janvier Woodward, on duty with the Army of the Potomac, and Brigade Surgeon John Hill Brinton of the Volunteers, on duty with the Army of the Mississippi, to report to the Office of the Surgeon General for special duty. The nature of this duty was disclosed in part, on 9 June 1862, in Circular No. 5 (fig. 3). "It is intended," the circular read, "to prepare for publication the Medical and Surgical History of the Rebellion," with responsibility for the medical portion of the work assigned to Dr. Woodward and for the surgical part to Dr. Brinton, and with all medical officers called upon for cooperation (fig. 4).[2]
The First Curator
Meanwhile, The Surgeon General was maturing his plans for a medical museum, and on 1 August 1862, he gave to Surgeon Brinton the go-ahead sign, directing him "to collect and properly arrange in the 'Military Medical Museum' all specimens of morbid anatomy, both medical and surgical, which may have accumulated since the commencement of the Rebellion in the various U.S. hospitals, or which may have been retained by any of the Medical officers of the Army." Dr. Brinton was also directed to "take efficient steps for the procuring hereafter of all specimens of surgical and medical interest that shall be afforded in the practice of the different hospitals" and to report the name of any officer who might decline or neglect to furnish such materials.[3]
The 30-year-old Brinton had been a demonstrator of anatomy at the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia and had served with General Grant in the West. At Fort Donelson, under the direction of Surgeon H. S. Hewitt, he had put together the first combination of regimental hospitals and ambulances into brigade organizations, foreshadowing the broader and more comprehensive groupings for evacuation and treatment of the wounded to be worked out later in the same year of 1862 by Surgeon Jonathan Letterman, Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac.[4]
- ↑ Circular No. 2, Surgeon General's Office, Washington City, May 21, 1862. On file, National Archives, Accession No. 421, Circulars/SGO/1862-1865.
- ↑ (I) Special Orders Number 98, War Department, Adjutant General's Office, 1862. (2) Circular No. 5, Surgeon General's Office, Washington, D.C., June 9, 1862. On file, National Archives, Accession No. 421, Letter Book No. 30. March 7 to May 30, 1862/SGO, p. 319.
- ↑ Brinton, John Hill: Personal Memoirs. New York: The Neale Publishing Co., 1914, pp. 180-181.
- ↑ (I) Duncan, op. cit., The Battle of Bull Run, p. 21. (2) Duncan, op. at., Evolution of the Ambulance Corps and Field Hospital, pp. 2-4.
