A Repository for Bottled Monsters: trephining

Monday, August 9, 2010

Letter of the Day: August 8 ( 2 of 2)

Curatorial Records: Numbered Correspondence 88

Smithsonian Institution

Bureau of Ethnology

Washington, D.C., August 8, 1894.

Dear Sir:

Your inquiry of the 14^th ultimo concerning the triple-trephined skull found near Cuzco by Dr Maneul A. Muniz and designated by him for presentation to the Army Medical Museum has been received. This skull, together with other specimens in the Muniz collection, remains in the Bureau pending the receipt from Dr Muniz of photographs of drawings of certain other trephined crania in Cuzco; when it is the purpose to prepare a detailed description of the entire collection for publication in one of our annual reports. Until advices are received from Dr. Muniz, it is inexpedient to fix a date for the final disposition of the collection; but should you feel anxious to have this specimen at an early date, I will undertake to put it in your hands by the end of the present month with no condition than that you will afford facilities for further examination in the Museum should occasion arise.

Yours with respect,

WJ McGee

Ethnologist-in-charge.

Dr. J.S. Billings,

Deputy Surgeon General,

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

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Monday, August 9, 2010

Letter of the Day: August 8 ( 2 of 2)

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