Figure 28.—Wet specimens on display enclosed in glass.
to be sufficient. The Surgeon General accordingly addressed a letter to the Honorable James A. Garfield, chairman of the Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives, on 6 January 1872, justifying an estimate of $10,000 for the Museum and also the Surgeon General's Library. "No institution," he said, "has reflected greater credit upon its Government both at home and abroad than the Army Medical Museum and its present size and steady increase render the expense of keeping it in good order and preservation larger than heretofore, although still small when compared with the cost of other institutions of similar character." The request was looked upon with favor, but the Senate Appropriations Committee cut the item from $10,000 to $5,000 whereupon, on 15 May, General Barnes wrote Chairman Cole, urging reconsideration and stating that the lesser sum was not sufficient to maintain the growing collection and "to make some of the more valuable results known to the profession of the country, a course which has been pursued so far as means would allow." The appeal for restoration of the House figure was not successful, and the next year's appropriation remained at $5,000.[1]
An interesting sidelight is thrown on the problem of the congressional relations of the Museum by a bit of correspondence between Curator Otis and Brevet Lieutenant Colonel John Shaw Billings of the Surgeon General's Office, preserved in the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology records. On 7 May 1870,
- ↑ On file, National Archives, Accession Number 421, Letter Book Number 50, SGO, pp. 37, 245.
