Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/112

AN ENDING AND A BEGINNING dates for admission to the Medical Corps of the Army in their duties as medical officers."

"The course of instruction will be for four months, and will be given annually at the Army Medical Museum, in Washington City, commencing on the 1st day of November."

As General Sternberg explained in his annual report for 1894, the new school, although affording "all the advantages that could be derived from one costing heavily for establishment and maintenance," would add nothing to the expense of the Army. Professors were selected from among the senior members of the corps stationed in or near the Capital, while the new Museum and Library building provided the necessary lecture rooms and "the accumulation of material for bacteriological and chemical study in the Army Medical Museum which furnished everything essential for laboratory work."

The Museum, indeed, furnished more than laboratory facilities and class rooms, for one of the most useful members of the faculty of the school was the newly appointed Curator of the Museum, Capt. Walter Reed (fig. 37), soon to become Major Reed, who took over the office on 8 September. The appointment was, in a sense, symbolic of the lessening of emphasis on the Civil War as the dominant theme of the Museum's activities. Born in Virginia in 1851, of North Carolina lineage, he was the first Curator of the Museum who had not served in the Union Army during the Civil War, and the first officer of Confederate antecedents to become Curator, serving under Maj. John Shaw Billings who continued to hold the post of Director of both the Museum and the Library.

Both Major Billings and Captain Reed were members of the faculty of the Army Medical School at its first session — Major Billings as professor of military hygiene, including practical instruction in the examination of air, water, food, and clothing from a sanitary point of view, and Captain Reed as professor of clinical and sanitary microscopy and director of the pathological laboratory.

Other members of the faculty were: Col. Charles H. Alden, Deputy Surgeon General and president of the faculty, who lectured on the military duties of medical officers, including property responsibility, examination of recruits, certificates of disability, reports, rights and privileges, customs of the service, and like topics; Lt. Col. William H. Forwood, attending surgeon at the Soldiers' Home, who was professor of military surgery, including care and transportation of the wounded; and Capt. Julian M. Cabell, instructor in Hospital Corps drill. In addition to the regular courses taught by the members of the faculty, there