A History of the
Surgeon General's Office Library
From Wyndham Miles article
(Reproduced and edited from the NIH files)
(PDF of Information on the Surgeon General's
Office Library by
Wyndam Miles )
Development of the Library During
the Civil War under the guidance of
Surgeon General Clement Alexander Finley
CLEMENT ALEXANDER FINLEY, who
had been in the Army for 43years and served in the Indian and Mexican
wars, was appointed Surgeon General on May 15, 1861. The Civil War was
bringing hundreds of physicians to the door of the Medical Department,
and Finley needed more office space for his expanding staff. He moved
from the Winder Building at F and Seventeenth Streets to a building on
the southeast corner of F and Fifteenth Streets, where he had several
rooms.' There, with his military aides, at least eight civilian clerks
and one messenger, he administered the procurement of medical supplies,
construction of hospitals, recruitment of physicians, and all the other
tasks that came with the war. The Library moved with the Surgeon
General.
During the war it was probably consulted more than any time in the past.
Finley preferred certain books for his own use, among them Gross'
Surgery, John E. Erichsen's Surgery, Bennett's Practice of
Medicine, John Foote's Practitioner's Pharmacopeia, Amos
Dean's Principles of Medical Jurisprudence, and Claude Bernard
and Charles Huette's Manual of Operative Surgery. The standard
list of books for distribution was revised to fit war conditions.
Surgeons in the armies received the following: Thomson's Conspectus,
William J. E. Wilson's Practical and Surgical Anatomy, Thomas
Watson's Practice of Physic, and Erichsen's Surgery.
Surgeons at hospitals and posts received the same, plus George Fowne's
Elementary Chemistry, the Dispensatory of the United States,
Robley Dunglison's Medical Dictionary, Alfred S. Taylor's
Medical Jurisprudence, and Ellis' Formulary. Finley
cancelled the office's subscription to American Medical Times and
ordered 35 copies of the Philadelphia Medical and Surgical Reporter
for distribution. Finley, owing to the seniority system then
followed generally in making promotions, was 64 years when he was
appointed Surgeon General. He probably would have been a satisfactory
leader during placid, peaceful times, but he did not act fast enough,
according to his critics, in developing the small medical department
into the large, energetic organization needed by the Federal armies
during war. In 1862 he was relieved of his duties and transferred,
whereupon he retired.
WILLIAM ALEXANDER HAMMOND
SURGEON GENERAL WILLIAM ALEXANDER HAMMOND owing to
the influence of the Sanitary Commission, seniority was ignored in
choosing the next Surgeon General and 34-year-old
William
Alexander Hammond was appointed on April 25, 1862. Hammond had been
an assistant surgeon in the Army from 1849 to 1860 and then had resigned
to teach in the
University of Maryland's Medical School. Energetic and competent,
Hammond improved the department as rapidly as chaotic wartime conditions
would permit. Shortly after he took office he established the Army
Medical Museum and ordered the beginning of the compilation of
statistics that was to be published many years later under the title
Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Two
months after Hammond arrived he moved his office to the buildings owned
by Riggs and Company, a private banking firm, on the northwest corner of
Fifteenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. Attached to the bank was a
two-story brick building that had originally been a private house. In
the back yard was a two-story frame structure and a large stable. The
general's private office occupied the back room on the first floor of
the brick house, and his clerk's office the adjacent pantry. Surgeon
John H. Brinton, whom the general appointed to organize the Army Medical
Museum, sat in the front room, formerly the parlor, and there he began
accumulating the first specimens. Also in the parlor were shelved books
and journals, handy for the general. On the second floor of the house
were several small rooms occupied by officers on the general's staff and
their clerks, and a large room for files and clerks.
The frame building housed a printing press, a
distribution room where Medical Department publications and medical
journals were sorted and sent to surgeons in the armies and military
hospitals, and one or two rooms for clerks. In the stable were two
horses and three carriages, used mainly in picking up and delivering
mail and packages. In the spring of 1862 Brinton moved with his
increasing number of museum specimens into another building, and
eventually medical books and journals filled the parlor, which served as
the library for a few years. Under Hammond's direction recently
published books were selected and purchased for distribution. A score of
reference books was provided for each general hospital and permanent
post. Surgeons attached to regiments in the field could not carry around
a box of books, but they were supplied with five of the most useful.
Journals for distribution comprised American Journal of the Medical
Sciences, apparently a copy for every surgeon; Boston Medical and
Surgical Journal, probably for selected officers; British and
Foreign Medico-Chirurgical Review, for the most senior officers; and
Medical Times. For office use Hammond ordered Annales d
Hygiene, Charles Lyell's Antiquity of Man, Boston Medical and
Surgical Journal, Recueil de Mernoires de Medecine, de Chirurgie et de
Pharmacie Militaries, Archives Generates de Medecine,
Virchow's Archiv, Alexander Tweedie's Lectures on
Fevers, Charles Murchison's book on "continued fevers," and the
publications of the Academic de Medecine and Societe Nationale
d'Acclimatation ofParis. He stopped the office's subscription to the
Medical and Surgical Re-porter, taken by Finley, and subscribed to
the Chicago Medical Journal 1817.
Blanchard & Lea, a Philadelphia publishing firm,
generously donated volumes towards forming a library. Many years later a
person, identity unknown, in the Surgeon General's office, jotted down
the following account of Hammond's influence on the book collection: "Up
to 1862 there was no library connected with the office except a few
common works of reference and such public documents as are annually
distributed. Surgeon General Hammond, however, began to buy books which
he wished to use himself. The first were brought from Bailliere Bros, in
August 1862. From that time on they were bought continuously for use in
making up the Medical and Surgical History. Hammond might have enlarged
the little collection into a first-class library had he not made an
enemy of Secretary of War Edwin Stanton. Stanton exiled him to New
Orleans in August 1863 and elevated Joseph K. Barnes to the rank of
Acting Surgeon General. Hammond was court-martialed and dismissed from
the Army in August 1864. He became a prominent physician, textbook
writer, teacher, researcher, novelist, and journal editor, and he
continually appealed his court-martial sentence. The government finally
exonerated him in 1879 and restored his rank, but he never returned to
the Army.
SURGEON GENERAL JOSEPH K. BARNES, M.D.
Barnes, who had been in the Army since 1840, was
appointed Surgeon General on August 22, 1864. He retained, with few
exceptions, the same standard medical books chosen by his predecessor
for distribution. A large number of these were purchased during the war:
The
numbers on the left are the number copies of these text books ordered
and manuals which were purchased during the early part of the War, but
these are not the only books ordered...MANY
MORE BOOKS WERE ORDERED DURING THE LATER YEARS OF THE WAR.
Copies in this collection are linked to each example.
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7,317
Bumstead on Venereal Diseases,
5,370
Erichsen's Surgery,
4,850
Wood & Bache, The
Dispensatory of the United
States,
3,895
Power's
Surgical Anatomy,
3,442
Gray's
Anatomy,
3,254
Watson's
Practice of Medicine,
3,251
Stephen Smith's
Principles of
Surgery,
3,239
Woodward's
Hospital Steward's
Manual,
3,100 Parkes' Hygiene,
2,671
Sargent's Minor Surgery,
1,905
Dunglison's Medical Dictionary,
1,640
Fowne's Chemistry,
1,542
Bennett s
Practice of Medicine,
1,412
Dalton's
Physiology,
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1,333 Parrish's
Pharmacy.
1,237
Hartshorn's Principles of
Medicine,
1,178
Longmore's Gunshot Wounds,
1,062
Beck's Jurisprudence,
1,024
Stille's Therapeutics,
And
lesser quantities:
Webster's
English Dictionary
McLeod's
Surgical Notes,
Virchow's
Pathology
Jones'
Diseases of the Eye
Bedford's
Mid-wifery
Toynbee's
Diseases of the Ear
Wilson's
Diseases of the
Skin
Guthrie's
Commentaries
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(Other Med. & Hosp. Dept. marked books & publications are
known to exist) |
Books and journals for the Library were selected
mainly by Barnes, Assistant Surgeon George A. Otis, and Assistant
Surgeon Joseph J. Woodward, who needed works on anatomy, surgery, and
other subjects for reference in the museum and for compiling the
Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Surgeons
James R. Smith, Charles H. Crane, and Charles H. Alden sent the orders
for books to publishers and booksellers. Purchases for Hammond, Brinton,
Otis, and Woodward during 1862, '63, and early '64 increased the
collection greatly.
Books and journals were constantly added to the
shelves in the front parlor of the brick house, where book cases
probably lined the walls except for door and window openings. In January
1864 Barnes decided that the Library, now containing approximately 1,800
volumes, should be reorganized, enlarged, and cataloged.2' On May 10 of
that year the first printed catalog of the Library was published,
perhaps for distribution to surgeons with the armies and in the many
military hospitals. Barnes had not yet appointed an officer to act as
librarian, and it is not known who superintended the preparation of the
catalog of 1864.
The
catalog was a pamphlet of 24 leaves, the rectos bearing titles and
the versos blank for additions or notes. Books were listed
alphabetically by authors under nine subject headings: anatomy;
physiology; materia medica, pharmacy and therapeutics; general pathology
and practice of medicine; surgery; midwifery and diseases of women and
children; medical jurisprudence and medical police; natural philosophy,
chemistry, etc.; miscellaneous, journals, reviews, reports,
encyclopedias, etc. A logical assumption is that the volumes were
arranged on the shelves in the same order. All-in-all the catalog
carried 485titles, including about 50 journals, showing a total of
approximately 2,100 volumes. The catalogue contained the titles of
William James Rhees' Manual of Public Libraries (1859) and of
William T. Lowndes' multivolume Bibliographer's Manual of English
Literature (1857-1861). This indicated that the Surgeon General was
trying to develop a library on principles advocated by professional
librarians. If the volumes had been considered previously as an
incidental collection, they were no longer. According to (the 1864
catalog the Library had not yet acquired any incunabula, any 16th or
17th century books, or any 18th century works except Robert Hamilton's
Duties of a Regimental Surgeon (1787), which had been in the
catalog of 1840, and Hamburgisches Magazin, oder Gesammelte Schriften
ausder Naturforschung (1747-63), 25 volumes.
A number of books mentioned in the
catalog of 1840 (among them the works of Gannal, Dunglison, Ashwell,
Colombat, Elliotson, Graves, and Maclise) and others acquired during
Surgeon General Lawson's term did not appear in the
catalog of
1864. Perhaps in the hustle and bustle of the office at the start of
the Civil War, along with a shortage of space for the ever expanding
volume of medical records accumulating during the conflict, volumes that
were obsolete or obsolescent were simply thrown away.
Otis and Woodward continued to choose most of the
books purchased through 1864 and '65, the orders being sent to
booksellers by Crane, by Surgeon William C. Spencer from
1864 to
1866, and by Assistant Surgeon John Shaw Billings from November 6,
1865, onward.28In the autumn of 1865 Surgeon General Barnes ordered that
a new catalog be compiled. One would assume that the primary reason for
a second catalog only a year and a quarter after the first was that
almost all copies of the 1864 catalog had been distributed to medical
officers.
A second reason may have been the accumulation of
more than 100 works, about 200 volumes, since the previous catalog had
been issued. The second printed catalog was published on October 23,
1865. Like its predecessor it was a pamphlet. Titles were on the recto
of the leaves while the verso and interleaves were blank so that the
owner could add notes or titles. According to this catalog the Library
now contained 2,282 volumes. Six hundred and two titles were listed,
including at least 67 journals. The publications were grouped in 11
classes, the differences between this and the previous catalog being the
addition of a new class, natural history, and the division of one class
into two classes, a) medical journals and reviews, and b) miscellaneous.
The largest class was surgery with 120 titles; followed by pathology
with 116 titles; natural philosophy, chemistry, etc., with 76; medical
jurisprudence and medical police, 72; medical journals and reviews, 44;
anatomy, 40; miscellaneous, 39; natural history, 37; midwifery and
diseases of women and children, 20; materia medica, pharmacy and
therapeutics, and physiology. The books were listed alphabetically by
author, journals by title.
In the latter half of 1865 an unusual source of
publications opened up for the Library as the Army began to close
temporary military hospitals. Erected during the war for the care of the
tens of thousands of wounded soldiers, these hospitals possessed medical
books and journals for the use of the surgeons, and a miscellany of
fiction and nonfiction works donated by the Sanitary Commission,
citizens, and relief organizations for patients. On June 26, 1865,
Barnes issued the following order: "when hospitals shall be discontinued
and the libraries disposed of, the most valuable works, Scientific,
Historical, etc. shall be carefully selected, packed and turned over to
the Quartermaster's Department for transportation to Surgeon George A.
Otis, U.S.V., curator of the Army Medical Museum. It is not known how
many publications the Library acquired from hospitals. (See a
book inventory at a New York hospital
in 1865)
The following anecdote by Daniel S. Lamb, a
pathologist at the museum for half a century, indicates that the men
dismantling the hospitals were not very discriminating in the choice of
works they forwarded to the Capital: "On May25, [1866] a lot of
non-medical books which had been sent to the Museum from discontinued
hospitals were ordered to be divided among four employees who were
connected with Sunday Schools in Washington, to be given to the said
schools. Further more among books accessioned after the war were a few
on navigation, astronomy, calculus, algebra, geometry, trigonometry,
logarithms, geology, and agriculture, hardly the subjects that would
have been purchased for a medical library but more likely that would
have arrived from closed hospitals
supplies of medical books.
Civil War Surgeon General's library and
publications ordered by the U.S. Army Medical Department
during the Civil War
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