biography
| name: |
Billings, John Shaw
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| sex:
| male
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| lived:
| (1838–1913)
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| biography:
| Surgeon and librarian, born near Vevay, Indiana, USA. He studied at the Medical College of Ohio (1860), and served as a medical officer with the Union army (1862–4). He then went to the surgeon general's department in Washington, DC where he stayed for 30 years (1864–94). While doing research, he was struck by how inadequate the surgeon general's library was and set about enlarging it from 600 books (1865) to more than 50 000 (1873) and, with Dr Robert Fletcher, published an Index Catalogue (16 vols, 1880–95) of the library. In 1873 he was appointed medical adviser for Johns Hopkins Hospital (Baltimore), which he helped found. He was also interested in preventive medicine, and was an original member of the American Public Health Association (1872). He was invited to New York City to help consolidate the privately established Astor, Lenox, and Tilden Libraries that form the nucleus of the New York Public Library, and he spent his final years at this task (1896–1913). |
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