78 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



he gave a foretaste of the humour and common sense always 

 manifested in his later writings. 



Billings was Demonstrator of Anatomy at the Ohio 

 Medical College, was beginning to get into touch with surgical 

 practice and on the eve of becoming assistant to Prof. 

 Blackman, when the Civil War broke out. He was appointed 

 first lieutenant and assistant surgeon on April 16, 1862, and 

 this appointment decided the course of his whole after career. 



His first charge was the Cliffburne Hospital, which he found 

 " in an extremely filthy and dilapidated condition." At once 

 he instituted the necessary sanitary reforms. This was the 

 beginning of what was to be one of the principal departments 

 of his life's work. During the two years of office as army 

 surgeon, Billings kept a detailed diary of daily work and 

 incidents. No newspaper correspondent could have given a 

 brighter or more vivid account of the campaign, as it entered 

 into matters of an interest wider than the mere medical and 

 surgical aspect. This diary is largely supplemented by letters 

 of a similarly descriptive nature, written to his wife, to whom 

 he was married in 1862. 



In the summer of 1864 Billings was relieved of active duty 

 in the field and assigned to the Washington branch of the 

 office of the Medical Director of the Army of the Potomac, 

 and charged with the duty of analysing and arranging its 

 field reports, afterwards embodied in the Medical and Surgical 

 History of the War. Six months later he was transferred to 

 the Surgeon-General's office in the War Department. As an 

 army surgeon he had become an expert in operative surgery, 

 but all active exercise of this branch of his profession 

 was now at an end, and he settled down to the dull routine 

 of official life which largely consisted in financial duties 

 connected with the disbanding of medical officers and the 

 discontinuance of military hospitals. His leisure time was 

 devoted to the study of microscopy, in which he became an 

 expert. He devoted special attention to the fungi and their 

 supposed connection with the origin of infectious diseases, 

 especially malaria. His valuable collection of fungi he pre- 

 sented at a much later date (1902) to the New York Botanical 

 Garden. 



About the year 1870, the sphere of his activities was 

 widened in other directions. He was placed in charge of the 



