Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/71



Fortunately for the future, while most other elements in the great complex of military organizations which had just won the war were shrinking back toward pre-war standards of size and activity, the Medical Museum was permitted to go on its way undisturbed. It had won the respect of the new Surgeon General, Joseph K. Barnes (fig. 23), who declared in the Annual Report for 1864, while the war was still being fought, that "the Army Medical Museum continues to increase in value, and is already one of the most instructive pathological collections in the world." Thus, early in its history, the ultimate direction of the development of the Museum was foreshadowed by the use of the word "pathological" to describe its collections. The term was repeated in The Surgeon General's Report for 1865, with mention of the Museum's "pathological collection," which had grown to 7,630 specimens.

Continued support of the project by Surgeon General Barnes was further evidenced by Circular No. 6 of the Surgeon General's Office, issued on 26 lune 1865, directing that "when Hospitals shall be discontinued and their Libraries disposed of, the most valuable works, Scientific, Historical, etc., shall be carefully selected, packed and turned over to the Quartermaster's Department for transportation to Surgeon George A. Otis, U.S.V., Curator of the Army Medical Museum."

Besides books, The Surgeon General interested himself in supplementing the financial support of the Museum by securing from the War Department the authority to have all "slush funds" of discontinued hospitals turned over to Major Otis for the use of the Museum. lust how much these funds amounted to does not appear, but the transfer, ordered on 27 September 1865, did not escape the attention of the Comptroller of the War Department, to whom General Barnes addressed an explanation and an inquiry on 21 July 1866. "This Fund," The Surgeon General wrote, "accrued during the war at the various General Hospitals from the sale of soap, fat and swill, and upon their discon-