Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/48

BACKGROUND AND BEGINNINGS Orleans, whence he was to report to the Secretary every 10 days, while Colonel Barnes acted as Surgeon General. 17

It was obvious that the Secretary of War was determined to be rid of the innovating and independent Hammond, and it might well have been apprehended that this determination extended beyond the person of the unwanted Surgeon General to all his works, as well. At any rate, Curator Brinton, while disclaiming any need for such representations, urged upon Acting Surgeon General Barnes that the plan for the Museum be carried out. "It is unnecessary for me, Colonel," he wrote, "to urge upon you the value of our National Medical Museum. Its claims to usefulness are recognized by the civil profession throughout the country and it is by them weekly and almost daily considered. The cabinet as it stands is not a mere Museum of curiosities. It is a collection which teaches."

"It is practical," he continued, "and has already powerfully influenced for the better the treatment of the wounded soldier." In confirmation, he called to mind the lessons to be deduced, from the study of the specimens of the Museum, as to injuries of the joints from conoidal balls, "a class of injuries previously almost unknown and the treatment of which, at the commencement of the war, was unsettled."

The proposed arrangement of the Museum in its new quarters, he added, would open the collection to the study of every surgeon, civil as well as military. Only in this way, he said, could a true knowledge of the treatment of wounds caused by modern projectiles be diffused. Concluding, he referred to the loss which would occur if the plans for the Museum should be changed. "I know of no other suitable building for the purposes of the Museum," he wrote, "and even should one be found, the fund at command would be utterly insufficient to make a second time the alterations and repairs which would be absolutely necessary."

Dr. Brinton's argument against scuttling the plan for removal of the Museum to its new and larger quarters was successful, for on 1 September Colonel Barnes was notified that the Secretary of War had "authorized the transfer of the specimens from the room in the Surgeon General's office to the Museum newly selected." 18