March of Dimes Archives

I picked up a piece of polio history the other day. This printing plate for a comic strip on a fundraising campaign.

I haven't printed it yet although we're trying, but flopping and inverting the picture lets you see it:


When we get it printed, a scan will be available from the Museum. In the meantime, it sparked a letter from the March of Dimes archivist which included this information on their archives. David's given his permission for me to repost the information.

March of Dimes Archives

The March of Dimes Archives is the official repository of non-current records of the March of Dimes. The mission of the Archives is to identify, acquire, preserve, and provide access to records documenting the history of the March of Dimes. The records consist of published and unpublished information in a variety of media created, received, and maintained by the March of Dimes and its predecessor (The National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis) in the conduct of business. Our collections include correspondence and other textual holdings, photography, film and videotape, electronic records, medical artifacts, posters, and memorabilia. The March of Dimes archivist oversees the proper organization and storage of its collections and provides both staff and the general public with information about its holdings.

Our archival collections document the history and achievements of one of the most successful voluntary health organizations in history. Highlights include the letters of Franklin Roosevelt and Basil O’Connor (first president of the National Foundation); the medical program to eradicate polio and the Salk vaccine field trial of 1954; fund-raising events such as the Mothers March, Waldorf-Astoria fashion shows, and WalkAmerica; the National Foundation Expanded Program (1958) that launched birth defects prevention as a mission objective; the career of Virginia Apgar, creator of the Apgar Score for evaluating newborns; perinatal health initiatives, including Toward Improving the Outcome of Pregnancy, a plan for the regional development of maternal and perinatal health services. Our archival resources are used by March of Dimes staff at the national office and chapters and by researchers from all walks of life who study, publish, and produce films and exhibits on epidemic disease, the history of medicine and public health, vaccines and vaccination, entertainment and political celebrities, volunteers and volunteerism, American popular culture, women’s history, disability studies, and much more.

March of Dimes archival collections include:

• Salk and Sabin Polio Vaccine Records
• Medical Program Records
• Fund Raising Records
• Film, Video, and Photography Collections
• March of Dimes Publications
• Chapter Organization and Activities Records
• Salk Institute for Biological Studies Records
• Basil O’Connor Papers
• Virginia Apgar Papers

Need assistance with historical questions? For information, please contact:

David W. Rose, Archivist
March of Dimes
1275 Mamaroneck Avenue
White Plains, NY 10605
914-997-4221
drose AT marchofdimes.com


You can also see the polio pictures we do have in the Museum, and we've got the film, Born in the White House, about the March of Dimes.

Telemedicine of the Third Kind

This article talks about another type of telemedicine - one in which patients load their symptoms and treatment into an online database to aid research, and possibly themselves.

"Practicing Patients," by THOMAS GOETZ, NY Times Magazine March 23, 2008.
PatientsLikeMe, an Internet start-up, creates information-rich communities for the chronically ill. Is it the next step forward in medical science — or just a MySpace for the afflicted?

Atomic veterans

We're asked fairly regularly for material relating to nuclear explosions, mostly photographs, of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or later tests. An article about Canadian veterans and their attempt to get benefits can be seen at "Troops exposed in nukes testing fight for aid," By Barry Brown, Washington Times March 23, 2008.

Another article related to forensic ID exhibit

Here's another article about another country and cultures take on identifying its dead soldiers - "Anonymous Korean War Dead Still Await Trip Home," By CHOE SANG-HUN, NY Times March 23, 2008.
Known as the “enemy cemetery” in South Korea, it contains the remains of communist fighters or infiltrators North Korea has not reclaimed.

I believe our exhibit on identifying US war dead is planned to open in early summer although I'm not involved in it.

See Inside Beta People

Medgadget linked to it, and since our Museum features actual anatomical specimens, I thought maybe our readers would be interested in this new site BodyMaps: A Human Atlas. The site sometimes took a moment to resolve on the screen after selecting a different system, but that doesn't put a dent though in its coolness factor. Enjoy.

When one site links to another, that's when the magic happens

So for the first draft of this post, as I described to Mike offline the other day, I had thought that I would lace some interesting information about the Museum's web site traffic with some witty commentary, even a few jokes. I get jokes. After torturing that draft for a while longer this afternoon, I'm just going to get to the point. So, if you were looking for some self-deprecating humor or hilarious observations about the state of the PR profession, too bad. Maybe another day.

I thought our eight or nine readers might enjoy this sampler of links gleaned from our Web site statistics:

Among the sites offering links to us with some significant traffic so far this month: a Wikipedia page on hairballs that links to our virtual exhibit; two different but related pages about the Lincoln assassination; a government site about pandemic flu planning; a 2005 Medgadget post about our Human Body Revealed exhibition; a tourist-focused site called Things to Do. To all those sites, and others, we appreciate the business.

If I find any other statistical goodies, I'll be sure to post those, too.

Museum News Hopefully Worth Noting

A few news items from museums near and far:

• Baghdad's National Museum, a treasure trove of artifacts from the stone age and Babylon to the Assyrians and Islamic art, will not reopen when renovation of two of its galleries is completed in a few months, an official said. (AP)
• Field Museum exhibit shows that mythical creatures didn't just spring from imagination (Chicago Tribune)

A little Googling led to some other related links: Here is the Wikipedia page on the National Museum, and here is what appears to be a nonprofit group interested in helping the Iraqis. And here is the link to the Field's new exhibit.

Enjoy.

Wounded vets rebuilding their lives

Walking around Walter Reed, even when not directly involved in patient care, one sees a lot of people who are working to get their bodies and their lives reconstructed. Here's an article about one of them - "Wounded Vet Again Tackles Basic Training; Swimmer Among Those Trying Out For Paralympics," By Amy Shipley, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, March 21, 2008; Page A01.

Vaccination, herd immunity, and selfishness

Two main papers ran articles on vaccination today. Let's take a look at them. Remember I'm speaking for myself here as our disclaimer notes.

"Vaccine Failure Is Setback in AIDS Fight: Test Subjects May Have Been Put at Extra Risk Of Contracting HIV" by David Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, March 21, 2008; Page A01 talks about the bitter conclusion.

"This is on the same level of catastrophe as the Challenger disaster" that destroyed a NASA space shuttle, said Robert Gallo, co-discoverer of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), which causes AIDS, and head of the Institute for Human Virology in Baltimore.

This seems to put off a prevention of AIDS for the foreseeable future, meaning that millions especially in Third World countries will continue to die:

"None of the products currently in the pipeline has any reasonable chance of being effective in field trials," Ronald C. Desrosiers, a molecular geneticist at Harvard University, declared last month at an AIDS conference in Boston. "We simply do not know at the present time how to design a vaccine that will be effective against HIV."

Meanwhile, theoretically well-educated people refuse to vaccinate their children in the US - read "Public Health Risk Seen as Parents Reject Vaccines," By JENNIFER STEINHAUER, New York Times March 21, 2008.

Let's pull out some quotes from this article:

SAN DIEGO — In a highly unusual outbreak of measles here last month, 12 children fell ill; nine of them had not been inoculated against the virus because their parents objected, and the other three were too young to receive vaccines.

Now, let's see what the Centers for Disease Control says about measles - "How serious is the disease? Measles itself is unpleasant, but the complications are dangerous. Six to 20 percent of the people who get the disease will get an ear infection, diarrhea, or even pneumonia. One out of 1000 people with measles will develop inflammation of the brain, and about one out of 1000 will die."

Hmmm. Let's see what a parent in the article has to say:

“I refuse to sacrifice my children for the greater good,” said Sybil Carlson, whose 6-year-old son goes to school with several of the children hit by the measles outbreak here. The boy is immunized against some diseases but not measles, Ms. Carlson said, while his 3-year-old brother has had just one shot, protecting him against meningitis. “When I began to read about vaccines and how they work,” she said, “I saw medical studies, not given to use by the mainstream media, connecting them with neurological disorders, asthma and immunology.”

Nice. So she's willing to risk her children to a 1 in 1000 risk of death because of something she read that the mainstream media (and the FDA and CDC) refuse to believe. So far, nobody has been able to prove that vaccination increases the risk of autism, which is what most people who fear vaccination seem to be most concerned about.

“The very success of immunizations has turned out to be an Achilles’ heel,” said Dr. Mark Sawyer, a pediatrician and infectious disease specialist at Rady Children’s Hospital in San Diego. “Most of these parents have never seen measles, and don’t realize it could be a bad disease so they turn their concerns to unfounded risks. They do not perceive risk of the disease but perceive risk of the vaccine.”

So what happens to herd immunity, or the phenomena in which even if an individual's vaccination doesn't take, one's protected by the fact that a virus can't infect anyone around him?

There is substantial evidence that communities with pools of unvaccinated clusters risk infecting a broad community that includes people who have been inoculated. For instance, in a 2006 mumps outbreak in Iowa that infected 219 people, the majority of those sickened had been vaccinated. In a 2005 measles outbreak in Indiana, there were 34 cases, including six people who had been vaccinated. Here in California, six pertussis outbreaks infected 24 people in 2007; only 2 of 24 were documented as having been appropriately immunized. A surveillance program in the mid ’90s in Canada of infants and preschoolers found that cases of Hib fell to between 8 and 10 cases a year from 550 a year after a vaccine program was begun, and roughly half of those cases were among children whose vaccine failed.

The current John Adams miniseries on HBO shows the lengths that Abigail Adams was willing to go to inoculate her children. Here's some pictures of smallpox, which was the first disease prevented by vaccination to show why she, and George Washington who vaccinated the Continental Army, went to such lengths.



Woman with smallpox with vaccinated infant (the opposite of the situation in the NY Times article in which the parent is protected, but the child is not).

You can live in a former Army base

Years and years ago, the Army expanded Walter Reed Army Medical Center by purchasing a former girls school known as the National Park Seminary. Parts of the school buildings were whimsical recreations of European architecture. You can buy a couple of books about the site, or you can just buy a home there. I'm not thrilled that these are becoming condos, but the Army didn't maintain them. In the late 1980s, I mounted a rescue operation of a large painting of psychiatric patients during World War 2. The painting hung on the ground floor of that building you see in their ad, but water leaking from three stories up had damaged it. The Borden Institute paid to have it restored to use in their Textbook of Military Medicine on psychiatry, and it hangs in the Museum now.

Medical museum links on Morbid Anatomy

Morbid Anatomy's got a list of links to medical museum's running down the left side of the blog. That should be useful feature. The new thing they've added is a list of museums on flickr, running down the right side.

A Civil War plastic surgery article I helped on

I just ran across this - "The first civil war photographs of soldiers with facial wounds," Journal of Aesthetic Plastic Surgery, Springer New York, ISSN 0364-216X (Print) 1432-5241 (Online), Volume 19, Number 3 / May, 1995. This was largely written by my late friend Dr. Blair Rogers, although I can still pick out the parts I wrote - mostly the photo history. They've even put up the full text as a pdf that can be downloaded. Blair really pushed me into writing about the Civil War photographs, and I appreciate his efforts (perhaps more now than I did in the early 1990s.)

Confederate Manual of Military Surgery online

This 1863 manual wasn't scanned by us, but by Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia. They've got three books in total available for download:

# A manual of military surgery, [Confederate States Army], 1863

# A manual of military surgery, by S.D. Gross, MD, 1861

# On the anatomy of the breast, by Sir Astley Paston Cooper, 1840

William Hunter and the Art and Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting

William Hunter and the Art and Science of Eighteenth-Century Collecting Conference
3-5 September 2008

A conference organised by the Hunterian and the University of Glasgow History of Art Department which will explore Dr William Hunter's role and place as a collector in eighteenth-century Europe.

Wednesday 3 September - Hunterian Art Gallery 4.00. Registration/coffee/tea; 4.30- 5.30 Keynote speaker: t.b.c.
5.45-7.00 Reception, Hunterian Art Gallery. Curators Peter Black and Anne Dulau give tours of exhibitions.

Thursday 4 September- Hunterian Museum. Session 1: European private collections.
Speakers include: Mikael Ahlund (Nationalmuseum, Stockholm); Heiner Krellig (Berliner Schlosser); Guillaume Faroult (Louvre); Kim Sloan (Francis Finlay Curator of the Enlightenment Gallery, British Museum)

Session 2: Medical 'men' as collectors and medical collections.
Stuart McDonald (IBLS - Neuroscience & Biomedical Systems, University of Glasgow); Peter Black (Curator, Hunterian Art Gallery); Starr Douglas (Leverhulme Scholar, University of Glasgow); Simon Chaplin (Director of the Museum and Special Collections at the Royal College of Surgeons)

Friday 5 September - Hunterian Museum. Session 3: 18th Century museums and collections.
Architecture, Interiors and Display; Helen McCormack (David Carritt Scholar, University of Glasgow); Clare Haynes (School of World Art Studies and Museology, University of East Anglia); Geoff Hancock (Curator of Entomology, Hunterian Museum); Tom Tolley (History of Art Department, University of Edinburgh).

Session 4: 'A centre of instruction and enlightenment'.
Hunter and his collections: David Weston (Keeper, Glasgow University Library Special Collections) Hunter's library 2.30 Donal Bateson (Curator of Coins & Medals, Hunterian Museum); Nick Pearce (History of Art Department, University of Glasgow); John Faithfull (Curator of Mineralogy, Hunterian Museum)

For further information contact Geoff Hancock
Telephone: 0141 330 2194
Email:G.Hancock@museum.gla.ac.uk
www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk

Pharmacology as a technology

Coincidentally the NY Times reported on the deaths of two men who developed drugs for treating mental states.

The articles are:"Frank Ayd, 87, Who Advanced Thorazine Use, Is Dead,", by DOUGLAS MARTIN, March 21, 2008.
Dr. Ayd studied his patients’ responses to early antipsychotic and antidepressant drugs, helping to give birth to the field of psychopharmacology.

and: "Frank Berger, 94, Miltown Creator, Dies," By BENEDICT CAREY, March 21, 2008.
Dr. Berger helped start the modern era of drug development with his invention of Miltown, the first mass-market psychiatric drug and a forerunner of Valium and Prozac.

These two obituaries show what a short time has passed since mind and mood altering drugs, besides alcohol, were developed and have become common, helping millions of people, but leading to many debates over the proper use of them. For thousands of years, medicine used some basic drugs and these didn't change much. In the 19th and 20th century, that was no longer true, and a new branch of the history of medicine opened up.

Anatomical brushes for Photoshop

I'm a struggling Photoshop Elements 6 learner. I'm always on the prowl for ways to level the learning curve so I subscribed to several Photoshop blogs. One that popped up today offers brushes (which I'm not really sure what they are but think they're something like virtual rubber stamps) of "... a mix of drawings (apparently drawn by Leonardo da Vinci...) and photos of 18th century wax anatomy sculptures (from Florence's Museo La Specola). Perhaps not for the very faint hearted, but interesting nonetheless."

I saw them mentioned on The Photoshop Blog. The brushes are being offered by a designer in France, who asks only that you link back to her when you use her brushes. In addition to these she also has a couple sets of skulls and bones, and a lot of non-anatomical sets too.

If only I could figure out how to show those brushes in this post.

Woolly Skeletons

Awesome blog Street Anatomy, which I will admit, I've taken a liking to in recent days, links to some cool anatomical constructs made of felted wool! (Worth the exclamation point? Don't know. Left it in anyway.)

Some Blog Coverage Today

A blog post about prosthetics, with just a twinge of commentary thrown in, mentions the Museum with several choice photographs, apparently taken with a keen eye by the blog's author. Thanks, DC Confidential, for the nice write-up and link. And we'll look out for those future posts the author mentions.

This week's flickr pictures

Kathleen and I have been putting up a few pics this week as the fancy has struck us. Check these out:

March 17th:


Retractors made from scrap metal. 44th Field Hospital, 8th Detachment. World War 2. 09/23/1945.

March 18:


"Gunshot fracture of left superior maxilla." Private Henry Morgan, Co. D, 77th New York Volunteers, wounded at Petersburgh, VA on April 2, 1865. Treated at Harewood Hospital, Washington DC, by Dr. Reed B. Bontecou who also had the photograph made.


"Shell Wound of the face, with great destruction of the soft parts." Private Joseph Harvey, Co. C, 149th New York Volunteers. Wounded at Chancellorsville, Virginia on May 3 1863.


"Case of Corporal Bemis, Thrice Severely Wounded in Three Battles." Cpl. Edson D. Bemis, Co. K, 12th Massachussetts, wounded at Battles of Hatcher's Run, the Wilderness and Antietam.


Mobile Optical Unit. 4th Medical Depot, Italy. 06/07/1944.

March 19:


Detachment of Hospital Corps taking patients over obstacles on the way to the hospital. Illustrating the equipment and operation of the brigade field hospital. Exhibit of the Army Medical Department, Pan-American Exposition, Buffalo, New York, 1901.


"Saboteuse" - World War II venereal disease prevention poster by editorial cartoonist C.D. Batchelor for the American Social Hygiene Association.


Panama. Dr. H.C. Clark. Gorgas Hospital. Ancon, Canal Zone. Club canoe forcing way through hyacinth beds, Pacora.

March 20:


Comparative anatomy, Auzoux model of horse, life size. Specimen no. 2635. [papier mache, on display in Army Medical Museum] (We no longer have the model, although one can be seen in the Science Museum in London. This one's for Morbid Anatomy).


An enlisted technician rides along with patient to ground level to insure safety. from a series: "Air Evacuation from China to India," Patients flown over the 'hump' from China to India to be admitted to the 142nd General Hospital for further disposition.

More information about each picture can be seen on our flickr site. Visit our 3rd flickr page regularly, or sign up to be a contact so you know when new pictures go up.

David Challinor's obituary

I never met, nor to be honest, had heard of Dr. David Challinor of the Smithsonian before reading his obituary yesterday. These sentences caught my eye:

He also wrote more than 200 " Letters from the Desk of David Challinor" that are in the Smithsonian's digital repository and available online. They address issues such as flu pandemics, tree ecology, bird song accents and dialects, the nature of trust, hydrothermal vents and "good smells and bad."

I read the bird flu article today - it's a good summation. As you can see by downloading some of those World War 1 medical histories that have been linked to here previously, the Army Medical Museum was quite concerned with investigating the 'Spanish flu' in 1918, and specimens preserved then were used by AFIP scientists to genotype that flu in the 1990s, demonstrating one value of a museum collection. You can see the Museum's flu pictures on the main website.

And speaking of telemedicine...

...today's Washington Times had a piece on teleradiology - "Outsourcing images," by Shelley Widhalm (March 20, 2008) that talks about some of the issues, ethical and practical, involved in the practice. It's a bit of a puff piece for an area business, but gets across the points one should think about.

My earlier post on telemedicine is here.

Whatever happened to... J. Carey Crane?

Another alum report - Carey was our exhibits head, but left us to go west. Carey had been the Curator of Exhibits at the Alamagordo Space Museum, but reports the "Latest twist in my checkered career: Senior Exhibits Curator for the City of Las Cruces' Museum system. Las Cruces is creating a complex including art, history, natural history museums. Several historic buildings including a railroad depot are close by."

What is...Street Anatomy, Alex?

For $200: A blog that that features depictions of human anatomy in various outdoor settings.

(I wonder if I would have come across something like this in any of my previous jobs...no, probably not. Cool, eh?)

Tip: Medgadget

Identifying war dead

The anatomical collections staff of the Museum is working on an exhibit about identifying American military war dead. The New York Times ran an interesting piece about the dead of other nationalities who were buried in Thailand in mass graves when they died during World War II building the 'Death Railway' and 'the bridge over the River Kwai.'

“It is almost forgotten history,” said Sasidaran Sellappah, a retired plantation manager in Malaysia whose father was among 120 Tamil workers from a rubber estate forced to work on the railway. Only 47 survived.

Tuskegee syphilis study - medical history that still has repercussions

This article "Testing after Tuskegee," by Amanda Thomas, Washington Times March 19, 2008, looks at the question of if the Tuskegee syphilis studies, unethical longitudinal studies that withheld treatment for syphilitic patients when an effective one existed, keeps black participation lower in clinical trials today.

Medical book exhibit in Australia

Medical books, with their interesting illustrations, make an easy exhibit subject. Here's an article about one at the University of Melbourne's Medical History Museum. Who knew they had a medical museum? We've got to get better organized.

Indiana Medical History Museum

Ange, a volunteer from the Indiana Medical History Museum, has written in to tell us that she's been posting pictures of their collection on flickr as well. I've been there - it's on the outskirts of Indianapolis - and it's a very cool place. In fact, I've referred film crews there because they still have a Victorian-type operating theatre.

Doctor's Day at the National Museum of Health and Medicine on March

Doctor's Day at the National Museum of Health and Medicine on March 30th!

In honor of Doctor's Day on Sunday, March 30, doctors and their families are invited to visit the National Museum of Health and Medicine for a special docent-led tour of our current exhibitions. A discovery cart activity showcasing plastinated human organs will also be featured. Doctor's Day observances date back to March 30, 1933, and mark the anniversary of the first use of general anesthesia in surgery.

Tours begin at 1:00 p.m. Admission and parking are free! Reservations are strongly recommended; phone (202) 782-2456 or email nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil in advance. Learn more about the Museum online at http://nmhm.washingtondc.museum. See you at the Museum!

What: Doctor's Day at the Museum!
Where: National Museum of Health and Medicine/AFIP, Building 54, Walter
Reed Army Medical Center
Date: Sunday, March 30, 2008
Time: 1:00 p.m.

Telemedicine at its most basic

Telemedicine is one of those buzzwords these days, and if you've checked into a hospital for x-rays after say 7 pm, you may very well have participated in it. Radiology is all digital these days - no film anymore - and India with its quotient of well-trained doctors is wide awake at midnight on the US East coast.

But here's another, more personal example from the Washington Times. In The doctor's online 'office' from March 18, 2008 by Karen Goldberg Goff, you can read about Dr. Howard Stark's embrace of the Internet to make life and medicine easier for everyone involved. Up to and including, "I once had a patient who worked for the WorldBank who called me from the airport in Kazakhstan," he says. "He had an abdominal hernia and was
in tremendous pain. I talked him through pushing in his own hernia on the floor of the airport."

Now that's telemedicine.

Women's History Month lecture at the National Museum of Health and Medicine!

Women's History Month at the National Museum of Health and Medicine!

Plan now to enjoy a special lecture on women and the American Red Cross. Thomas B. Goehner, Manager, Historical Outreach American Red Cross National Headquarters, will discuss "American Red Cross Women: Embracing Opportunity," on March 26, 2008 at 11:00 a.m. in Russell Auditorium at the NMHM.

From the time of Clara Barton to the present, the American Red Cross has offered women opportunities for leadership, travel, independence, volunteerism and professional growth. Wherever the Red Cross is serving--either on the battlefront or the home front--women continue to embrace and achieve success with each new challenge. This talk will celebrate the achievements and unique opportunities given to women through the Red Cross, shedding light on the contributions of rank-and-file Red Cross women as well as the pioneers from the past, like Clara Barton and nursing legend Jane Delano.

Admission is free!

What: Women's History Month Lecture: "American Red Cross Women:
Embracing Opportunity"
Where: Russell Auditorium, National Museum of Health and Medicine/AFIP,
Building 54, Walter Reed Army Medical Center
Date: Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Time: 11:00 a.m.

For more information, call (202) 782-2456 or email nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil. Learn more about the Museum online at http://nmhm.washingtondc.museum.

Internet Archive (archive.org)

As you know, we've been uploading books that we've digitized to the Internet Archive's collection of about 350,000 books. Today Wired.com had an article about the Archive, describing the page-by-tedious-page scanning that's being done there. It's nice to know that even the Big Boys are doing it a page at a time.

Another Veterinary Corps researcher

A short while ago I wrote about Mike Lemish, who's interested in Military Working Dogs used in Vietnam, and said there was another researcher who's found some treasures in our Veterinary Corps collection. Greg Krenzelok's interest lies with the Corps during World War 1, when his grandfather, Sergeant Leonard Patrick Murphy served, and he has a web page where he relates what he's found and solicits information that others are willing to pass along. His particular interest lies with the horses used during the war, and is looking for pictures such as this one showing a horse being prepared for surgery.

Reeve 14727

19th Century French medical equipment

In response to a request from someone interested in our General Medical Products Information (GMPI) collection, we recently scanned two "catalogs" put out by M.G. Trouvé in 1869 and 1872. The person who requested them kindly provided a loose translation that suits both of them: "New apparatus for the use of doctors and surgeons, designed and constructed. Extract from the journal les Mondes, 15 July 1869.... All the apparati were presented at the Academy of Medicine by Mr. Béclard, [at the] session of 10 June 1869 [and May 1872]."

It turns out that these aren't really catalogs, but reprints from the journal mentioned above, les Mondes, that tout Trouvé's products in the guise of a scholarly article. There are some nice illustrations that I haven't yet figured out how to isolate from the PDF to post here.

More medical museum excerpts from the AFIP's annual reports

The rest of the Medical Museum Excerpts from the AFIP Annual Reports:

1996

1998

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2006

After 2006, the report went digital.

These are all laid out by the unsung Fran Card. One of them in the oughts got garbled in the printing process, but I don't recall which it is.

Malaysia's opening a medical museum and...

See the story on the new Malaysian museum here.

Meanwhile the University of Copenhagen's Medical Museion scored a cool mechanical heart device, lucky devils.

Another alumnus story

Does my heart proud... Scott was an assistant archivist who was one of our more... agressive... flickr posters. And now he'd putting up favorite pictures at his new job.

The Emilio Segrè Visual Archives has put up an online gallery of some of our favorite images from the collection and we invite everyone to take a look (more info below).

Thanks,
Scott Prouty
photos@aip.org

****
Every picture tells a story. We've picked 63 of our favorites.

Visit our new Favorite Photos gallery featuring the most popular and striking selections from our collection of more than 30,000 images of physicists and astronomers.

The Emilio Segrè Visual Archives (http://photos.aip.org/?em=esva0308) site includes historical photographs, slides, lithographs, engravings, and other visual materials of many of the best known names in physics and astronomy, including Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Marie Curie, Isaac Newton, Richard Feynman and Hans Bethe, along with other lesser known figures. All are available as digital downloads or high-quality print reproductions.

We hope that you'll browse through the site and enjoy the pictures.

About the Emilio Segrè Visual Archives (ESVA) The ESVA is a leading resource of digital and print images of scientists and their work. It is part of the Niels Bohr Library & Archives at the American Institute of Physics (http://www.aip.org/?em=esva0308) in College Park, Maryland.

For more information
Call us at (301) 209-3184 or visit online at http://photos.aip.org/?em=esva0308

Military Working Dogs again

Today I got an email from Mike Lemish about the post I made yesterday. The Military Working Dog website is not his; he just forwarded an email he received from Debbie Kandoll, whose website it IS. Mike also told me, "Also the MWDs may not be Iraq war veteran's. With over four thousand dogs worldwide it may be a bomb/drug detector dog from anywhere in the world but most likely CONUS [continental United States]." Check it out, folks.

Here's another picture from our collection. This is a shot of elevated kennels in Vietnam.

Interesting World War 1 article

Our colleagues at the the Office of the Surgeon General's Historian's office have put an article about volunteer Americans' experiences in the British Army on their website. Click here to download Yanks in King's Forces. For those who want more information, Mitch Yockelson, who co-curated The Cost of a Splendid Little War exhibit with me, has a new book on the topic coming out, Borrowed Soldiers: Americans Under British Command, 1918, and will be speaking at the Museum at some point later this year.

Medical museum excerpts from AFIP annual reports

Alright, this isn't exciting, but where else are you going to find them? These are links to scans of the Medical Museum section of the AFIP Annual reports. There's some interesting bits off and on.

Medical Museum Excerpts from the AFIP Annual Reports of 1947-1991.

Medical Museum Excerpts from the AFIP Annual Reports of 1992.

Medical Museum Excerpts from the AFIP Annual Reports of 1993.

Medical Museum Excerpts from the AFIP Annual Reports of 1994.

Medical Museum Excerpts from the AFIP Annual Reports of 1995.

Medical Museum Excerpts from the AFIP Annual Reports of 1997.

World War 1 volume on Gas Warfare finally posted

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 14: Medical Aspects of Gas Warfare(1926) would discuss the effects of your poison gases like mustard gas. This completes the World War 1 books available for downloading.

Military Working Dogs

We've had a couple of researchers lately who've looked into our large Veterinary Corps collection. One of them is Mike Lemish. Mike's research has to do with Military Working Dogs from the Vietnam war. Recently he sent me an email announcing a website that promotes adoption of working dogs that have been retired from the Iraq war but are great dogs that still have a lot to give. However, too many of them are euthanized because they don't get adopted and have nowhere to go. As of 2000, civilians have been allowed to adopt these animals (H.R. 5314 on 6 Nov 2000) and Mike's website gives information about how to do so.

Another collection digitized

The museum photographer just photographed a scrapbook of photos for us because the book was too fragile to lay flat on the scanner. The scrapbook was given to Miss Frances Pleasants by students of hers, from when she taught wounded soldiers during the Civil War in Germantown, Pennsylvania. This photo caught my eye, as well as the caption that was handwritten underneath it:


The caption read "Photograph of three children found in the hands of a dead soldier on the battlefield." It took me a couple of reads to see it meant the photo was found in the dead soldier's hands, not the children. Obvious now, but I sure wondered at the time.

New book donation

We're not the Pathology Institute's library and most of what would have been the Museum library left with the National Library of Medicine when it split off from the old Army Medical Museum and Library for good in the 1960s (remind me to post about the split of the photographs and AMML records), but people give us books.

Recently we got 26 books from Dr. Inghram Miller, Newton, Kansas (NMHM Acquisition Number 2007.0038) accompanying a wicker wheelchair. There was also a couple of neat pieces of medical trade literature in the books.

Johnson, Alexander Bryan. Surgical Diagnosis, volumes I, II, and III, 1910

Kelly, Howard A. Operative Gynecology, Volumes I and II, 1898 and 1899

Deaver, John B. Surgical Anatomy, Volumes I, II, and III, 1904 and 1908

Bryant, Joseph and Albert Buck. American Practice of Surgery, Volumes VII and VIII, 1910 -11

International Clinics Vol II, 2nd and 3rd series, 1892 and 1893

Ashton, Willaim Easterly. A Testbook on the Practice of Gynecology. 1906

Flint, Austin. A Treatise on the Principles and Practice of Medicine. 1881

Bartholow, Roberts. A Practical Treatise on Materia, Medica, and Theraputics. 1889

Wood, George B and Franklin Bache. Dispensatory of the United States, 18th ed. By Wood, Remington and Stadtler. 1899

Osler, William. Principles and Practice of Medicine. 1895

Gould, George M. An Illustrated Dictionary of Medicine, Biology and Allied Sciences, 5th ed. 1903

Holt, L. Emmett. Diseases of Infancy and Childhood. 1897

Da Costa, J. M. Medical Diagnosis, 8th ed. 1895

Gray, Henry. Anatomy Descriptive and Surgical. 8th and enlarged ed. 1881 (1878)

Babcock, W. Wayne. A Textbook of Surgery. 1929

Kaltschmidt, J. H. School Dictionary of the Latin Language, Part 1: Latin-English. 1876

Tillmans, Herman. A Textbook of Surgery, Vol II: Regional Surgery. trans from German. 1899

Mathews, Joseph M. A Treatise on Diseases of the Rectum, Anus and Sigmoid Flexure. 1893

Taylor, Alfred Swain. A Manual on Medical Jurisprudence. 11th American ed by Clark Bell. 1892

Museum Linked on Yahoo! Directory Blog Post

Some PR people call it 'current awareness' or 'reputation management' (easier to overbill for the service when the exaggerated amounts are associated with a fancy term, I guess) but I tend to call it what it is - reading or watching the news. In this case, news about the Museum, either in 'traditional' media or elsewhere in the blogosphere.

Thanks to Google, Yahoo!, Topix and Bloglines, and others, it's easy enough to monitor for mention of the Museum out there on the Internet, and it was one of those engines that led me to this blog post on Yahoo! today.

I'm not sure what to make of the Yahoo! blog post; I don't see an 'about' link to tell readers why the stream of posts is being written or published. That notwithstanding, it's great to see a link to the Museum, and the use of one of the Otis Historical Archives' very cool Flickr posts; in this case, a photo from the collections related to the 1918 influenza pandemic.

There is much more about influenza available on the Museum's Web site.

World War 2 booklet

We were asked for a copy of this recently - it's by a pharmaceutical company, but they didn't put too much advertising on it.

Decorations and Medals of the United States of America (1943),John Wyeth
and Brother; reading copy or broadsheet copy.

Batchelor World War 2 venereal disease posters

C.D. Batchelor was a Pulitzer Prize winning editorial cartoonist whose career lasted for almost 50 years in New York. One can see similarities in the 1937 Pulitzer winning cartoon and the anti-venereal disease cartoons reproduced below from the collections of the National Museum of Health and Medicine.


"Warning: these enemies are still lurking around. Syphilis.
Gonorrhea." Cartoon by C..D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-67)


"Two girls I know want to meet you in the worst way." C.D. Batchelor, American Social Hygiene Association. (Reeve79101-62)


"The glory of manhood is strength. Keep clean for the heritage of the cleanly is strength." Cartoon by C..D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-52)


"Boys your sweetheart, your wife or your parents may never know it if you contract a venereal disease - but I'll know it and I'll suffer from it." Cartoon by C.D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-11)


"Enemy agent. U.S. War Effort. Venereal Disease." Cartoon by C.D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-16)


"'My boy was wounded in the African landing.' 'Mine was wounded in this country by a street walker.'" Cartoon by C..D. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygiene Association, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. (Reeve79101-31)

Note the difference in quality between Batchelor's original above, and the Army's copy below:


"My boy was wounded in the African landing. Mine was wounded in this country by a street walker." World War 2. "Cartoon by C.C. Batchelor of the New York Daily News for the American Social Hygene Asociation, 1790 Broadway, New York, N.Y. Reproduced by Div. S.S.C. for distribution by Surgeon 3rd Armored Div." (Reeve74964-6.jpg)

Collections of his papers are in Witchita State University's Library in THE CARTOON COLLECTION OF C. D. BATCHELOR, MS 90-16 and C. D. Batchelor Papers - An inventory of his papers at Syracuse University.

More downloadable books on Internet Archive

The two newest ones are:

Cantor Lectures: The Microscope (1888). Lectures on the history of the microscope by British collector John Mayall, Jr. excerpted from the Journal of the Society of the Arts, 1885-1888.

A History of the United States Army Medical Museum 1862 to 1917 compiled from the Official Records (1917) by Daniel S. Lamb

For those collecting them, here's the complete list although World War 1 #14 isn't actually working at the moment.

Museum history:

http://www.archive.org/details/TheArmedForcesInstituteOfPathology-ItsFirstCentury - The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology - Its First Century(1962)

http://www.archive.org/details/HISTORYARMYMEDICALMUSEUM - A History of the United States Army Medical Museum 1862 to 1917 compiled from the Official Records (1917) by Daniel S. Lamb

Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion

http://www.archive.org/details/MSHWRMedical1 - The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. (1861-1865) Part I. Volume I. Medical History. (1st Medical volume) (1870)

http://www.archive.org/details/MSHWRMedical2 - The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Part II, Volume I. (2nd Medical volume) (1879)

http://www.archive.org/details/MSHWRMedical3 - The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Part III, Volume I. (3rd Medical volume) (1888)

http://www.archive.org/details/MSHWRSurgical1 - The Medical and SurgicalHistory of the War of the Rebellion. (1861-1865.) Part I. Volume II.(1st Surgical volume) (1870)

http://www.archive.org/details/MSHWRSurgical2 - The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. (1861-1865.) Part II. Volume II.(2nd Surgical volume) (1876)

http://www.archive.org/details/MSHWRSurgical3 - The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Part III, Volume II. (3rd Surgical volume)

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV1 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 1: The Surgeon General's Office (1923)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV2 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 2: Administration American Expeditionary Forces (1927)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV3 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 3: Finance and Supply (1928)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV4 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 4: Activities Concerning Mobilization Camps and Ports of Embarkation (1928)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV5 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 5: Military Hospitals in the United States (1923)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV6 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 6: Sanitation (1926)

http://www.archive.org/details/W1ArmyMedDeptHistV7 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 7: Training (1926)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV8 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 8: Field Operations (1925)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV9 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 9: Communicable and Other Diseases (1928)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV10 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 10: Neuropsychiatry (1929)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV11-1 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 11:Surgery; Part One, General Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery, Neurosurgery (1927)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV11-2 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 11: Surgery; Part Two (1924)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV12 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 12: Pathology of the Acute Respiratory Diseases, and of Gas Gangrene Following War Wounds (1929)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV13 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 13: Part 1, Physical Reconstruction and Vocational Education; Part 2, The Army Nurse Corps (1927)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV14 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 14: Medical Aspects of Gas Warfare(1926)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV15-1 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 15: Statistics; Part One Army Anthropology (1921)

http://www.archive.org/details/WW1ArmyMedDeptHistV15-2 - The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 15: Part 2, Medical and Casualty Statistics (1925)


http://www.archive.org/details/CantorLecuturesTheMicroscope - Cantor Lectures: The Microscope (1888). Lectures on the history of the microscope by British collector John Mayall, Jr. excerpted from the Journal of the Society of the Arts, 1885-1888.

Blumberg Collection:

http://www.archive.org/details/KennedyAutopsyReportWarrenCommissionReport - Autopsy of President Kennedy (February 01, 1965) by Pierre Finck, Armed Forces Institute of Pathology


General Medical Products Information (GMPI) Collection:

http://www.archive.org/details/CatalogueOfSurgeonsInstrumentsAirAndWaterBedsPillowsAndCushions - A Catalogue of Surgeons' Instruments, Air and Water Beds, Pillows, and Cushions, Bandages, Trusses, Elastic Stockings, Inhalers, Galvanic Apparatus, and Other Appliances Used by the Medical Profession, Maw and Son, 1866

http://www.archive.org/details/AnIllustratedDescriptionOfFirst-classAchromaticMicroscopesApparatus - An Illustrated Description of First-Class Achromatic Microscopes, Apparatus, Specimens, etc., Miller Brothers, 1879

Vorwald Collection:

http://www.archive.org/details/AMedicalSurveyOfTheBituminous-coalIndustry - A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry (1947), Coal Mines Administration, US Department of the Interior

the military's medical school

Our colleagues in Bethesda at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences made it into the Post today - see "Today's Lesson: Major Disaster - Military Medical School Simulates Chaotic Situations," By Jackie Spinner, Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, March 10, 2008; Page B04. Interestingly enough, the moulage techniques being used in this picture were developed by an Army Medical Museum staffer, Sgt. Cortizas. We've got some historical moulage kits as well as photographs and papers on the development of them including this collection:

OHA 334

* Training Aids Section Files, 1955-1963
* 3.5 cubic feet, 7 boxes.
* No finding aid, part arranged, inactive, unrestricted.
* Records of a defunct AFIP division concerned with medical training, which grew out of work done at the Museum. Includes material on films, moulages, manikins, and other training aids. Many of the products are in Historical Collections.

Creativity, music and neurology article

Museum alum Jenn Heilman passed along this article as being appropriate as the Museum sponsors Brain Awareness Week - "Creativity Jazzes Your Brain," By LAURAN NEERGAARD
The Associated Press, Monday, March 10, 2008.

Jen's now Director of Communications for the non-profit group Prevention of Blindness Society of Metropolitan Washington.

Another museum alum sighting

Jeff Reznick has a book review of Meade and Serlin's edited volume Radical History Review 94: Disability and History in the new issue of the Bulletin of the History of Medicine, v. 82.

European Association of Museums in the History of the Health Sciences meeting announcement

14th Congress of the European Association of Museums of the History of Medical Sciences, Edinburgh, Scotland
17 - 21 September 2008

The Body: Simulacra and Simulation - models, prosthetics and interventions

Models in wax or plastic, wood or metal, plaster or papier- mache are held in almost every medical museum in the world; while the development of surgical interventions and prosthetics has also led to a range of materials being used to replicate and imitate external and internal parts and movements of the body. Congress 2008 will explore aspects of the use, culture, history, art and manufacture of models, prosthetics and surgical interventions. It is hoped that the conference will be the catalyst for the development of a European-wide electronic database of models and prosthetics held in medical collections.

Call for Abstract Submissions
Curators, scholars and collectors in any relevant discipline are invited to submit abstracts that explore the following strands:
Deadline: 15 April 2008 (approx. 250 words and 150 word biog).

Sessions:
* Models
* Prosthetics
* Interventions
* Medical Museums for the 21st Century
Special session Friday 19th September:Invited speakers include, Ken Arnold (Head of Public Programmes, Wellcome Trust) and Thomas Soderqvist (Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen)

Submission Guidelines:

There will be 4 sessions on the main Simulacra and Simulation, topics. Each session will have a moderated discussion.
An abstract (250 words max) and a short bio (150 words max) should be submitted by 15 April 2008, via email to d.kemp@rcsed.ac.uk. Papers should be 20 minutes long.

Due to limited speaker slots, a poster session will also take place during the Congress. Please indicate on your application if a poster presentation is acceptable.

Submissions accepted and presented at the conference may be published, subject to copyright, in a publication of EAMHMS Congress proceedings, the EAMHMS website and/or the Scotland & Medicine website - www.scotland&medicine.co.uk . Please indicate if you do not want your presentation to be published in this way.

Email: d.kemp@rcsed.ac.uk
Tel contact, Dawn Kemp: +44 (0)131 527 1649

Congress Delegate and Accompanying Guest Fees:
The number of delegate places is limited to 150, a waiting list will be drawn up if the Congress sessions are oversubscribed.
Delegates may bring a guest to take part in all social aspects of the programme but please note, guests will not be able to attend sessions unless there is available space on the day.

Congress Fees, include the social and tour programme as detailed (the programme may be subject to change, if necessary) EAMHMS Congress rates:

Before 16 May 2008
Delegate Member 270 Euro
Guest of Member (social and tour programme only) 240 Euro
Non Member 300 Euro

After 16 May 2008
Delegate Member 300 Euro
Guest of Member (social and tour programme only) 270 Euro
Non Member 300 Euro


Congress Accommodation in Edinburgh:

Delegates must make their own accommodation arrangements but group arrangements have been made with the following hotels and guest houses, all within walking distance of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh and in the heart of historic Edinburgh. Breakfast is included in the price of the hotels:

MacDonald Holyrood Hotel ****
www.macdonald-hotels.co.uk/holyrood/
Situated next to the Scottish Parliament and the historic royal residence, Holyrood Palace this hotel is less than a 10 minute walk from the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. We recommend you book early to secure a room.

Price per night, bed and breakfast, Congress rate: £99single/£109double
Tel: +44 (131) 5288281
quote group code: EURO170908

10 Hill Square ***
www.tenhillplace.com

The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh's very own lodge style hotel, situated next to Surgeons' Hall. There are a number of rooms reserved for Congress delegates and guests. We recommend you book early to secure a room.
Price per night, bed and breakfast, Congress rate: £77single/£95 double
Tel: +44 (131) 662 2080
Email:
quote group code: M091029

Edinburgh Best Western ***
www.edinburghcityhotel.com
A ten minute walk from Surgeons' Hall, situated in an area steeped in Edinburgh's medical heritage, the hotel was formerly the Simpson Memorial Hospital, first opened in the 1860s. The hotel is also close to Edinburgh's Old Royal Infirmary and the Edinburgh College of Art.

Price per night, bed and breakfast: £85single/ £95 double
Tel: +44 (131) 6227979
quote group code: 410200/Royal College of Surgeons

Salisbury Green Hotel
University of Edinburgh Hotel
www.salisburygreen.com

In the spectacular surroundings of the Royal Park in the shadow of Arthurs Seat, the imposing volcanic plug which dominates Edinburgh's skyline there is a range of accommodation available in this hotel and residency complex.

Price per night, bed and breakfast: £94 or 104 single/£109 or 119 double
Tel: +44 (131) 662 2000
These rooms can not be held under a group booking and your are advised to reserve a room as soon as possible.

Minto House Hotel
www.edinburghmintohotel.co.uk

Less than five minutes walk from Surgeons' Hall close to the beautiful Royal Park and Arthurs Seat.

Price per night, bed and breakfast: £69/74 single /£109/120 double
Tel: +44 (131) 668 1234

Guest Houses/economy accommodation:
Thrums Hotel, Minto Street

www.thrumshotel.com

Less than five minutes walk from Surgeons' Hall close to the beautiful Royal Park and Arthurs Seat

Price per night, bed and breakfast, Congress rate: £34.5 per person
Tel: +44 (131) 677 5545
quote group: Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh


These are just some of the hotels and guest houses close to Surgeons' Hall, they are all situated in central Edinburgh, close to the historic Royal Mile in the Old Town of Edinburgh information about other hotels in the area is available from:
http://www.visitscotland.com/sitewide/bookedinburgh

Please note that many of these hotels work with web agents and you may be able to book directly through general hotel accommodation websites.

"So big and exciting and new and scary..."

Musematic's author wrote at length today about an interesting topic, something I've heard once or twice around the table at meetings but not in such detail as presented here. The topic is serious and wide-ranging, and almost always a moving target: how to interact and engage with the public, or how to allow our audiences to engage with our collections: clearly, not a new topic for museums but with the rapid changes in technology, something that is increasingly on everyone's minds.

I think about this all the time: it's the job of any marketing or communications professional to engage an institutions' audiences, and the change in the public's attention span in recent years, coupled with the myriad of ways that audiences want to be engaged, has made this task so much more complicated and challenging (and fun, honestly.)

I don't have any silver bullet answers at the moment, though you never know where inspiration lies or where providence leads us next, but I thought the post was an interesting examination by someone clearly very enmeshed in this debate personally. Read on.

Anatomical Art is Cool

Morbid Anatomy has a cool post on comparative anatomical illustrations, and that post links to this blog Medical Illustration Studio Blog. If you're not a Morbid Anatomy reader, you're missing out on great stuff, so grab their feed, and I, for one, added this new art-with-a-medical twist blog to the reader today. Enjoy.

More Brainy Goodies

We'll certainly have much more to tell about our awesome Brain Awareness Week activities in future posts, but I wanted to make sure I thank the good people at SharpBrains.com for linking to us this week (not once, but twice!) and allowing us to spotlight our incredible partners for the upcoming programs. I am told that its an exciting and fun week, my first at the Museum, and I'll be glad to offer some news and photos in the near future.

The Internet and Museums: Perfect Together

I've made an effort (mostly reading other blogs, of course, the source of all real information, right?), since starting at the Museum, to keep an eye out for any sort of 'best practices' papers or research that helps support positive growth and new ideas in the museum world. There's lots of good stuff, for sure, but this came across the wires the other day.

I came across a blog post at museumblogthesis.blogspot.com that links to a new study which tries to put down the theory that the Internet is doing some irreparable harm to museums and libraries. The report was done with the support of several universities and the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services. The report itself is online at http://interconnectionsreport.org/ and much like the museum blogger linked above, I've only scanned the main conclusions slides, but it seems persuasive.

I wonder now how much this gets noticed in the community.

New pics on Flickr

I put up five photographs today that were part of last year's scanning project.

This one's been popular:


Poliomyelitis. Transmission Experiment with Aedes aegypti. (although polio is not transmitted by mosquitos).


ANTERIOR POLIOMYELITIS. (MICROPHOTOGRAPH.)


American soldier wounded but still happy. Boureuilles, Meuse, France. 09/26/1918.


"Healthy, Happy Companionship. The community that provides - wholesome family life, - healthy recreation, - V.D. education will protect its young people." Ontario. Issued by the Ontario Provincial Department of Health, circa World War 2.


[summer night crowd watching motion picture, circa World War 1. "Fit to Fight" anti-venereal disease film showing?]

Two more World War 1 books to download

Only one left to go!

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 13: Part 1,
Physical Reconstruction and Vocational Education; Part 2, The Army Nurse Corps (1927)

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 15: Part 2, Medical and Casualty Statistics (1925)

New Bell Daguerretoype acquired and finding aid added to website.

The museum has acquired an 1852 daguerreotype taken by William Bell, chief photographer for the Army Medical Museum during and after the Civil War. Bell took many of the pictures included in the collection of Photographs of Surgical Cases and Specimens and provided his work to Matthew Brady's gallery. The daguerreotype, in a pristine leather case with a velvet lining embossed with "W. Bell, Jenny Lind Gallery, 86 N Second St, Phil[adelphia]" shows a man with ptosis (drooping eyelid). This acquisition was made with the generous assistance of Frederic A. Sharf.

We updated the finding aid for Bell's collection done a few years back by intern Rudolf D'Souza and posted it to the website as well. You can see more of Bell's scenery pictures from the 1882 expedition to photograph transit of Venus (and his obituary) on the website too.

Another WW1 book uploaded - this time with influenza

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 12: Pathology of the Acute Respiratory Diseases, and of Gas Gangrene Following War Wounds (1929)

Collect them all!

JULY 2008, NATIONAL HUMAN CADAVER PROSECTION PROGRAM (IUSM-NW)

And here's a fun program that we've been asked to publicize. These gents donated a set of their dissection dvds (going by memory on that) to the Museum last year.

***** 2nd Notice *****

***** NATIONAL HUMAN CADAVER PROSECTION PROGRAM *****

Indiana University School of Medicine-Northwest Dunes Medical
Professional Building 3400 Broadway Gary, Indiana University

APPLICATION DEADLINE: *** MAY 1, 2008 ***

PROGRAM SPONSOR: ZIMMER, Inc. (Zimmer Orthopedics)

**** Human Cadaver Dissection **** **** Radiology **** **** Orthopedic Surgery Demonstrations ****


Applications for the July 2008, NATIONAL Human Cadaver Prosection Program at the Indiana University School of Medicine-Northwest (IUSM-NW) are now being accepted. The application form is available online at the IUSM-NW Web Site (URL: http://iusm-nw.medicine.iu.edu).
The Cadaver Prosection page is linked to the IUSM-NW front page. [Click on "IUSM-Northwest Educational Programs, and then "Cadaver Prosection"]

The Cadaver Prosection will be held on Wednesday, July 30 and Thursday, July 31, 2008, from 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., and will include 2 evenings of preparatory work in late June.

Selected participants who complete the program will receive a certificate of completion, honorarium and certification for work with biohazards and blood-borne pathogens. All will have extensive hands-on experience professionally dissecting human cadavers, and will receive intensive exposure to human gross anatomy and radiology.

Zimmer Orthopedics will conduct a special lecture presentation and accepted applicants will participate in a hands-on orthopedic workshop.
CME Credit is offered for the NATIONAL Human Cadaver Prosection Program.

You need not be a medical professional or pre-medical student to participate. All are encouraged to apply. Prior participants have included pre-med and pre-vet, nursing, radiological technology, mortuary science students, other undergraduate and graduate students, teachers,
attorneys, lab technicians, etc.

For further information go to the Cadaver Prosection Page, or contact the program director:

Ernest F. Talarico, Jr., Ph.D.
TEL: 219-981-4356
Email: etalaric@iun.edu

Send (ordinary mail or email) your application materials to:
Ernest F. Talarico, Jr., Ph.D.
Assistant Director of Medical Education
Indiana University School of Medicine - Northwest Campus Dunes Medical
Professional Building Room 3028A 3400 Broadway Gary, IN 46408

New Exhibition Opens at NLM..."MOST HORRIBLE & SHOCKING MURDERS!"

New Exhibition Opens at NLM... "MOST HORRIBLE & SHOCKING MURDERS!"

True crime murder pamphlets in the collection of the National Library of Medicine

The History of Medicine Division (HMD) of the National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibit, "MOST HORRIBLE & SHOCKING MURDERS: True crime murder pamphlets in the collection of the National Library of Medicine." It is located in display cases in the HMD Reading Room, on the first floor of the National Library of Medicine, Building 38, National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland. The exhibit is open Monday through Friday, 8:30am to 5:00pm, and Saturday 8:30am to 2:30pm, through June 15, 2008.

Ever since the mid-1400s, the public's appetite for tales of shocking murders-"true crime"-has been one of the most durable facts of the market for printed material. Murder pamphlets were hawked on street corners, taverns, coffeehouses, newsstands, and bookshops. Typically, the pamphlets claimed to be true accounts of a murder, consisting of a narrative, trial transcript, or written confession of the murderer
before his or her execution. Sometimes they featured medical commentary. The pamphlets on display in "MOST HORRIBLE & SHOCKING MURDERS" were printed between 1692 and 1881. Some deal with cases of interest to the emerging field of forensic medicine. Others deal with cases in which doctors were accused of-or were victims of-heinous crimes. Still others have no medical connection whatsoever. Today, murder pamphlets are a rich source for historians and crime novelists, who mine them to study the history of medicine, class, gender, the law, the city, religion and
other topics.

The exhibit was curated by Michael Sappol, PhD. For further information on the exhibit, contact Stephen Greenberg, e-mail greenbes@mail.nih.gov , phone 301-435-4995. Due to current security measures at NIH, off-campus visitors are advised to consult the NIH Visitors and Security website at:http://www.nih.gov/about/visitorsecurity.htm


The library is purported to have a large pornography collection as well. Seriously.

Last of Civil War volumes and another World War 1 book online

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 11: Surgery; Part Two (1924)

The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. (1861-1865.) Part II. Volume II. (2nd Surgical volume) (1876)

Collect them all!

More bits from the papers

A few articles relating to the history of medicine in today's papers. All 3 of these articles have in common a condition or diagnosis that's perceived to be increasing, without any good epidemiological work being done:

The Washington Post has its medical mysteries column (as does the NY Times in its Sunday magazine) which looks at the growing diagnosis of multiple sclerosis. See "A Suspect Diagnosis: The Doctors Agreed. So Why Did He Doubt Them?" By Sandra G. Boodman, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, March 4, 2008; Page HE01. Read to the end to see what the amazingly common diagnosis should have been.

And it's page A1 news that "Immune Systems Increasingly On Attack" By Rob Stein, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, March 4, 2008; Page A01. Actually, like the MS article above, I have doubts about this, which a doctor from Johns Hopkins also has although we're about 20 paragraphs in before he's quoted. But how many articles do you see recommending dosing one with parasitic worms? Now that's heroic medicine.

And finally this article in the NY Times business section discusses a test for MRSA although one doctor they interviewed suggests that patients would be better off if everyone in the hospital just washed their hands -
A Bug Rises, and With It a Company By ANDREW POLLACK, Published: March 4, 2008.
Patients might not like the new admission procedure at a growing number of hospitals: having an elongated Q-Tip stuck up their noses. But it smells great to Cepheid.

Note the VA is planning on using this test. Is the test a bad idea? Probably not, but one wonders if the money could be spent more wisely.

And without even trying hard, we started every post title with "More" this evening.

Mo' participants

Tim Clarke Jr, the Museum's Public Affairs Officer (aka flack, see also spin doctor) made his first post tonight. That brings the total to four of us blogging - Andrea of Public Programs, Assistant Archivist Kathleen Stocker and Archivist Mike Rhode (aka me). I noticed on one of the blogs Tim linked to in the preceding post that I was given all the credit, but this is a group effort.

More Link Craziness

Links happen, and they make for a safe first post, right? So, click away, but come back. Please.

• We're getting ready for Brain Awareness Week, in case you didn't notice, and so is SharpBrains.
• Morbid Anatomy pointed out Mutter's new photo exhibition.
• People at work will be surprised to learn that I am a bit of disaster preparation fanatic - seriously, I've read too much about this for my own good - so when I saw a post about a museum doing due-diligence crisis planning, I was actually pretty excited. Anyway, now that I've outed my fascination with disasters, I'll link to Musematic's discussion on the topic, with the awesome post title The Big One. (And I'll admit that I too am often excited by the 'prospect of digital disaster' as the post goes on to discuss.)
• I am still learning a lot about museums but I read this very educational blog, and while some of it still blows past me, it's worthwhile reading.
• The Museum itself (notice, I capitalize 'Museum' when I refer to the institution; I do that because we're awesome and the capital letter is just one way to characterize that, at least in my own mind) was the beneficiary of some link love recently, so please consider clicking over and checking these blogs out.
• All good link posts need to come to an end, but not without the capstone link for tonight: Check out 'Photography in the O.R.' over at Medgadget, courtesy of Boing Boing.

More downloadable books on Internet Archive

Two from the Civil War and one from World War 1.

The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Part III, Volume I. (3rd Medical volume) (1888)

The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. (1861-1865.) Part I, Volume II. (1st Surgical volume) (1870)

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 11: Surgery; Part One, General Surgery, Orthopedic Surgery, Neurosurgery (1927)

Alumni Steven Solomon mentioned in paper

Our former public affairs officer is quoted here in Tampa Bay Online. One presumes he's tan, rested and ready, but there's no picture.

More downloadable books on Internet Archive

One Civil War and three World War 1 books today.

The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion. Part II, Volume I. (2nd Medical volume) (1879)

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 9: Communicable and Other Diseases (1928)

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 10: Neuropsychiatry (1929)

The Medical Department of the United States Army in the World War volume 15: Statistics; Part One Army Anthropology (1921)

Book review on Italian syphilis lawsuit

See "In the 1890s, a wet nurse contracted syphilis from a baby -- and sued."
By Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World Sunday, March 2, 2008; Page BW15.

He reviews:

AMALIA'S TALE
An Impoverished Peasant Woman, an Ambitious Attorney, and a Fight for Justice
By David I. Kertzer
Houghton Mifflin. 237 pp. $24

which is an interesting bit of history of medicine that I hadn't heard of before.

Our (possibly) most viewed Flickr image

We've had almost 1200 views on this photo, which may be the most-viewed of our 500 or so.

CP1855. The caption is: "Amputation of left thigh. [Image is reversed.] CPL Edward Scott, 10th U.S. Calvary. Injured May 3, 1886 at the Battle of Sierra Pinita, Mexico and treated by Dr. Paul R. Brown. Baker & Johnson Photos studio. "