Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/74

54 Enough glass jars were on hand to meet the Museum's needs for a year to come, and a sufficient quantity of alcohol had been distilled from confiscated whisky turned over to the Museum by the major general commanding in Washington to mount the wet preparations suitably. 2

The Museum, according to Dr. Otis's report, had not only enough glass jars and alcohol; it had also an appropriation for the coming year that was "ample." The fact that an annual appropriation of $5,000 was "ample" was explained later by Dr. Woodward in an article in Lippincott 's Magazine for March 1871. "The building is already the property of the government, the officers and attaches all belong to the army; no extra-duty pay, no special allowances of any kind are awarded to any of them." Hence, as Dr. Woodward put it, "the total additional outlay * * * in consequence of the existence of the museum is so small that it may fairly be regarded as insignificant in comparison with the good to be obtained." 3

In its 3 years of life, the Museum had been housed in three different buildings and now, in its fourth year, it was to be moved again. Its new quarters were in the building (fig. 24) formerly occupied by Ford's Theater, on 10th Street, NW., where, on Good Friday of 1865, President Lincoln was shot. The building had been closed as a theater immediately after the assassination and had been in the possession of the Government since 8 July 1865. The purchase of the building "for the deposit and safekeeping of documentary papers relative to the soldiers of the army of the United States and of the Museum of the Medical and Surgical Department of the Army" was provided for by Act of Congress approved 6 April 1866, and on 7 May 1866, the building was assigned by Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton to The Surgeon General. 4

Its interior fittings had been torn out and replaced with three floors, of which the upper floor was assigned to the Museum, the second floor to the surgical records of the Surgeon General's Office, and the ground floor to the Record and Pension Division of the same office. There had been an effort to fireproof the building by putting in brick floors resting on iron arches, sup-