Plans for an Army Medical School
Dr. Brinton was less successful in the attempt to establish a school of military medicine and surgery in the Museum. On 24 September 1863, four young Army medical officers then on duty in Washington, some of them being connected with the Museum and "wishing to make that institution at once practically useful," asked Acting Surgeon General Barnes for "permission to deliver a course of lectures on military medicine and surgery in the hall of the Museum." Such a course would be particularly advantageous, they suggested, because of the large number of medical cadets and junior medical officers on duty in the hospitals in the Washington area. It was proposed to deliver the lectures in the evening so that they "would in no way interfere with the official duties of anyone concerned." The proponents of the course had all had experience in lecturing on medical subjects. "These lectures of course will be delivered free," the letter read, "and with the facilities afforded by the Museum would not be a source of any expense whatever to the Government."
The officers who thus proposed what would nave been the first school of the sort were: Doctors Brinton and Woodward, Dr. Roberts Bartholow, and Dr. D. W. Bliss. Others who were to have lectured included Surgeons John A. Lidell and A. C. Hamlin, Assistant Surgeon William Thomson, of the Volunteers, and Surgeon Richard H. Coolidge of the Regular Army, who was to have taught the customs of the service and military medical ethics.
The Acting Surgeon General submitted the proposition to the Secretary of War, who said he would decide the matter the next day. Surgeon Brinton tells the story :
On the morrow, about nine o'clock, on his drive from his home to the war office, he [the Secretary] stopped at the Museum Building, descended from his carriage, ran hastily through the Museum rooms, looked angrily at the dear little lecture room, stamped his foot, growled, "Ugh," drove to his office, sent for Acting Surgeon General Barnes and said sharply to him, "Are these lectures to be given in the evenings?" To an affirmative reply, he growled, "They will go to the theatre and neglect their duties. It shan't be," and thus was the end of a favorite plan for doing some good for the Medical Corps of the Army, and for disseminating a more correct and general knowledge of military medicine and surgery. 19[1]
And, it might be added, it was to be another 30 years before the idea of an Army Medical School was to come to fruition.
- ↑ 19 (1) Original letter, John Hill Brinton to Joseph K. Barnes, 24 September 1863. On file in historical records of AFIP. (2) Lamb, op. cit., pp. 23-25. (3) Lamb, The Military Surgeon, 53 (1923), pp. 103, 104. (4) Brinton, op. cit. pp. 258—259.
