A Repository for Bottled Monsters: AFIP medical examiners mentioned in Post and Times

Saturday, August 16, 2008

AFIP medical examiners mentioned in Post and Times

Human remains from a long lost plane crash have been found and identified by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology's medical examiners. The story is "9 Years Later, a Fatal Mystery Solved; Experts Trace Body Part From 1948 Plane Crash to Roanoke Seaman," By Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, August 16, 2008. A similar case is reported on in "Missing pilot to be brought home; Recovered remains to receive Arlington burial," by Jennifer Harper, Washington Times Thursday, August 14, 2008.

The AFIP isn't mentioned by name in either article which is typical. The Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory (AFDIL) is, but they are a component of the Office of the Armed Forces Medical Examiner, which in turn falls under the AFIP. And the medical examiners would have done the fingerprint work mentioned in the Post article, not the DNA technicians.

Remember, the museum has on display Resolved, an exhibit on forensic identification of military dead that's just opened.

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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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Saturday, August 16, 2008

AFIP medical examiners mentioned in Post and Times

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