A Repository for Bottled Monsters: alternative medicine

Thursday, December 11, 2008

Acupuncture again

I wrote a while back about my husband getting a couple of acupuncture treatments for pain. One worked really well and the next not so well. He had a serious problem in his neck that acupuncture wasn't going to cure, but the fact he got some pain relief for a while, until he had surgery, is terrific. He also quit smoking more than 25 years ago as a result of a single acupuncture treatment. I underwent acupuncture myself recently when I had a bout of pretty crippling back pain. In conjunction with some therapeutic massage, it worked.

Today the Washington Post ran an article saying 38% of adults use alternative medicine. It goes on to quote someone from the Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, who says, "Acupuncture is a placebo. Homeopathy is one step above fraud...The fact that they are so widely used is evidence for how gullible large segments of our society are." Huh. Hmmm. My choices for pain relief were drugs and/or a cortisone shot. Which might or might not work. I took a chance on the acupuncture, sure, but it wasn't drugs pouring into me.

If you read the article, make sure you read the comments as well. There are a lot of believers out there and, as I say, thousands of years of Chinese medicine can't be wrong.

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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Thursday, December 11, 2008

Acupuncture again

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