CHAPTER V
An Ending and A Beginning
Shortly after the new building was occupied, in 1888, the sixth and final "part," comprising the two "volumes" of the monumental "Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion," was published. From its inception this project had been, in all but name, an integral part of the Museum operation. The first Curator of the Museum, Dr. John H. Brinton, had been the first editor of the Surgical volume, and he was succeeded in the editorship by Dr. George A. Otis, the second Curator, who brought out part I of that volume in 1870 and part II in 1876, leaving part III to be brought out by still another Curator, Dr. David L. Huntington, in 1883. The first and second parts of the Medical volume were edited by Dr. Joseph Janvier Woodward, coming out in 1870 and 1879, respectively, and the third and concluding part was edited by Dr. Charles Smart, the Army surgeon detailed to complete the History.
Each of the six "parts" is a massive volume in itself, averaging nearly 1,000 quarto pages of text, with an average of some 40 full-page plates, many in color, plus scores of black-and-white woodcuts. The volumes contain the reports of thousands of medical and surgical cases, usually in the words of the doctors who treated the wounds or diseases. In view of at least one unfriendly critic, indeed, the work was a "mere compilation of other people's writings," l but it is far more than that. The History contains an orderly arrangement and presentation of vital statistics, while the body of the text summarizes, analyzes, and comments on the specific cases in the light of the best medical literature and thought of the times in which it was published. Thus, Dr. Woodward's skepticism as to the bacterial origin of disease, expressed in the volume issued in 1879, was replaced with a more tolerant view by Dr. Smart in the 1888 volume. He was not yet ready to admit that the "causal relationship of a micro-organism to the disease" of typhoid fever had "been established" but he discussed at some length the researches supporting that view and concluded, "Although the typhoid germ
1 Sunday Herald, Washington, 1 April 1883.
