A Repository for Bottled Monsters: Slate finds some posters from the Medical Museum

Saturday, May 25, 2013

Slate finds some posters from the Medical Museum

As far as I can tell, these were never put into production

Four WWII Posters That Taught Soldiers How To Identify Chemical ...
Slate Magazine
The advent of chemical warfare during WWI was traumatic, and the stories from the front ... Thanks to Eric Boyle of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.

With all due respect to my friend, Eric, back when I was the archivist of the Museum, I put these and other pictures of chemical warfare up on Flickr in 2006 at http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=99129398@N00&q=mustard

Since I left in the fall of 2011, they haven't added any images to the almost 4,000 I loaded here - http://www.flickr.com/photos/medicalmuseum/

Similar World War II posters can be seen at the National Library of Medicine's Images in the History of Medicine website.

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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, May 25, 2013

Slate finds some posters from the Medical Museum

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