A Repository for Bottled Monsters: Walter Reed Army Institute of Research photographic collection

Saturday, July 11, 2009

Walter Reed Army Institute of Research photographic collection

WRAIR~D1784Photo by HOCH, January 1977. BRAZIL~ANIMALS MARABA FISH.

In the 1960s and 70s (and possibly longer), doctors trained by the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research (WRAIR) were sent out to investigate tropical medicine while given cameras and film to document what they found. WRAIR had many photographs including film teams, all over the world including in Vietnam. The Vietnam still photos went to the National Archives when WRAIR moved into its current building, and the Medical Museum got 1/2 of the other still pictures that were left. We're now scanning WRAIR's third (thanks to their providing funding) and our third to create a digital collection that can be used by WRAIR and our researchers.

WRAIR D1783. Photo by HOCH, January 1977. BRAZIL - HIGHWAYS MARABA T-AM GOSLOS BRIDGE CONSTRUCTION.

I put these samples of the first test batch of scans on Flickr. The captions are limited because they're being taken from a printout of an early computerized catalogue. As you can see, not all of the pictures deal directly with medicine.

WRAIR D1762. January 1977. BRAZIL~UPPER TORSO MARABA BLACK FLY BITES CPT HOCH.

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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, July 11, 2009

Walter Reed Army Institute of Research photographic collection

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