The National Medical Dictionary: Including English, French, German, Italian, and Latin Technical Terms Used in Medicine and the Collateral Sciences, and a Series of Tables of Useful Data; Volume 1
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Hospital Plans: Five Essays Relating to the Construction, Organization & Management of Hospitals
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This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work.
This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.
As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
John Shaw Billings: Creator of the National Medical Library and Its Catalogue, First Director of the New York Public Library
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John Shaw Billings was an American librarian and surgeon. He was the first director of the New York Public Library.
Background
John Billings was born on April 12, 1838, in Allensville, Indiana, United States, the son of James Billings and his wife, Abby (Shaw) Billings, the latter descended from one of the Mayflower Pilgrims. He was descended from William Billings of Somersetshire who migrated to New England about the middle of the seventeenth century. In the course of six generations the family removed through New York State to Switzerland County in southeastern Indiana, where John was born.
Education
As a boy John read voraciously, learned Latin with a little aid from a clergyman of the neighborhood, and later made an agreement with his father to waive all claim to an inheritance in favor of the other child, a sister, if the father would help him through college. He prepared himself, and at the age of fourteen entered the sub-freshman class of Miami University at Oxford, Ohio, some fifty miles from his home. Five years later he received the degree of B. A. with honors and in the fall of the following year began his professional studies at the Medical College of Ohio. In the spring of 1860 he obtained his M. D.
Career
After college John was appointed demonstrator of anatomy in the medical college at which he had studied. A year later he went before the medical examining board of the regular army, then being rapidly enlarged to meet the demands at the opening of the war, and passed at the top of the list. He received his commission the following spring and was put in charge of a hospital. At the end of the summer he became executive officer of a Philadelphia hospital filled with thousands of sick and wounded, and at that post developed a facility in disposing of official business by which he was ever after characterized.
In April 1864 he was assigned to duty with the medical director of the Army of the Potomac and during the Wilderness campaign was a medical inspector in fact if not in title for that army. In July he was invalided back to Washington and in December he was transferred to the surgeon-general's office where he remained until his retirement from active duty thirty years later. During the first few years of this period his time was occupied largely with routine departmental duties in connection with the closing of many great army hospitals and the discharge of civilian physicians and surgeons.
During his student years in the Medical College Billings had been aroused to the need of a great medical library in the United States. His graduating thesis had been on "The Surgical Treatment of Epilepsy. " The six months which he spent in writing it, ransacking the while the libraries of Cincinnati and of eastern cities for material, showed him that there were more than 100, 000 printed volumes of medical books and journals to search, that no medical library in the United States possessed the majority of these books, that under the circumstances it was an immense task to collect the information he needed, and that the burden of work was greatly increased by the fact that many of the volumes were not indexed or were badly indexed. This experience led him after peace came "to try to establish for the use of American physicians a fairly complete medical library and in connection with this to prepare a comprehensive catalogue and index. "
Soon after beginning his Washington life Billings was put in charge of the Surgeon-General's Library and much of his time thereafter was devoted to fostering its growth. A sum of $80, 000, turned in from the army hospitals after the war, was made available, and, energetically using this opportunity, he increased the library from 600 entries in the catalogue of 1865 to more than 50, 000 entries in that of 1873. After he had seen the Surgeon-General's Library thus grow under his hands, he printed in 1876 a Specimen Fasciculus of a Catalogue and submitted it to the medical profession for suggestions. It was well received and four years later Congress provided for printing Billings's monumental work, the Index Catalogue, in the preparation of which he was ably assisted by Dr. Robert Fletcher. The first volume appeared in 1880. One volume of the Index Catalogue including about one thousand pages royal octavo appeared each year thereafter until 1895 when the sixteen volumes had been printed and Billings, retiring from the service, left his successors to produce a second series, 1896-1916, even more voluminous, and to begin upon a third. In 1879 the Index Medicus, planned by Billings and Fletcher as a monthly guide to current medical literature and a companion publication to the Index Catalogue, began to appear, and it was continued without a break until after the retirement of Billings in 1895.
As Billings in 1873 was beginning his work at cataloguing and indexing the Surgeon-General's Library, Johns Hopkins of Baltimore died, leaving a generous endowment for a great hospital. The trustees asked five experts in hospital construction to submit sketch plans for the construction, heating, ventilation, and administration of the proposed group of buildings. The plans of Billings were accepted, the architects' plans were adapted to them, and Billings, with the consent of the Surgeon-General, was appointed medical adviser to the trustees. In this capacity he presented a series of reports upon hospital construction and organization, and the relation of hospitals to the training of nurses and medical men, which have become classical. The new hospital was to be an integral part of the Medical School which Hopkins also endowed and both were to aim at raising the level of medical training in the United States. That Billings selected first William H. Welch, whom he met as a student in Germany, and later William Osler for the staff of the medical school illustrates his power of judging not merely performance but promise in younger men. Perhaps the greatest change in medicine during the present generation has been a shift in emphasis from curative to preventive medicine, from caring for the individual patient to caring for community health; in this change Billings was a pioneer.
Billings's first publication used the statistical method and in later years whatever the theme upon which he was writing he was likely to try the same method upon it. He was in charge of the vital statistics of the federal censuses of 1880 and 1890 and although the imperfections of his material prevented him from making in those reports any contributions of the first importance, the soundness of judgment, professional knowledge, and statistical acumen there displayed contributed much to rescue American work in this field.
Five years before the date upon which Billings was to retire from active duty in the army the University of Pennsylvania with the permission of the Surgeon-General appointed him director of its University Hospital and professor of hygiene; after his retirement he removed to Philadelphia to give himself more fully to these duties. One year later, however, after securing the reluctant consent of the University authorities he resigned to accept a greater and more congenial task in New York City where the remaining seventeen years of his life were spent.
Three libraries and library endowments in that city, the Astor, Lenox, and Tilden foundations, were consolidated in 1895 by common agreement and with the hope that a library worthy to be compared with the best in Europe might result from the union. The many problems involved in the execution of the plan required a director of energy and expert knowledge, and it was natural that Billings should be chosen. The city gave land in a central location and constructed upon it a library building following the plan which Billings originally sketched. While it was being erected, Billings supervised the reclassification and recataloguing of the books in the three libraries and the consolidation of New York's numerous free circulating libraries into branches of this central library. He also persuaded Carnegie to provide the $5, 000, 000 needed for building these branches, now more than forty in number, on condition that the city would furnish the necessary land, which was done. Of the New York Public Library as it stands today he was "in a very real sense the creator. " It now contains more than 3, 000, 000 books and pamphlets.
In his last eleven years Billings was active in the organization and guidance of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, designed to encourage research, especially in the fields of pure and applied science. For most of that time he was chairman of the board of trustees and member of the executive committee and "he gave a surprisingly large amount of time and attention to the affairs of the Institution" and "rendered invaluable services during this formative period. "
During his lifetime Billings’ work won perhaps more honor abroad than at home because medical knowledge and skill in many countries of Western Europe then stood higher than they did in the United States. At the seventh meeting of the International Medical Congress in London he was invited as a representative of American medicine to give one of the four general addresses, the others being by selected representatives of France, Germany, and England. This was the first time American medicine had been so recognized and his address on "Our Medical Literature" was his best public effort. It was received with great enthusiasm.
John Billings was a member of the American Public Health Association.
Personality
Billings was high-spirited and imperious in temper and in his later years the recurrent physical pain of which he never spoke added at times an edge to his words. His absorption in matters of large moment interfered with his enduring fools gladly; his army training developed an innate self-reliance and domination which to some were repellent; his achievements were not such as to split the ears of the groundlings; and his humor, at times somewhat grim, was not always understood by little men.
Connections
Billings was married on September 3, 1862, at Georgetown, D. C. , to Katharine Mary Stevens, daughter of Hestor L. Stevens who had been a representative in Congress from Michigan, 1853-1855, and had settled in Washington after his term in Congress was ended. Of this marriage six children were born of whom a son and four daughters survived.