A Repository for Bottled Monsters

An unofficial blog for the National Museum of Health and Medicine (nee the Army Medical Museum) in Silver Spring, MD. Visit for news about the museum, new projects, musing on the history of medicine and neat pictures. The Museum is currently closed to the public.

Who are we?

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. Currently, the Museum is closed.The last day that the public could visit any exhibits at the Museum in its present location was Sunday, April 3, 2011. Visit the official Web site for more information.

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, April 28, 2011

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Who are we?

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Guide to the Collections of the NMHM 2009 (pdf link)

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