NLM logo

Gallery: First Exhibition

Home
A 19th-century black and white portrait of a white man
A 19th-century black and white portrait of a white man
A page of text in a book
A sepia-toned photograph of a building
A page of text in a book
A page of text in a book

4 of 6

A sepia-toned photograph of a building

Ford’s Theater, 1870–1879

The U.S. Surgeon General’s library, known then as the Army Medical Library and Museum, occupied the second floor of Ford’s Theater from 1866 to 1887. John Shaw Billings, head of the library, curated the first reported exhibition, a collection of pamphlets from the personal collection of Claude Bernard, in 1878.