A Repository for Bottled Monsters: General Hospital

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Letter of the Day: January 27 UPDATED

Six months after the establishment of the Museum, Civil War hospital doctors were saving material for it.

U.S.A. General Hospital No. 1,

Frederick, MD., Jany 27 1863

Doctor.

I will endeavor to pl[ea]s[e] also [illegible] to take Davis place & at any rate the specimens “shall be preserved”. Enclosed please find corrected bill.

Respectfully,

R.F. Weir

Asst Surgeon, USA

Dr. J.H. Brinton, USA

Surg. Gen’l Office

Washington, DC

Curiosity over this letter leads me to transcribe the earlier one:

U.S.A. General Hospital No. 1,

Frederick, MD., January 25 1863

Doctor.

Enclosed find your vouchers for expenditures for whiskey to preserve pathological specimens. Will you please have them settled as the money had been advanced by Dr. Davis who has recently left for England & me, heir to bones & [illegible – whiskey?] collections. When may we expect to see the new Catalogue[?]

Respectfully,

R.F. Weir

Asst Surgeon, USA

Dr. J.H. Brinton, USA

Surg. Gen’l Office

Washington, DC

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

Letter of the Day: January 27 UPDATED

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