Ten Years in Washington or, Inside Life and Scenes in Our National Capital as a Woman Sees Them ... to Which Is Added a Full Account of the Life and Death of President James A. Garfield

CHAPTER XLIII.

Chapter 43192 wordsPublic domain

THE ARMY MEDICAL MUSEUM—ITS CURIOSITIES AND WONDERS.

Ford’s Theatre—Its Interesting Memories—The Last Festivities—Assassination of President Lincoln—Two Years Later—Effects of “War, Disease, and Human Skill”—Collection of Pathological Specimens—The Army Medical Museum opened—Purchase of Ford’s Theatre—Ghastly Specimens—A Book Four Centuries Old—Rare Old Volumes—The Most Interesting of the National Institutions—Various Opinions—Effects on Visitors—An Extraordinary Withered Arm—A Dried Sioux Baby!—Its Poor Little Nose—A Well-dressed Child—Its Buttons and Beads—Casts of Soldier-Martyrs—Making a New Nose—Vassear’s Mounted Craniums—Model Skeletons—A Giant, Seven Feet High—Skeleton of a Child—All that remains of Wilkes Booth, the Assassin—Fractures by Shot and Shell—General Sickles Contributes His Quota—A Case of Skulls—Arrow-head Wounds—Nine Savage Sabre-Cuts—Seven Bullets in One Head—Phenomenal Skulls—A Powerful Nose—An Attempted Suicide—A Proverb Corrected—Specimen from the Paris Catacombs—Typical Heads of the Human Race—Remarkable Indian Relics—“Flatheads”—The Work of Indian Arrows—An Extraordinary Story—A “Pet” Curiosity—A Japanese Manikin—Tattooed Heads—Adventure of Captain John Smith—A “Stingaree”—The Microscopical Division—Preparing Specimens, 475