A Repository for Bottled Monsters: National Museum of American History

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Whatever Happened to Polio? exhibit photos

When the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History closed in 2006, one of the things that went with it was Katherine Ott's excellent exhibit "Whatever Happened to Polio?" I don't know if the exhibit is in the re-opened museum, but when I ran across my pictures I figured I'd share them here.

Would a vaccine work? panels

Will there always be polio? panels

What do these devices do? panel with crutches.

What is polio? panels

What could your dime do? (for the March of Dimes) panel

How did polio change us? panels

What happened in a polio epidemic? panel

Interactive station

Iron lung.

Model showing how iron lung reduced pressure to enable lungs to fill with air.

What do these devices do? panel with braces.

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

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Army Medical Museum mention in American History

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Whatever Happened to Polio? exhibit photos

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