A Repository for Bottled Monsters: Tried and True Always Works

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Tried and True Always Works

Since I've been away from the blog for a while, I thought I would work back into the swing of things with a plethora of links, a panoply of bloggy goodness for you to behold. Enjoy.

Two offerings from our awesome friend Joanna at Morbid Anatomy: A few photos from her visit to the Musée Dupuytren in Paris (France, not Texas) with links of her own to follow; and vintage photos of med students with their cadavers. Both posts - worth it.

Street Anatomy points us toward the Skull-A-Day project. I love it when blog titles exactly capture what their posts feature.

And from pathtalk, a blog about pathology, is a link to a video that is beautiful and cool, but beyond me technically. The blog post - Animated DNA - and this bit of description 'incredibly cool animation of the central dogma of molecular biology' - offer some more clues. I watched it, I liked it, and think you might, too.

And how about these very pretty pictures of surgical instruments, demonstrating that artistry can be found in anything and anywhere. Check out the post from something called SurgeXperiences. Who knew there was a blog carnival about surgical stuff? (And could that be less technical? "Surgical stuff"?)

2 comments:

Øystein said...: Thanks for liking my pics of surgical instruments.

Nice blog you got here!; May 15, 2008 at 4:50 PM
Anonymous said...: Med Students and their cadavers? You should see the cut-ups at the Medical College of Virginia on flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/vcutmlsca/2434112042/; May 16, 2008 at 7:12 AM

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Who are we?

Mike Rhode was the chief archivist of the Museum from 1989-2011, and is the founder of this blog. I maintain an interest in the course of the museum, and will be posting relevant information.

The Army Medical Museum was founded in 1862 during the American Civil War. After World War II, a parent-child relationship was inverted and the Museum became part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Since then, the Museum has moved around Washington, stopping for years in Ford's Theatre, and on the National Mall where the building it shared with the National Library of Medicine once stood, until it was demolished in 1968 for the Hirshhorn Museum. For 35 years it was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and now is in Silver Spring, MD.

So what about that blog name?

It's historical. I found it in a quote from one of the former curators. World War II confirmed the Army Medical Museum's primary role in pathology consultation. James Ash, the curator during the war and a pathologist, noted, "Shortly after the last war, more concerted efforts were instituted to concentrate in the Army Medical Museum the significant pathologic material occurring in Army installations." He closed with the complaint, "We still suffer under the connotation museum, an institution still thought of by many as a repository for bottled monsters and medical curiosities. To be sure, we have such specimens. As is required by law, we maintain an exhibit open to the public, but in war time, at least, the museum per se is the least of our functions, and we like to be thought of as the Army Institute of Pathology, a designation recently authorized by the Surgeon General."

After the war, it evolved into the tri-service Armed Forces Institute of Pathology.

A Repository for Bottled Monsters

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Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Tried and True Always Works

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