A Repository for Bottled Monsters: The tragic death of President James Garfield

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The tragic death of President James Garfield

CBS News' Sunday Morning July 1 2012

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7413480n

In 1881 James A. Garfield became the second U.S. President to be assassinated. As Mo Rocca learns, however, his death could have been avoided.

[Book author Candace Millard did research in the Museum, and former Museum curator Jeff Reznick appears]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: Ultimately, it was the terrible medical care Garfield received that killed him. The doctors even sent in a bill for their services (which was only partially paid). Not that this saved the assassin from being executed.

http://drvitelli.typepad.com/providentia/2007/09/killing-preside.html; July 3, 2012 at 10:25 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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Tuesday, July 3, 2012

The tragic death of President James Garfield

The tragic death of President James Garfield

1 comment:

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