Museum, and have earnestly requested that suitable provision be at once made for their preservation * * *.
The building proposed is plain, fireproof, with a large amount of floor space the building would cover an area of about 21,000 square feet, contain about 1,350,000 cubic feet, and at a cost of $200,000, recommended by the bill, or about 15 cents per cubic foot. 5[1]
Support From the Medical Profession
Before the new Congress, the 48th, opened its first session, the medical profession made further representations favoring a new building for the Museum and the Library. Professors Samuel D. Gross of Philadelphia, Austin Flint of New York, and Oliver Wendell Holmes of Boston, three giants in American medicine, addressed a letter to members of the American Medical Association calling attention to the need for a new building as a subject of great importance to the medical profession and to the public welfare. They wrote:
There has been formed at Washington, under the direction of the Medical Department of the Army, a Museum of Military Medicine and Surgery, and in connection with this, a Medical Library, each of which is believed to be the largest and best of its kind in the world.
The building in which these invaluable collections are stored, collections which can never be replaced if destroyed, is insecure, not fire-proof, in the midst of highly inflammable buildings, and overcrowded. At the close of the last session of Congress, too late for action, a bill appropriating funds for a fire-proof building * * * was reported It appears to the undersigned in the highest degree desirable that this bill should become a law at the next session of Congress, and to further this end, that the physicians of the United States should explain to the members of Congress * * * the great importance of these collections of books and specimens, the propriety of granting the funds necessary for their maintenance and preservation, the inexpediency of separating them, or removing them from the management under which they have so successfully been conducted, and the necessity of a fire-proof building, that they may be handed down safely to coming generations.
Responding to his communication, the American Medical Association, meeting at Cleveland, Ohio, on 5-8 June 1883, adopted a strong memorial and named a special committee to present the matter to Congress and to call the attention of State medical societies to the importance of action. To the distinguished medical men who had originated the action, there were added on the special committee Doctors D. W. Yandell of Louisville, T. G. Richardson of New Orleans, and H. F. Campbell of Augusta — all three ex-Confederate surgeons and future presidents of the American Medical Association.
- ↑ 5 H.R. Report 1995 (H.R. 7681), 47th Congress, 2d session.
