ealing with
the nature and properties of drugs of various kinds and origins, their
collection and mode of administration for the treatment of diseases, and
the medicinal utilization of animal products) held an increasingly
important place among the medical sciences. In the United States, as in
other civilized countries, this topic was greatly emphasized in the
curriculum of almost every school teaching the health professions.
Today, the subject matter contained in this branch of science is taught
under the heading of several specialized fields, such as pharmacology,
pharmacognosy, and drug analysis of various types. However, when the
decision was made in 1881 to promote greater knowledge and interest in
the healing arts by creating a section devoted to such pursuits in the
U.S. National Museum, the title of Section of Materia Medica was
adopted. Added to this, was the fact that the bulk of the first
collections received in the Section was a great variety of crude drugs,
which constituted much of the material then taught in the academic
courses of _materia medica_.

The new Section was included in the Department of Arts and Industries,
then under the curatorship of Assistant Director G. Brown Goode. From
its beginning and for two decades, however, the Section of Materia
Medica was sponsored and supervised by the U.S. Navy in cooperation with
the Smithsonian Institution. For this reason, the Navy decided not to
establish a similar bureau for a health museum as did the Army in
starting the Medical Museum (of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology)
in 1862 through the efforts of Dr. William Alexander Hammond. The
Smithsonian did, however, provide a clerk to relieve the curator of much
of the routine work. The Section's early vigorous activities were the
result of the ingenuity of the first honorary curator, Dr. James Milton
Flint (1838-1919), an Assistant Surgeon of the U.S. Navy. From the
establishment of the Section, in 1881, to 1912, Dr. Flint was curator
during separate periods for a total of nearly 25 years. For three of his
tenures (1881-1884; 1887-1891; 1895-1900), he was detailed to the
Smithsonian Institution by the Surgeon General of the U.S. Navy. During
the interim periods, other naval doctors were detailed as curators.
Finally, in 1900, Dr. Flint retired from the Navy with the rank of Rear
Admiral and volunteered to continue his services to the National Museum.
The proposal was gladly accepted and he continued