Library of the Surgeon General's Office
Encyclopedia
The 19th century
The Library of the Surgeon General’s Office was established in 1836 when Joseph LovellJoseph Lovell
Dr. Joseph Lovell was the 8th Surgeon General of the United States Army, ,-Family:Lovell was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the son of James S. and Deborah Lovell...
, then Surgeon General, purchased reference books and journals for his office. In 1840 the library published its first list of publications in a manuscript notebook. In 1864, the library printed its first catalog containing 2100 volumes.
In 1867, the Library, along with the new Surgeon General's office, was moved to Ford's Theater, site of the tragic assassination of President Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln
Abraham Lincoln was the 16th President of the United States, serving from March 1861 until his assassination in April 1865. He successfully led his country through a great constitutional, military and moral crisis – the American Civil War – preserving the Union, while ending slavery, and...
in April 1865. (The theater had been closed and remodelled in the intervening two years.) The new Office/Library site was taken over by the U.S. Army to house a cluster of important post-Civil War medical activities of the Surgeon General's Office. The most significant were the archive of Civil War medical records (essential for verification of veterans' pension claims), the Army Medical Museum (now the National Museum of Health and Medicine
National Museum of Health and Medicine
The National Museum of Health and Medicine is a museum in Silver Spring, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., USA. An element of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the NMHM is a member of the National Health Sciences Consortium....
), the editorial offices for preparation of the multi-volume Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion
Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion
The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861-65 was a U.S. Government Printing Office publication consisting of six volumes published between 1870 and 1888 and “prepared Under the Direction of Surgeon General United States Army, Joseph K. Barnes”...
, and the Library of the Surgeon General's Office.
Index medicus
Index Medicus is a comprehensive index of medical scientific journal articles, published since 1879. It was initiated by John Shaw Billings, head of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office, United States Army...
, a periodical listing the titles of current medical articles, books, reports, and other medical literature. This achievement, as well as the creation of the Index Catalogue of the Surgeon General's Office (1880), was largely the legacy of Dr. John Shaw Billings
John Shaw Billings
John Shaw Billings was an American librarian and surgeon best known as the modernizer of the Library of the Surgeon General's Office of the Army and as the first director of the New York Public Library.-Biography:...
, Director of the Library from 1865 to 1895.
When the Army's needs outgrew the capacity of the former theater, several of the units were moved in 1887 to a new building, the Army Medical Museum and Library
Army Medical Museum and Library
The Army Medical Museum and Library of the U.S. Army was a large brick building constructed in 1887 at South B Street and 7th Street, SW, Washington, D.C., USA, which is directly on the National Mall...
, on the nearby National Mall
National Mall
The National Mall is an open-area national park in downtown Washington, D.C., the capital of the United States. The National Mall is a unit of the National Park Service , and is administered by the National Mall and Memorial Parks unit...
(7th Street and South B Street [now Independence Avenue], SW, the present site of the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum).
The 20th century
In 1922, the library was renamed the "Army Medical Library" (AML). In 1927, using funds from the , Index Medicus merged with the Quarterly Cumulative Index forming the Quarterly Cumulative Index Medicus. From 1937 until 1942, the library ran a program, "Medicofilm," which provided microfilm access to medical literature to patrons. In 1941 the library published The Current List of Medical Literature a "rapid finding aid" to all current articles and microfilm copies in the library's possession.The AML administration opposed a proposed reorganization and created the Association of Honorary Consultants to the Army Medical Library as a lobbying group to keep the facility within the U.S. Army. Chauncey Leake headed the group and important contributions were made by Michael DeBakey, Joseph McNinch and Harold W. Jones
Harold W. Jones
Colonel Harold W. Jones, M.D. , is noted as the Director of the U.S. Army Medical Library from 1936 through 1945, who made signal contributions to military medicine and to the evolution of the United States National Library of Medicine ....
. A transfer to the Public Health Service
United States Public Health Service
The Public Health Service Act of 1944 structured the United States Public Health Service as the primary division of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare , which later became the United States Department of Health and Human Services. The PHS comprises all Agency Divisions of Health and...
(PHS) was strongly opposed, with one alternative being incorporation under the Smithsonian Institution
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution is an educational and research institute and associated museum complex, administered and funded by the government of the United States and by funds from its endowment, contributions, and profits from its retail operations, concessions, licensing activities, and magazines...
. In 1952, the facility was renamed the "Armed Forces Medical Library".
On 13 March 1956, Senators Lister Hill and John F. Kennedy
John F. Kennedy
John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy , often referred to by his initials JFK, was the 35th President of the United States, serving from 1961 until his assassination in 1963....
submitted Bill S.3430 to Congress, which promoted "the progress of medicine and advanced national health and welfare by creating the National Library of Medicine". On 3 August 1956 President Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower was the 34th President of the United States, from 1953 until 1961. He was a five-star general in the United States Army...
signed the legislation which transformed the “Armed Forces Medical Library” into the "National Library of Medicine". The Library collection was thus transferred from the control of the United States Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...
to that of the PHS of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare.
See also
- National Library of MedicineUnited States National Library of MedicineThe United States National Library of Medicine , operated by the United States federal government, is the world's largest medical library. Located in Bethesda, Maryland, the NLM is a division of the National Institutes of Health...
- Fielding H. GarrisonFielding H. GarrisonColonel Fielding Hudson Garrison, MD was an acclaimed medical historian, bibliographer, and librarian of medicine. Garrison's An Introduction to the History of Medicine is a landmark text in this field....