1865 Receipt for
Sale of Surplus Hospital Inventory
As evidence of the sale of surplus
medical supplies, we have an original receipt for government
issued medical instruments and books purchased from the Medical Store
Surplus Office, in Washington, D.C., 9/1865 by Civil War assistant
surgeon Benjamin Pope for $89.50! These surplus items would have
belonged to the Medical Department per their directive to the hospitals
in 1865 to inventory and return all surplus supplies, which were then
sold for over four million dollars at the end of the War.
"The War Department's
order of 28 April 1865 to cut back on expenses was followed by the
reduction of the department's small fleet of ocean-going hospital
transports from four to one, the return of all its river transports to
the Quartermaster's Department, the elimination of all hospital trains
but one in the West, and the
collection of excess medicines and hospital supplies for sale at public
auction.
As can be seen in the
end of the year report on transactions of the Medical Department, the
monies received for surgical sets sold to medical officers and private
physicians is minimal.
Statement of finances and general
transactions of the Medical Department for the fiscal year ending
June 30, 1865. Value of books and surgical instruments sold to medical officers and
private physicians: $8,311.30 (
See: Article on budget items at the end of the War.) Which
would not account for large numbers of sets or books. Most
likely the bulk was sold at public auctions after the war.
Barnes dismissed the
medical boards that had been examining surgeons for the wartime Army and
ordered his purveyors to stop buying until all surpluses had been
consumed. He began closing purveying depots, keeping open only seven
distributing sites and the main depots at New York, Philadelphia, and
Louisville. He started reducing the size of the department's
laboratories. His medical directors intensified the process of
consolidating patients, both Union soldiers and Confederate prisoners of
war, and of converting large hospitals to post facilities, while Barnes
began discharging contract doctors and hospital attendants. The surgeon
general also decided that the department could loan its excess
bedsteads, bedding, and blankets to soldiers' homes." (THE ARMY
MEDICAL DEPARTMENT 1818-1865 by Mary C. Gillett )
"Disposal of hospital supplies: ...
General hospitals, hospital transports and railroad trains, ambulance
corps, and a number of medical purveying depots, have been dispensed
with, and all perishable articles of medicines and hospital supplies in
excess of the requirements of a peace establishment have been disposed
of by public sale at advantageous prices. The proceeds of old or surplus
medical and hospital property amount to $4,044,269 59."
(History of the Civil War, by John W. Draper)
O.R.--SERIES III--VOLUME V [S# 126]
CORRESPONDENCE, ORDERS, REPORTS, AND RETURNS OF THE UNION AUTHORITIES
FROM MAY 1, 1865, TO THE END.
Upon the termination of active military movements, immediate measures
were taken to reduce the expenses of the Medical Department. Of the 201
general hospitals open on January 1, 1865, 171 have been discontinued.
Three of the sea-going hospital transports have been discharged; the
fourth is now constantly engaged in transfer of sick and wounded from
Southern ports to the general hospitals in New York Harbor. All of the
river hospital boats have been turned over to the Quartermaster's
Department, and but a single hospital train is retained in the
Southwest. The vast amount of medicines and hospital supplies made
surplus by the reduction of the Army has been carefully collected at
prominent points and is being disposed of at public auction, most of the
articles bringing their full value, and in some instances their cost
price.
EDWIN M. STANTON,
Secretary of War.
Article on various sources of Civil War military surgical sets
The importance of this receipt is
it confirms one source of government marked sets and imprinted medical
books, (U.S.A Hosp. & Med. Dept), which ended up in the hands of former surgeons after the War.
The sale of the medical surplus after the war was under the control of
the Medical Purveyors and Medical Store-keeper office.
Another source of medical surplus
after the war was the government resorting to public auctions of surplus
instrument sets. One could purchase complete general operating
sets for $40 to $75". (Advertisement, Surgical Instruments from
Government Auctions, B.F.Wilson, Boston, Edmonson, American
Surgical Instruments, p. 70; Truax, introduction, p. XIX)
Article on the Medical
Purveyors and Store-Keepers during the war
"Received, Medical
Store-Keeper's Office, Washington, D.C. August 9 -65 of Benjamin
F Pope, Asst. Surg., 10th N.Y. Artillery, Eighty nine 50/100
Dollars for: 1 Personal Set; 1 Staff Pocket Cases; 2
Erichsen Surgery; 1 Bennet's Practice of Medicine; 1 Gray's
Anatomy; 1 Smith's Handbook of Surgery"
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