that his friends and associates would be inclined to persuade him from new ventures, he kept his plans quiet until they were nearly ready for the launch." Growoll wrote essentially the same in Frederick Leypoldt; Biographical and Bibliographical Sketch (1899), a 15-page pamphlet. I have not seen any other attributing the conception of Index Medicus to Leypoldt. Growoll was associated with Leypoldt and it can be argued that he knew whereof he spoke. Fielding Garrison said this: “One year before the publication of the first volume of the Index Catalogue, Dr. Billings and Dr. Fletcher hit upon another bibliographical expedient. . . . This was the Index Medicus” (John Shaw Billings, p. 225). I have not seen any statement, except Growoll's, that disagrees with Garrison's. Garrison was associated with Billings for 5 years, with Fletcher for 22 years, and it can be argued that he was closer to them than Growoll was to Leypoldt. My personal feeling is that Garrison was correct. It seems to me less reasonable that Leypoldt, who worked in the literature of the book trade and in general bibliography, would have singled medicine out of all sciences and other endeavors as a field in which to publish a bibliographical journal, than would Billings, who had specialized in medical bibliography for a decade. "Dr. Fletcher very deeply resented the use of that term [Index Medicus] as a title for other medical bibliographies, because it was a Latin expression devised by himself which he ragarded as his personal property. . . . More than one medical journal has employed it in this way and he always denounced it to the editors in virgorous terms"; letter, Garrison to George H. Simmons, Aug. 8, 1914: JH. 32 Letter, Fletcher to James Tyson, Aug. 13, 1909: MS/C/116. 33 Index Medicus paid a total of about $50 a month to clerks for copying in the early 1880's, $80 a month by 1899; letter, Fletcher to Billings, April 30, 1899: NYPL. 34"* the work of copying the library cards for redaction having been parceled out. . . among the wives and daughters of the office force, as private work": Fielding H. Garrison, "In Memoriam Dr. John Shaw Billings," Index Medicus 2S, vol. 11, Mar. 1913. 35 The classification, or table of contents, may be found at the beginning of occasional numbers of Index Medicus, and particularly in the editorial at the beginning of the first number, January 1884, vol. 6. 36 Fielding Garrison, "Report of Committee on Library Classification," Bull. M. Lib. Assoc. 7: 28 (1917-18); “Subject Bibliography and Shelf Classification," Ibid., 10: 29-37 (1920-21). 37 Letters, E. Brigham to Billings, July 19, 1882, Billings to Brigham, July 22: MS/C/81. See also Joseph E. Garland, The Centennial History of the Boston Medical Library, 1875– 1975, pp. 34-35. 38 C. Martel, "Remarks on Cataloguing and Classification," Bull. Med. Lib. Assoc. n.s. 5: 43-45 (1915/16). 39 Prospectus, dated Nov. 1, 1878, bound at the beginning of vol. 1, Index Medicus, HMD, NLM. 40 Billings, preface to Index-Catalogue, vol. 16, 1895, p. iv. 41 In NLM are several letters to and from Leypoldt in which the publisher mentioned the lack of support for Index Medicus. See, for example, Billings to Leypoldt, Oct. 25, 1882, MS/ C/81, and Leypoldt to A. Jacobi, Oct. 10, 1881, MS/C/1. See also letter, Billings to A. Van Derveer, May 5, 1884: MS/C/81. 42 "As to the Index Medicus the deficiency was about $1000.00. Five hundred copies of it cost about $5000, and it does not seem possible to cheapen it in any way. The simple truth is that there are only about 250 persons who want it quite a number took it not because they had any use for it, but for the general good or from friendly feelings to me . . .,"; letter, Billings to C. R. Agnew, Jan. 27, 1885: MS/C/272. 43 Billings, "The Conditions and Prospects of the Library of the Surgeon-General's Office and of its Index Catalogue," Trans. Assoc. Amer. Phys. 6: 251-7 (1891). In this article Billings lists the number of subscribers from each foreign country, as Australia 5, Belgium 2, Brazil 1, and so on. "The number of subscribers to the Index Medicus is harulv sufficient to pay Mr. Davis for the expense of printing it, and I have for two or three years feared that he would soon be unwilling to go on with its publication"; letter, Billings to A. Mosso, Turin, Italy, Mar. 7, 1892: MS/C/81. In an effort to attract more subscribers Davis published excerpts from scores of European and American reviews and from letters of physicians in a pamphlet, An Explanation, by the Publisher, of the Nature, Scope, Form and Method of Preparation of the Index Medicus [1886?]: Arch. Coll., NLM. 44 "I believe it [Index Medicus] will be a success among the scholars in the profession. Unfortunately, however, that class is much too small"; letter, G. F. Schrady, ed. New York Med. Rec., to Billings, Mar. 5, 1879: NYPL, copy in NLM. 45 A scrapbook containing letters and clippings relating to Index Medicus is in NLM. Letters, Fletcher to Billings, Nov. 16, 18, 20, 1895, 51 Letters, Billings to F. A. P. Barnard, Dec. 4, 1883, May 26, 1886: MS/C/81. 52 Letter, Billings to B. Cotting, Sept. 29, 1884: MS/C/81. 53 Letters, Billings to T. Parvin, and to N. S. Davis, Jan. 25, 1883: MS/C/81. The banquet was held November 30, 1895. The silver box that contained the check is in HMD, NLM. Garrison, Billings, pp. 282-7, gives excerpts from speeches at the banquet. 55 Memorial Meeting in Honor of the Late Dr. John Shaw Billings, April 25, 1913, p. 10. As late as the 1930's mail from foreign countries was received at the Library addressed to John Shaw Billings. IX Billings Seeks a Building for the Library and Museum PLANNING THE BUILDING S soon as Billings won his battle to publish the Index-Catalogue, he began with a building of their own. He had gathered so much printed material that he had run out of space in Ford's Theatre. Volumes were double and triple shelved. "There came to be no room for even the storage of books and specimens," wrote Charles Smart, “not to speak of facility of reference or advantageous display." Billings considered placing books in the attic but decided that the weight there might cave in the building, or that if a fire ever broke out the volumes would be burned or ruined by water from fire hoses. Assistant Surgeon David Huntington relieved a bit of the pressure by storing books and undistributed volumes of Index-Catalogue at Soldier's Home about 4 miles away on the outskirts of Washington.2 The ex-theater was undesirable in other respects for its present uses. The Museum, crowded into the third floor, was visited by approximately 36,000 persons a year and was being enlarged by about 500 specimens annually. The lower floor, where clerks searched Civil War records for pension applicants, was dim, illuminated only by gas lamps, and had no ventilation. The Inspector General of the War Department had protested strongly that three times as many clerks were jammed into the space as ought to be.3 The theater had been erected hurriedly in a few months and was poorly constructed. The east wall was more than a foot out of plumb. The southwest corner had given way until there was a large crack in the wall. The weight of books, specimens, furniture, files, and people placed stresses on the floors and walls that the building had not been designed to bear. Officers were apprehensive that the continual addition of weight would cause the building to collapse. Finally, the building, although the walls were of brick and the floors of concrete, was not fireproof. In 1875 a small frame building adjacent to the south side caught fire. Daniel Lamb, pathologist of the museum, discovered the blaze before it had time to spread widely, but before it was extinguished 4 it damaged the photograph room. The staff always feared that a fire might start in a neighboring house or shed, jump to Ford's and destroy all their work. It seems that Billings had four choices: to recommend to Surgeon General Barnes that the Library stop collecting (which he would not have done if humanly possible, and which would have ended publication of Index-Catalogue), to suggest or agree to a merger with Library of Congress (which he did not want to do), to find storage spaces here and there in government buildings (which would have fragmented the Library), or to persuade the Surgeon General to ask Congress for permission and funds to construct a special library-museum building. Apparently, he had no difficulty with the last alternative, for medical officers, from the Surgeon General to the most recent assistant surgeon, were proud of their Library and museum. Billings had learned something about the functional design of buildings years before when he compiled and edited Circular No. 4 of the Surgeon General's office, A report on Barracks and Hospitals, with Descriptions of Military Posts. And he had learned more while consulting with officials of Johns Hopkins about the design of its hospital. He discussed his ideas for a building with Adolph Cluss of the architectural firm of Cluss and Schulze and sketched a floor plan of a building that Cluss translated into a design. Undoubtedly Cluss contributed to the plan; several years earlier he had won third place among 28 entries in a competition for a design for the proposed Library of Congress building. The building was to be L-shaped, four stories high. The center segment and the first floor of the wings were to contain offices, workshops, laboratories, and space for records. The upper portions of the wings were to be halls, one for the Library, the other for the museum. The strategy that Barnes and Billings decided upon to gain Congressional support was to emphasize the unsafe condition of Ford's, rather than the lack of space for books and specimens, or the crowded condition of records, and clerks. "In the building . . .," the general reported to his superiors, "these collections are continually exposed to the danger of destruction by fire. This building is surrounded by inflammable houses and sheds . . . destruction by fire of the roof would not only involve the whole Museum Collection in the third story, but, by the fall of at least a portion of the walls, the destruction of the contents of the lower stories, including the Library and the Records, would result."5 Barnes convinced Secretary of War Alexander Ramsay that a new, sturdy, plain, fireproof building, costing a quarter of a million dollars on a site costing about $50,000, was needed for the Library, museum, and records. Ramsay gave President Rutherford B. Hayes information about the building and its contents, and the President was impressed." He recommended, in his annual message, that Congress appropriate money for a new structure, stating that? the Army Medical Museum and Library are of national importance. .. Their destruction would be an irreparable loss, not only to the United States, but to |