Revealing the Smithsonian's 'racial brain collection'

Aug. 14 2023

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/interactive/2023/smithsonian-brains-collection-racial-history-repatriation

'Macabre curiosities': top US medical museum confronts skeletons of its past

Mütter Museum in Philadelphia at centre of ethics dispute over provenance of its collection of skulls, fetuses and body parts

Edward Helmore in New York

Sun 13 Aug 2023 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/aug/13/medical-mutter-museum-philadelphia-specimen-ethics

A Museum of 'Electrifying Frankness' Weighs Dialing It Down

The Mütter Museum, a beloved 19th-century collection of medical curiosities and human remains in Philadelphia, wants to adopt a more "respectful" approach. Some fans won't have it.

By Franz Lidz

Aug. 13, 2023

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/13/science/mutter-medical-museum.html

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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

Pages

Monday, August 14, 2023

Anatomical collections under attack

Revealing the Smithsonian's 'racial brain collection'

'Macabre curiosities': top US medical museum confronts skeletons of its past

A Museum of 'Electrifying Frankness' Weighs Dialing It Down

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