80 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



Southern States, was visited with a severe epidemic of yellow 

 fever in 1879. Acting under the authority of the National 

 Board of Health, Billings made a thorough sanitary survey of 

 the city and made his report in the winter of that year. Al- 

 though the agent of transmission of yellow fever was then 

 unknown — later to be revealed by a future brilliant pupil of 

 his, Walter Reed — the recommendations made in this report 

 as to means of prevention were all on the right lines. 



It will be news perhaps to some that the beginnings of the 

 Johns Hopkins Hospital date back more than forty years. 

 Its founder died in the winter of 1873, bequeathing the re- 

 mainder of his estate to the foundation of the hospital, and 

 University of Baltimore — the hospital to be called after his 

 own name. In 1875 a circular letter was sent to five experts 

 in hospital construction, Billings among the number, inviting 

 them to send in plans. Billings's plan was preferred to those 

 of his competitors, and almost immediately the building of the 

 hospital was begun. Its well-nigh unique career as a teaching 

 centre and its success in the treatment of disease need not be 

 enlarged upon here, but it is common knowledge that its re- 

 markable success in these and other directions was due 

 principally, if not wholly, to his initiative. His abrupt inter- 

 view with Dr. (now Prof. Sir William) Osier, whose life- 

 work until he came to England was bound up with the Johns 

 Hopkins, was characteristic of the manner of the man, but 

 showed his wonderful instinct for making the right selection. 

 Billings's Description of the Johns Hopkins Hospital published 

 in 1890 is a model of its kind, and became an accepted text- 

 book on the subject of hospital construction and ventilation. 

 He always considered that the most difficult thing in forming 

 the hospital consisted not in the planning of the buildings nor 

 in their heating and ventilation, but in finding the " proper 

 and suitable person to be the soul and motive power of the 

 institution." 



The 3'-ear 1 887 saw the opening of the Army Medical Museum, 

 the administrative and sanitary arrangements of which had 

 been planned by Billings himself. Its inception had dated 

 back to the early 'sixties, at the time of the war, but its 

 collections had been steadily accumulating for twenty years. 

 Dr. Garrison describes it as " an interesting general collection," 

 numbering among its treasures five specimens of the work of 



