A Repository for Bottled Monsters: Google Alert - "National Museum of Health and Medicine"

Monday, July 2, 2012

Google Alert - "National Museum of Health and Medicine"

Artifact History: Nélaton probe « BoothieBarn
The collection of the National Museum of Health and Medicine (NMHM) contains several objects relating to Presidential health and care. In regards to the ...
boothiebarn.wordpress.com/.../artifact-history-nelaton-probe/

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Thanks for linking to my blog! As a archivist for the National Museum of Health and Medicine would you happen to know if there are any other artifacts of Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth in the collection?

Also, according to some of the comments on my blog, the museum doesn't have their Booth vertebrae and spinal cord on display right now. I think that's unfortunate as they are historically interesting items.

You're probably aware of this, but there is a 1874 book that has a whole chapter about the Army Medical Museum when it was housed at Ford's Theatre. It is called, "Ten Years in Wasington: Life and Scenes at the National Capital As a Woman Sees Them". There are a few nice engravings of some artifacts and the main hall at the time. I briefly mentioned it in a post I made about Ford's Theatre: http://boothiebarn.wordpress.com/2012/06/09/the-collapse-of-fords-theatre/; July 3, 2012 at 11:05 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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Monday, July 2, 2012

Google Alert - "National Museum of Health and Medicine"

1 comment:

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