Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/38

BACKGROUND AND BEGINNINGS to convince the skeptical that the formation of a "great National Surgical and Medical Museum was not for the collection of curiosities, but for the accumulation of objects and data of lasting scientific interest, which might in the future serve to instruct generations of students, and thus in time be productive of real use."

Dr. Brinton could hardly have foreseen that future generations of students would come to look upon many of the medical and surgical practices of the Civil War as curiosities carried over from the Middle Ages of medicine, but in his prediction that the institution which he was launching would "in time be productive of real use" he was abundantly correct—for the Medical Museum has broadened into the Institute of Pathology, serving not only the Armed Forces but, through its unique relation with the civilian specialist, serving the needs and pacing the progress of all pathology.

Many of the Army surgeons of 1862 "entered into the scheme of the Museum with great zeal and earnestness," Dr. Brinton wrote afterward, "but some few there were, and these mostly the least educated, who failed to see its importance." In time, however, the project received "active and faithful co-operation" from the medical staff generally.

The chief difficulty encountered at first was in the field hospitals where, after battles, the medical forces were overwhelmed with the bloody work of operating under conditions and pressures which did not permit the preparation of specimens with their accompanying case histories.

"It really seemed unjust," Dr. Brinton noted, "to expect [under such circumstances even] the rough preparation necessary to preserve for the Museum the mutilated limbs." Consequently, the Curator adopted the practice of visiting the battlefields (fig. 6) where he had dug out of the trenches in which they had been buried "many and many a putrid heap" of legs and arms on which he went to work "amid surrounding gatherings of wondering surgeons and scarcely less wondering doctors." All saw, he said, that he was in earnest and as his infectious example spread from corps hospital to corps hospital, "active co-operation was eventually established."

In his visit to the Army of the Potomac, after the battle of Fredericksburg, Dr. Brinton was accompanied by Dr. William Moss, the Assistant Curator, the purpose of the trip being to assist in caring for the wounded and also to "look