Letter of the Day: April 26 - the Peabody Museum sends thanks

 

Peabody Museum of American Archaeology and Ethnology

Harvard University

 

F.W. Putnam,

Curator of the Museum,

 

Cambridge, Mass, Apr 26 1876

 

My dear Dr. Otis

 

Many thanks for your kindness in sending me the negative which arrived today. I have sent it to Mr. Edwards without unpacking + shall have a proof from him at once. If it turns out all right would you like copies for your own use? If so I will have some sent you with the compl.[iments] of our museum as I shall have a number printed on large sheets for special distribution.

 

We shall greatly value the large photograph you propose sending as all we have now is one of the Cabinet rig which you sent in, which I framed + hung in the museum.

 

You will be pleased to know that we begin our new building at once, so I hop e in time to have a chance to arrange the museum as it should be. I shall be very much pleased to see you here + and you will kindly send me word when you are to be or in advance, for as I live in Salem + and not at the museum every day I often miss parties here unless they let me know when they are coing.

 

I congratulate you as arriving so near to the end of your editorial work on the big volume. It was a great undertaking + I fully know the time + attention required for such work. I hope to have some good photorelief figures of the California skulls to go in my report, and I shall be very thankful to you for the use of your measurements as you propose..

 

 

Faithfully yours,

F.W. Putnam

 

To Dr. G.A. Otis, U.S.A.

Curator Army Medical Museum

Washington, D.C.

Letter of the day, March 15

Harvard University
Medical School

Anatomical Department

Boston, March 15, 1887

My dear Dr. Billings,

I have made three more corrosion preparations for your museum. The first is a left human lung [A.M.M. No. 2432 Anatomical Sect.] – vein red, artery blue. It is decidedly better than the one that was broken and which it is sent to replace. It shows the shape of the lung including the curve cut out to make room for the heart. There is an extravascetion[?] at one place but it does not show very much. I have made also a human liver in four colors. Portal vein red, hepatic vein (and cava) blue, artery yellow, bile duct green. It is the best preparation of the kind that I ever made. The only defects are that the acid has affected the green which has unfortunately become very bluish and that the yellow [section of page torn off] I think the preparation [torn] called one of the first class. The kidney which I sent [illegible] had rather a weak injection of the vein. This is perhaps as well as it shows more of the rest but I have now a preparation which is its complement.[A.M.M. No. 2434] Namely a full injection of the vein in blue, the ureter in yellow and no artery.

The lung is sent to replace the other one. The price of the liver is fifty dollars and the kidney is thrown in. The lung and liver are mounted elastically on cushions covered in white silk. I hope you will send a man for them as it would break my heart if the liver were broken.

I intend now to give up corrosions. They take too much time and should be made by demonstrators not professors. A visitor just came in to see the liver. I think it has changed shape a little by its weight. It is worth sending for anyway and if it deteriorates you can pay what you please.

Yours very sincerely,

Thomas Dwight

[Specimens of lung & liver received Mar. 28, 1887
Kidney Apr 1 ‘87
Liver broken when received and not placed in A.M.M. Could not be repaired.]

Harvard's Comparative Zoology Museum

A nice article on the Museum is at http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/HarvardGazette12.03.091.pdf