CHAPTER XLIII.THE ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM—ITS CURIOSITIES AND WONDERS.

Ford’s Theatre—Its Interesting Memories—The Last Festivities—Assassination of President Lincoln—Two Years Later—Effects of “War, Disease, and Human Skill”—Collection of Pathological Specimens—The Army Medical Museum Opened—Purchase of Ford’s Theatre—Its Present Aspect—Ghastly Specimens—Medical and Surgical Histories of the War—The Library—A Book Four Centuries Old—Rare Old Volumes—The Most Interesting of the National Institutions—Various Opinions—Effects on Visitors—An Extraordinary Withered Arm—A Dried Sioux Baby!—Its Poor Little Nose—A Well-dressed Child—Its Buttons and Beads—Casts of Soldier-Martyrs—Making a New Nose—Vassear’s Mounted Craniums—Model Skeletons—A Giant, Seven Feet High—Skeleton of a Child—All that Remains of Wilkes Booth, the Assassin—Fractures by Shot and Shell—General Sickles Contributes His Quota—A Case of Skulls—Arrow-head Wounds—Nine Savage Sabre-Cuts—Seven Bullets in One Head—Phenomenal Skulls—A Powerful Nose—An Attempted Suicide—A Proverb Corrected—Specimen from the Paris Catacombs—An “Interesting Case”—Typical Heads of the Human Race—Remarkable Indian Relics—“Flatheads”—The Work of Indian Arrows—An Extraordinary Story—A “Pet” Curiosity—A Japanese Manikin—Tattooed Heads—Representatives of Animated Nature—Adventure of Captain John Smith—A “Stingaree”—The Microscopical Division—Medical Records of the War—Preparing Specimens.

The building in which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated will always retain a deep and sad interest in the mind of the American people. It was well that it should be consecrated to a national purpose. None could be more fit than to make it the repository of the Pathological and Surgical results of the war.

From the dark hour of the great martyr’s death, the light and music of amusement never again animated these dark halls. But in two years from the day of the tragedy, its doors were opened to the people, to come in and behold what war, disease, death, and human skill had wrought.

In obedience to an order from the War Department, issued in 1862, thousands of pathological specimens had accumulated in the office of the Surgeon-General. An ample and fit receptacle was needed for their proper care and display. And April 13, 1867, the old Ford Theatre, on Tenth street, between E and F, was opened as the Army Medical Museum.

Congress had already purchased the building of Mr. Ford, and used it for a time as the receptacle for the captured archives of the Confederate Government. Before it was opened as the Army Museum, its interior had been entirely remodeled, retaining nothing of the original building but the outside walls. It has been made fire-proof, and is exclusively devoted to the uses of the Museum. The third story is the Museum hall, lined on its four sides with pictures and glass cases filled with ghastly specimens, beside many more in the interior of the room.

Over a square railing, in the centre of the hall, you look down upon the second story, and through that to the first. The lower floor is filled with busy clerks, sitting at tables, writing out the medical and surgical histories of the war.

THE MAIN HALL OF THE ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM.—WASHINGTON.This Museum occupies the scene of the assassination of President Lincoln, in Ford’s Theatre, which after that date became the property of the Government. It contains a collection of upwards of twenty thousand rare, curious and interesting objects, surpassing any similar collection in the world. It is visited annually by upwards of twenty-five thousand persons.

The second floor, which is reached by light spiral stairs from the first, is largely devoted to the very valuable Medical and Surgical Library, which has been collectedsince the opening of the Museum. It now numbers thirty-eight thousand volumes, some of which are rare books of extreme value. One of these was among the earliest of printed volumes. The art of printing was first used to give to the world religious and medical books. This treasure of the Medical Museum was published at Venice, in 1480, and is the work of Petrus de Argelata. It is bound and illuminated in vellum. Another choice book, is a copy of Galen, which once belonged to the Dutch anatomist, Vierodt, and copiously annotated by him. These, and many other valuable books, have been bought by the agents of the Museum, abroad, while many others have been received as contributions from physicians, and scientific societies interested in the growth of this national institution.

Louis Bagger, in a late number ofAppleton’s Journal, speaks of the Army Medical Museum as one of the most interesting, but least visited, of all the national institutions in Washington. It cannot fail to be one of the most absorbing spots on earth to the student of surgery or medicine; but to the unscientific mind, especially to one still aching with the memories of war, it must ever remain a museum of horrors. Its many bones, which never ached, and which have survived their painful sheaths of mortal flesh, all cool and clean, and rehung on golden threads, are not unpleasant to behold. But those faces in frames, eaten by cancer or lost in tumors, which you look up to as you enter, are horrible enough to haunt one forever (if you are not scientific) with the thought of what human flesh is heir to.

No! the Museum is a very interesting, but can never be a popular place to visit. I doubt if a sight at the Siouxpappoose, and a bit of John Wilkes Booth’s spinal marrow, or a piece of General Sickles’ leg, will be sufficient compensation to the average unscientific mind, to go twice to look at those terrible tumors and elephantiasis in gilt frames and glass jars. It is enough to make one feel as if the like were starting out all over you. But that’s because you are not scientific.

The first “specimen” which confronts you on entering is a withered human arm, with contracted hand and clinched fingers, mounted on wires in a glass case on the window-ledge. The sharp bone protrudes where it was shot off near the shoulder joint; every muscle is defined; the skin looks like tanned leather. It is not pleasant to look at. A thrilling story has been printed about this arm. I am sorry it is not wholly true. The one I have to tell will not please you as well, for it is not nearly as exciting.

We were told that the shock of the cannon-shot, which took off this arm, carried it up into a high tree, where, a year or two after, its owner, a Gettysburg hero, revisiting the battle-field, discovered his lost member lodged in the branches, brought it down and bore it hither as a trophy. The soldierdidfind his arm (I am telling the true story); but he found it in a corn-field. By what mark he knew it I am not informed, but he declared it to be his arm and brought it to the Museum as a first-class “sensational specimen.”

In the next window we find another one—the Sioux baby. Poor little baby! It is not a Modoc—though not much better—it did not live to slay our brethren, so we are sorry as we look at it—for its once black locks are bleached red, and its nose is gone. It was found in a tree near Fort Laramie. I have seen Sioux babies aliveupon their native soil, and can testify from personal observation that this little pappoose-mummy is extraordinarily well dressed. Hannah of old did not sew more buttons on the coat of her little Samuel in the Temple, than this poor savage mother did on the plains of Wyoming. It is of blue flannel, profusely ornamented with round tin buttons, and many beads on its broad collar. On its neck it wears a string of white delf beads, and there is something cunning and dainty in the tiny embroidered moccasins upon its feet. In a case there is another pappoose still less agreeable to contemplate. It is a little Flat-head Indian. Its head is so very flat no doubt it died in the process of compression. This melancholy child also wears a white necklace, and was foundburiedin a tree.

Passing on, we are arrested by a table surrounded on its outer edge by plaster casts of soldiers who have undergone famous and difficult surgical operations. It is gratifying to know that, if you lose your nose by some other collision beside that of a cannon ball, you can have a new one set on made out of your cheek. The new nose will grow to the root of the old one, and the hole in your cheek will fill up and the scar heal. To be sure it will hurt you frightfully; but youcanhave a new nose made, and you yourself supply the material. If you don’t believe it, come to the Army Medical Museum and see! Here is the head of the poor fellow with his nose shot off—and here is another with the new nose grown on.

In the centre of the table are some of Vassear’s mounted craniums, purchased for the museum by order of the Surgeon-General. These craniums, with the skeletons inthe cases, are mounted after Blanchêne’s method, which allows every portion to be taken apart and put together again. This cranium on the table is as white as crystal; it is mounted on gold, and tiny blue and crimson threads of silk trace from chin to head-top the entire nerve system. It is a work of exquisite art as well as of science, and in no sense repulsive. The glass cases just in the rear contain skeletons mounted by the same method. One is the skeleton of a giant, in life seven feet high, prepared by Auzoax and mounted by Blanchêne’s method. It is as white as snow, and its brass or gold joints (we will call them gold) are bright and flexile. Another, of a child of some six years, shows the entire double sets of first and second teeth. The first, not one tooth gone, and above, in the jaw, the entire row of second teeth ready to push the first ones out.

Amid the thousands of mounted specimens in glass cases, which reveal the freaks of bullets and cannon-shot, we come to one which would scarcely arrest the attention of a casual observer. It is simply three human vertebræ mounted on a stand and numbered 4,086. Beside it hangs a glass phial, marked 4,087, filled with alcohol, in which floats a nebulæ of white matter. The official catalogue contains the following records of these apparently uninteresting specimens:

“No. 4,086.—The third, fourth and fifth cervical vertebræ. A conoidal carbine ball entered the right side, comminuting the base of the right lamina of the fourth vertebræ, fracturing it longitudinally and separating it from the spinous process, at the same time fracturing the fifth through its pedicles, and involving that transverse process. The missile passed directly through the canal, with a slight inclination downward and to the rear,emerging through the left bases of the fourth and fifth laminæ, which are comminuted, and from which fragments were embedded in the muscles of the neck. The bullet, in its course, avoided the large cervical vessels. From a case where death occurred in a few hours after injury, April 26, 1865.”“No. 4,087.—A portion of the spinal-cord from the cervical region, transversely perforated from right to left by a carbine-bullet, which fractured the laminæ of the fourth and fifth vertebræ. The cord is much torn and is discolored by blood. From a case where death occurred a few hours after injury, April 26, 1865.”

“No. 4,087.—A portion of the spinal-cord from the cervical region, transversely perforated from right to left by a carbine-bullet, which fractured the laminæ of the fourth and fifth vertebræ. The cord is much torn and is discolored by blood. From a case where death occurred a few hours after injury, April 26, 1865.”

Such are the colorless scientific records of the death wounds of John Wilkes Booth. All that remains of him above the grave finds its perpetual place a few feet above the spot where he shot down his illustrious victim.

It has been recorded elsewhere that the fatal wounds of Wilkes Booth and his victim were strikingly alike. “The balls entered the skull of each at nearly the same spot, but the trifling difference made an immeasurable difference in the sufferings of the two. Mr. Lincoln was unconscious of all pain, while his assassin suffered as exquisite agony as if he had been broken on a wheel.”

In the surgical division which contains the above specimens we find illustrations from living and dead subjects of almost every conceivable fracture by shot and shell.

On a black stand, bearing the number 1,335, we see a strong white bone shattered in the middle. The official statement concerning it is: “The right tibia and fibula comminuted in three shafts by a round shell. Major-General D. E. S., United States Volunteers, Gettysburg, July 2, amputated in the lower third of the thigh by Surgeon T. Sim, United States Volunteers, on the field.Stump healed rapidly, and subject was able to ride in carriage July 16; completely healed, so that he mounted his horse, in September, 1863. Contributed by the subject”—who is General Daniel E. Sickles.

One of the cases in this division is filled with skulls which show gunshot wounds from arrow-heads and thrusts from tomahawks and sabres. One of the latter, No. 970, shows nine savage sabre cuts. It is the skull of an Araucanian Indian, killed by Chilian troops. Near it is the skull of another Indian, riddled by six or seven bullet-shots received from American troops or trappers.

The Museum contains eight craniums, which illustrate the wonderful fact of an unbroken external skull, while the vitreous table is perforated or dented. One of these shows slight discoloration on the outside of the head without fracture or depression, while inside, the bone is broken. The seven other specimens illustrate the same phenomena. In this case we see craniums in which bullets are imbedded and broken. We see one where a conical bullet split in two in entering the head at the temple, one half going inside, caused instant death, while the other half struck the face outside. Here we see a minié-bullet split on the bones of the nose. Another case is of an attempted suicide—who died a natural death. He fired a pistol in his mouth, whose bullet passed through the jugular vein, but not through the head. It stopped short, embedded in the bone, where it remained as a stopper to the blood from the perforated artery, and the man who tried to kill himself, lived seventeen years to be sorry for doing so.

A WITHERED ARMSkin, flesh and bones complete. Amputated by a cannon shot on the battle field of Gettysburg. The shot carried the severed limb up into the high branches of a tree, where it was subsequently found completely air and sun dried.All that remains Above Ground ofJOHN WILKES BOOTH.Being part of the Vertebræ penetrated [A] by the bullet of Boston Corbett. Strange freak of fate that these remains of Booth should find a resting place under the same roof, and but a few feet from the spot where the fatal shot was fired.A SIOUX PAPPOOSEOr Indian infant, found in a tree near Fort Laramie, where it had been buried (?) according to the custom of the tribe.SKULL OF LITTLE BEAR’S SQUAW,Perforated by seven bullet holes. Killed in Wyoming Territory.SKULL OF AN INDIAN,Showing nine distinct sabre wounds.SKULL OF A MANWho received an arrow wound on the head, three gun-shot flesh wounds, one in the arm, another in the breast, and a third in the leg. Seven days afterwards he was admitted to the hospital at Fort Concho, Texas [where he subsequently died], after having traveled above 160 miles on the barren plains—mostly on foot.SKULL OF A SOLDIERWounded at Spotsylvania—showing the splitting of a Rifle ball, one portion being buried deep in the brain, and the other between the scalp and the skull. He lived twenty-three days.APACHE INDIAN ARROW-HEADOf soft hoop-iron. These arrows will perforate a bone without causing the slightest fracture, where a rifle or musket ball will flatten; and will make a cut as clean as the finest surgical instrument.CURIOSITIESFrom the Army Medical Museum, Washington.

All that remains Above Ground ofJOHN WILKES BOOTH.Being part of the Vertebræ penetrated [A] by the bullet of Boston Corbett. Strange freak of fate that these remains of Booth should find a resting place under the same roof, and but a few feet from the spot where the fatal shot was fired.

A SIOUX PAPPOOSEOr Indian infant, found in a tree near Fort Laramie, where it had been buried (?) according to the custom of the tribe.SKULL OF LITTLE BEAR’S SQUAW,Perforated by seven bullet holes. Killed in Wyoming Territory.

A SIOUX PAPPOOSEOr Indian infant, found in a tree near Fort Laramie, where it had been buried (?) according to the custom of the tribe.

SKULL OF LITTLE BEAR’S SQUAW,Perforated by seven bullet holes. Killed in Wyoming Territory.

SKULL OF AN INDIAN,Showing nine distinct sabre wounds.SKULL OF A MANWho received an arrow wound on the head, three gun-shot flesh wounds, one in the arm, another in the breast, and a third in the leg. Seven days afterwards he was admitted to the hospital at Fort Concho, Texas [where he subsequently died], after having traveled above 160 miles on the barren plains—mostly on foot.

SKULL OF AN INDIAN,Showing nine distinct sabre wounds.

SKULL OF A MANWho received an arrow wound on the head, three gun-shot flesh wounds, one in the arm, another in the breast, and a third in the leg. Seven days afterwards he was admitted to the hospital at Fort Concho, Texas [where he subsequently died], after having traveled above 160 miles on the barren plains—mostly on foot.

SKULL OF A SOLDIERWounded at Spotsylvania—showing the splitting of a Rifle ball, one portion being buried deep in the brain, and the other between the scalp and the skull. He lived twenty-three days.APACHE INDIAN ARROW-HEADOf soft hoop-iron. These arrows will perforate a bone without causing the slightest fracture, where a rifle or musket ball will flatten; and will make a cut as clean as the finest surgical instrument.

APACHE INDIAN ARROW-HEADOf soft hoop-iron. These arrows will perforate a bone without causing the slightest fracture, where a rifle or musket ball will flatten; and will make a cut as clean as the finest surgical instrument.

CURIOSITIESFrom the Army Medical Museum, Washington.

CURIOSITIES

From the Army Medical Museum, Washington.

Two specimens in this collection deny the assertion that “when a man breaks his neck that is the last ofhim.” One of these is a skull taken from the Catacombs in Paris. It has a few vertebræ attached to the neck. One of these shows a distinct dislocation where it was broken from the head, and where it had grown closely together again. The other is a home specimen, which shows no less distinctly where the broken neck again formed the connection with the head. There is also in this section of the museum a piece of human cranium, about the size of a silver dollar, cut from the head of a soldier wounded at Petersburgh, Va., June 14, 1864. The following is the official history of this “interesting case:”

“The subject was admitted to Mount Pleasant General Hospital, Washington, D. C., on June 24, with the report that the progress of the case had been so far eminently satisfactory. After admission he was found to be insensible, and a few hours subsequently convulsions supervened in rapidly recurring paroxysms. Twelve ounces of blood were taken from the temporal artery without apparent benefit. A trephine was then applied to the seat of fracture, and upon the removal of a bottom of bone, a portion of the inner table was found slightly depressed. This was elevated, and the patient, soon after, regained consciousness. On the 28th of June, the wound in the scalp became erysipelatous, and before the inflammation subsided there was extensive loss of substance of the integuments and pericranium denuding a large portion of the parietal bone. Necrosis ensued, and embraced the whole thickness of the bone. In September, 1864, a portion of the parietal, three inches by four, had become so much loosened that it was readily removed. After this, cicatrization went on rapidly; and at the date of the last report, December 2, 1864, the wound had contracted to an ulcer less thanan inch in diameter. The patient’s mental faculties were impaired somewhat, the ward-physician thought, but not to a great extent.”

This specimen was contributed by Assistant-Surgeon E. A. McCall, United States Army. A colored drawing was made representing the parts prior to the separation of the exfoliation, (No. 74, surgical series of drawings, Surgeon General’s office.)

We see suspended in a case the bone of an arm from the shoulder to the elbow. A musket ball having shattered it, it was necessary to take it out or amputate the arm. The surgeon chose the former. The bone with all its splinters was removed. The photograph of its owner is set up under it, while the living original may come and look at it any moment he chooses, he being one of theattachésto the Museum. He says that he can use the injured arm as readily as the other. The muscles and integuments have taken the place of the lost bone, and are strong enough to enable him to lift a two-hundred-pounds’ weight without difficulty.

Another case of great interest to the medical profession, is that of a soldier of Company C, Eighth New Jersey Volunteers, who was wounded in the battle of the Wilderness, May 5, 1864. The specimen on exhibition is a piece of the hip-bone, about four or five inches long. This shattered bone was excised, May 27, 1864, and the patient was discharged from the hospital, April 17, 1865, perfectly cured, and able to use the mutilated limb without its portion of thigh-bone. In 1868, he was well, could walk without a cane, and was employed as a hod-carrier. He now receives a Government pension of fifteen dollars a month.

At the right of the main entrance, stands the Craniological Cabinet. It contains a thousand or more specimens of the craniæ of different human races. Beside the skull of the Caucasian, we see that of the African, each of the highest order of its kind. The long line contains a “sample” of nearly all the typical heads of the human race.

The collection contains a large number of Indian skulls of opposite tribes, taken from tumuli, and gathered from other sources. There are none to which the scientific man points with more interest, than to the skulls of the Flat-head Indians. These are perfectly flat on the top, forming a right angle with the forehead. Here is the head of a baby, who probably died in the process. Boards are tightly bound to infants’ heads, from birth, till they cease to grow. One would suppose that this would lessen the brain-capacity. But as it can not grow in front, it avenges itself by pushing far out on the sides. Thus the Flat-head Indian’s head is as wide as it is flat, and in defiance of phrenology, he is not only as bright, but brighter in his wits, than many of his neighbors.

Here are Indian arrows, taken from the dead bodies of our soldiers on the plains. The arrowheads are made of barrel-hoops, and so sharp, they can pierce any skull. One is shown, still sticking through a portion of the shoulder-blade of a buffalo. The point of the arrow is outside of the bone, the arrow-tip having passed through the body of the buffalo, and through the bone, opposite the side that it entered. A rifle-ball would be flattened where an Indian arrowhead penetrates without hindrance. The cut of an arrowhead is as clear and clean as if made by the most acute surgical instrument. Thefatal force with which an arrow is driven from an Indian bow, is illustrated in the following fact: Here, in the Museum, is the piece of a door of a stage which was attacked by Comanches near Bellos River, Texas, September 1, 1870. The wood, about an inch and a half thick, is pierced by an Indian arrowhead, the point appearing on the outside.

Of the two passengers in the stage at the time of the occurrence, one was killed and the other escaped. The stage guard consisted of three soldiers—one was killed instantly, another escaped, the third was wounded. He received an arrow wound in the head, and three gunshot flesh-wounds, one in the arm, another in the leg and one in the breast. In this condition he travelled one hundred and sixty miles across the plains, on foot. Seven long days it took him to reach the post-hospital at FortConchoConcho, Texas. When admitted, mentally, he was clear and bright. But on September 19, he died.

The skull of this unfortunate man, preserved in the Army Museum, shows an arrowhead firmly embedded in the petrous portion of the right temporal bone—a wound in itself, it would seem, sufficient to prove instantly fatal.

One of the pet curiosities of the Museum is a Japanese manikin—ess—we will call it, as it is supposed to represent the creature feminine. The heart is a red apple and the liver (very properly) a yellow one. The stomach looks like a lean pomegranate. The lungs are represented by five green oak leaves. These organs are lumped together, the lungs being below all the rest. The Japanese idea of anatomy seems to be quite as muddled as its powers of perspective.

A case near the front window, contains three Maoriheads from New Zealand. They are all tattooed with the black juice of the betel-nut. Any thing more hideous than their empty eye-sockets, their striped cheek bones and ghastly white teeth cannot be imagined.

Along the windows at the opposite end of the great hall, may be seen skeletons of all kinds of animals, birds, fishes and reptiles. Here are skeletons of the horse, the buffalo, the grizzly bear, the elk, the walrus, and the ray. One of these last, caught in James river, has been presented to the Museum.

Those who have read the early history of Virginia may remember that it chronicles the fact that once when Captain John Smith, of wonderful memory, was one day bathing in the James River, he received a sudden shock, and many days elapsed before he recovered from it. It was supposed that he was struck by a ‘stingaree.’

The ‘stingaree’ is a corruption of the stinging ray—and such a specimen is shown in the Museum. The ray is a fish of the cartilaginous species, not having the vertebrated form. It has wings, each measuring about fourteen inches across the widest part; and it has a very long tail, in which is implanted a sting, which resembles in its effects a shock of electricity, and produces temporary paralysis. The ray darts in among a shoal of fishes, electrifies them, and then proceeds to devour them.

The microscopical division of the Museum on the library floor is of great value. It affords facilities for the study of natural history and comparative anatomy equal to the medical schools of Paris. This department contains a series of photographical publications of enlarged photographic pictures of the specimens, mounted on cardboard and bound in Russia leather. A set of this series,also a complete set of bound photographs of all the specimens contained in the surgical department of the Museum, with a sketch of the case attached, has been presented to all the governments and large public libraries of Europe. In return, these European governments and libraries have sent complete sets of like publications of their own. Several hundred volumes, handsomely bound, include these foreign gifts to the Army Medical Museum at Washington.

The primary object of the Army Medical Museum is to illustrate minutely the wounds and diseases of our late war, while the medical and surgical histories of the war, now being written under the supervision of the Surgeon-General, will show the processes of treatment and their results. Dr. J. J. Woodward, assisted by Dr. Otis, both of Pennsylvania, are charged with the writing of this history. Doctor Woodward is writing the medical history, and Doctor Otis the surgical history of this important national report. Five thousand copies of each will be issued by Congress. The first volumes of both histories have already come from the bindery of the Public Printer in handsome form. The first of the medical volumes is chiefly occupied with tabular statements of the diseases which prevailed, and the numbers dying of each, during the entire period of our civil war. The coming volumes will treat of these diseases, the treatment pursued, and will give photographs of the organs affected in each disease.

The Museum proper is divided into four departments, Surgery, Medicine, Anatomy, and Comparative Anatomy. These are all placed in the hall of the third story. We reach this by an outer iron stair-case, whose walls oneither side are lined with sketches and plans of the battle-fields of Gettysburg and Antietam, in black walnut frames. Entering the long hall, we are confronted at once by the ghastly victims in the frames opposite, and the eyes are quickly withdrawn to glance up and down along the polished glass cases which line the walls. Above some of these cases droop the flags and standards, the swords and sabres which have survived the war. Models of ambulances, stretchers, and hospital tents, also have a place on the top of these cases.

More than four-fifths of the specimens in the Museum have been presented to it, or exchanged for duplicate objects, quantities of which are stored in the attic, ready for exchange. The Army Medical Museum belongs to the nation, and as its existence and object have been widely published, it is in daily receipt of new specimens. It has become an object of personal interest and pride to the medical fraternity of the country, each one of whom is invited to become a contributor to its pathological treasures. In a late official report, the Surgeon-General thus refers to the subject, which is of interest to all medical persons:

“It is not intended to impose upon medical officers the labor of dissecting and preparing the specimens they may contribute to the Museum. This will be done under the superintendence of the curator. In forwarding such pathological objects as compound fractures, bony specimens, and wet preparations generally, obtained after amputation, operation, or cadaveric examination, all unnecessary soft parts should first be roughly removed. Every specimen should then be wrapped separately in a cloth, so as to preserve all spiculæ and fragments. Asmall block of wood should be attached, with the number of the specimen and the name of the medical officer sending it inscribed in lead-pencil; or a strip of sheet-lead, properly marked with the point of an awl, may be employed for this purpose. In either case, the inscription will be uninjured by the contact of fluids. The preparation should be then immersed in diluted alcohol or whisky, contained in a keg or small cask. When a sufficient number of objects shall have accumulated, the cask should be forwarded to the Army Medical Museum, in Washington, D. C. The expenses of expressage will be defrayed in Washington. The receipt of the keg or package will be duly acknowledged by the curator of the Museum.”

When the first Army Medical Museum report was issued, January 1, 1863, the collection begun in August, 1862, numbered over thirteen hundred in all. Since then the collection has grown to the following proportions. In 1873 it contains over sixteen thousand objects. In the surgical department alone, there are over six thousand. In the medical department over eleven hundred. In the anatomical department over nine hundred. In the department of comparative anatomy over one thousand. In the microscopical department over six thousand. A library and photograph-gallery belong exclusively to the Museum. The side rooms and lower stories are used as the laboratories and work-rooms for preparing and mounting the specimens for exhibition. The Army Medical Museum is a great beginning—and yet only a beginning of one of the most unique, precious and important, pathological collections in the world.

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