Otis wrote, "I have on hand about thirty volumes of surgical photographs. Is it practicable to have them bound at the Congressional Bindery ?", to which inquiry Dr. Billings responded on the same day, "Dear Doctor: I do not think it will be well to try to get any binding done at the Gov't, office until Congress adjourns. It wouldn't be done I am sure and I doubt whether the attention of the Committee on Printing would not be called to it— which thus far has been avoided." 24[1]
Enlarging the Aims of the Museum
Despite limited financial support, the Museum continued to grow. By 1876, in its 10th year in the Ford's Theater building, the surgical section contained 6,539 specimens, the medical section 1,279, the microscopical section 7,275, the human anatomical section 1,254, tne comparative anatomical section 1,522, and the section for miscellaneous articles 240. The primary emphasis remained on preserving specimens illustrative of the wounds and diseases which produced death and disability in the military forces, with the purpose of reducing mortality and alleviating suffering among soldiers, but by 1876, Dr. Woodward wrote, it had become "the desire of the Surgeon General that so far as the means placed at his disposal will permit, the collection shall be extended so as to embrace all forms of injuries and diseases, so that eventually it shall become a general pathological Museum, accessible for study to all medical men who are prosecuting original inquiries * * *.25[2]
That the original purpose remained uppermost is indicated by the reports of foreign observers, who were struck by the richness of the collections in gunshot and arrow wounds, and were impressed with the diligence and devotion which had permitted the making of such collections in the midst of a great war. "Among the foreign visitors, whose wide experience made their commendation peculiarly gratifying," said The Surgeon General in his annual report for 1875, "were Baron Schwartz-Sanborn, Director of the Vienna World Exposition of 1873, and Professor John Eric Erichsen, of University College, London." Professor Erichsen, who visited the Museum in the fall of 1874, said in a lecture on American surgery at the University College on 9 November of that year:
There is one Museum which is so unique, so admirably arranged, and so interesting, that I must direct your attention to it for a few minutes. It is the Museum of the Army Medical Department at Washington. This magnificent collection, illustrating not
