A Repository for Bottled Monsters: July 2018

Monday, July 23, 2018

July 23: Medical Museum Science Cafe: Confronting "Shell Shock": The American Experience during World War I

You are cordially invited to attend the following lecture to be held at the
National Museum of Health and Medicine, 2500 Linden Lane, Silver Spring, MD
20910, on Tuesday, July 24, 2018, from 6-7 p.m.

Confronting "Shell Shock": The American Experience during World War I

During World War I, war-related psychological trauma was considered a new
manifestation of psychiatric breakdown. American military medicine was
challenged by establishing an entirely new medical specialty while treating
the stricken service member and assuring an anxious public back home. Explore
American psychiatrists' understanding of "shell shock" and what lessons they
did – or did not – learn from their experience. Presenter: Rachel Levandoski
is an historian in the Office of the Secretary of Defense Historical Office
and a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

FREE! Open to the public. No RSVP required.

Andrea Schierkolk
NMHM Public Programs
andrea.k.schierkolk.civ@mail.mil
301-319-3303

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 23, 2018

July 23: Medical Museum Science Cafe: Confronting "Shell Shock": The American Experience during World War I

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