A Repository for Bottled Monsters: fossil

Monday, February 15, 2010

Letter of the day: February 15

Smithsonian Institution
Washington
February 15 '70 (1870)

Dr. George A. Otis
Army Medical Museum,

Dear Sir,

I have the honor on behalf of this establishment to acknowledge the receipt of the two teeth mention in yours of February 5th and which have been transferred by the Medical Department of the U.S. Army to the Smithsonian Institution in accordance with the terms of an agreement, entered into, some time since, by these two establishments relative to an exchange of certain kinds of specimens.

Of the two teeth which are of those of Fossil horse, - the larger will bear the number 9826, the smaller 9827.

Very truly,
Your obdt servant,

Joseph Henry

Scty, Smith. Inst.
by D.L. [illegible]

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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Monday, February 15, 2010

Letter of the day: February 15

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