PlU-PARATOllV TO RliSliARCH CARI-.IiR 47 



ciicky), the second to be established west of the AUeghenics 

 (1819)."'^'' His years of service with the Medical Corps had 

 proved fortunate, since, while located at important government 

 hospitals, he acquainted himself with the latest and most approved 

 ideas of hospital construction and administration. In time he was 

 to plan the construction and administration of at least seven great 

 buildings — the Barnes Hospital or Soldier's Home of the District 

 of Columbia, the Army Medical Museum of Washington, D. C, 

 the Johns Hopkins Hospital of Baltimore, the Laboratory of Hy- 

 giene and the William Pepper Laboratory of Clinical Medicine in 

 Philadelphia, the New York Public Library, and the Peter Bent 

 Brigham Hospital of Boston.''''' 



More than ten years before Pasteur and Koch had discovered 

 the proper methods to investigate the infectious diseases of 

 animals and man. Dr. Billings had been interested in the germ 

 theory. During the 1860's and early 1870's, he had reported on 

 cattle diseases and, in the course of his investigations with Dr. 

 Edward Curtis, had examined "' fluids of diseased cattle with refer- 

 ence to the presence of cryptogamic growths." ^^ Contagious 

 pleuropneumonia and the "Texas cattle disease" were two of the 

 animal maladies experimentally studied. Their conclusions were, 

 of course, in the negative, but, it must be remembered that, at 

 that time, fevers and infectious diseases of man had been studied 

 for possible cryptogamous origins." After graduating from medi- 

 cal school, Dr. Billings had been appointed to the faculty as a 

 demonstrator of anatomy. In Washington his interest in micro- 

 scopy was supplemented by an interest in microphotography.^^ 

 He learned to read the German language by studying Rudolph 

 Virchow's three volume treatise on The Pathology of Tumors. 

 Part of his future greatness was to lie in the field of medical 

 bibliography, and at the Johns Hopkins Hospital medical school 

 he was to be a lecturer on medical history. 



Dr. Billings was among those leaders of American medicine 

 who early realized the need for more adequate laboratory facilities 



so 



51 



*' Idem, 4-18, quotation at p. 8. 



Idem, 339. 



Report of the Comm'er of A,^r/c. on the Diseases of Cattle in the United States. 

 156-170, Washington, Gov't Print. Office, 1871. 

 ^- John Shaw Billings, op. cit., 150-152. 

 ^""Idem, 138. 



