Figure 10.—The third home of the Museum. Picture is from an engraving by H. H. Nichols of the Museum staff.
Grounds for Anxiety
Apparently, judging from the anxious tone of Brinton's letter of 24 August 1863 to Col. Joseph K. Barnes, the Acting Surgeon General, there was some apprehension that the Museum project might be caught in the backwash of the increasingly bitter differences between Surgeon General Hammond and the Secretary of War. These differences between two men of powerful personality and clashing temperament had progressed to the point, by 2 July 1863, that a special commission of three civilians was appointed to scrutinize The Surgeon General's papers, seeking cause for his removal. The Surgeon General had added to the ranks of his opponents by the issuance, on 4 May 1863, of his Circular No. 6 striking calomel and tartar emetic from the list of Army medical supplies—an action which outraged many physicians who were accustomed to use calomel as a standard medication, if not as a sovereign remedy. Before the month of August was out, Hammond was ordered out of Washington on a vague and ill-defined mission of inspection in the South with headquarters at New
