A Repository for Bottled Monsters: laboratory medicine

Friday, November 19, 2010

Letter of the Day: November 19

Curatorial Records: Numbered Correspondence 317

November 19, 1894

Dr. Judson Daland

319 S. 18^th St.

Philadelphia, Pa.

My Dear Doctor:

Can you give me any information concerning a centrifugal machine which is considered superior to the Litten centrifugal? Dr. Gray has just informed me that you are using a superior machine for urinary and blood analysis, and hence I write to ask you that you will be kind enough to enlighten me on this subject, especially as Surgeon General Sternberg is considering the matter of supplying certain of the larger military posts with the latest and most improved centrifugal apparatus.

Very sincerely yours,

Walter Reed

Major and Surgeon, U.S. Army,

Curator Army Medical Museum.

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Letter of the Day: October 6

Curatorial Records: Numbered Correspondence 1736

Fort Crook Neb.

Oct 6^th 1896

Major Walter Reed U.S.A.

Washington D.C.

Dear Doctor,

As I am anxious to get the laboratory in the new hospital here in shape for a course in bacteriology this winter, I wish to ask if it would inconvenience you too much to send me cultures of the following bacilli, viz; B. Diphtheria, Typhoid Fever, Coli communis, Tuberculosis, Cholera, Anthrax, Prodigiosus, Glanders, and Finkler-Prior Vibrio.

All of my cultures became extinct in the move from Fort Omaha to this post as no one looked after them when I left to organize this hospital.

Very Sincerely

WB Banister

Capt. + Asst. Surgeon U.S.A.

The Surgeon

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

Friday, November 19, 2010

Letter of the Day: November 19

Wednesday, October 6, 2010

Letter of the Day: October 6

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