A Repository for Bottled Monsters: More Lincoln news, this time mentioning the Army Medical Museum!

Thursday, February 12, 2009

More Lincoln news, this time mentioning the Army Medical Museum!

Another in recent news clips mentioning the Museum, though this one is a little different...

Last night was the official gala re-opening for Ford's Theatre after its two-year renovation. In this article on Bloomberg today you will find mention of the Army Medical Museum (today's NMHM). Here's the money paragraph:

In the aftermath of the assassination, the government bought the theater, which dates to 1861, from Ford for $100,000 and gave it to the War Department for use as storage space and an Army Medical Museum.

This news on the same day our exhibit received the last major element for installation - the remnants of a flag that hung in the state box at Ford's the night Lincoln was shot.

Enjoy.

2 comments:

Tim Clarke, Jr. said...: And National Geographic's Intelligent Traveler blog mentioned the exhibit, too

http://blogs.nationalgeographic.com/blogs/intelligenttravel/2009/02/celebrate-abes-200th-birthday.html

Enjoy some more.; February 12, 2009 at 9:55 PM
Mike Rhode said...: Ford's Theatre was also used as space for the Army Medical Library (now the National Library of Medicine) and the Surgeon General's Division of Surgical Records, which helped work on pension requests as well as the Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. There was no room for 'storage.' In fact, the Museum's photographic studio was built in a free-standing shed next door.; February 13, 2009 at 8:07 PM

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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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Thursday, February 12, 2009

More Lincoln news, this time mentioning the Army Medical Museum!

2 comments:

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