A Repository for Bottled Monsters: engraving

Monday, February 1, 2010

Letter of the day: February 1

These prints were needed for the second edition of the Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion.

Surgeon General’s Office
Washington City, DC
February 1, 1868

Baron von Egloffstein,
Superintendent Heliographic Engraving Company
135 West 25th Street
New York City

Baron,

The two impressions of the plate representing the surgeons railway car of the hospital train of the Department of the Cumberland were duly received and submitted to the Surgeon General. I have also to acknowledge your communication of the 30th ult., announcing the transmission of these proofs, and asking for my criticism thereon.

I regard the work as a very satisfactory copy of the drawing. Much of the engraving appears to me to be done by hand, but it is immaterial how it is done provided so good work can be furnished at the same price as lithographic work.

For an edition of 5020 prints of a similar plate, done by lithography, this office has heretofore paid one hundred dollars, the paper being furnished by this office.

I am instructed by the Surgeon General to request you to send a proof on the thin paper. I herewith transmit, and also a statement of the price at which you can furnish 5020 prints, the paper being furnished.
I am, Baron,
Very respectfully,
Your obt. Servant,
By order of the Surgeon General,
[George A. Otis]
Ass’t. Surgeon, U.S. Army

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, February 1, 2010

Letter of the day: February 1

Get new posts by email:

FeedBurner FeedCount

Google analytics