A Repository for Bottled Monsters: Anatomy Board

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Code of Public Local Laws, City of Baltimore, 1882

Article 4, Section 154 Laws of Maryland 1882, Chapter 166 Page 168

Any public officer of Baltimore City or Baltimore County having charge of or control over the bodies of deceased persons required to be buried at the public expense, or at the expense of any institution supported by said city or county, shall notify the chairman of the Anatomy Board, said board being composed of a demonstrator of Anatomy of each medical school in the State of Maryland, of the existence and possession of of such bodies, and shall give permission to said Anatomy Board through its chairman or to any physician or surgeon of the State of Maryland, upon his request made therefore, to take such bodies within forty-eight hours after death, to be given by him, used within the State for the advancement of Medical Science ...

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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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Code of Public Local Laws, City of Baltimore, 1882

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