Page:The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology-ItsFirstCentury.djvu/76

56 office that the former quarters had been vacated, and transmitted the keys. 6 For the next 20 years, the life of the Museum was to be centered in the Ford's Theater building.

From the beginning, the Museum had attracted an increasing number of visitors. Within a year of its establishment, its usefulness had been recognized by the civilian medical profession as well as by the military, and it was "weekly and almost daily" consulted by them. 7 To the medical profession, there was added another class of visitors with a special interest. In Dr. John H. Brinton's phrase, "officers and soldiers who had lost a limb by amputation would come to look up its resting place, in some sense its last resting place." Then, too, as Dr. Brinton wrote, "the public came to see the bones, attracted by a new sensation." While the Museum was still at the H Street address, Curator Otis reported, more formally, "the number of visitors to the collection constantly increases." 8

With the removal to the Ford's Theater building, and its tragic associations with the great appealing figure of Lincoln, the number of visitors mounted to such an extent that rules, approved by order of The Surgeon General and issued on 25 April 1867, were posted (fig. 25) .9

Between mid-April of 1867 and the end of the year, some 6,000 persons, an average of about 25 for each day the Museum was open, had been registered in the visitor's book. Within the next 4 years, the number of visitors had trebled, 10 and the Museum had become established as one of the "sights" of Washington. When extra crowds came to the city, as upon the occasion of Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant's inauguration as President in 1869, the visiting hours were extended — opening at 9 a.m. and closing at 4 p.m.; and at his second inauguration, in 1873, from 8 a.m. until 4 p-m. 11

The collections viewed by these visitors were divided into six groups or sections — surgical, medical, microscopical, normal human anatomy, comparative or animal anatomy, and miscellaneous articles (fig. 26).