Another view of our Resolved exhibit

I think this is my favorite view of the exhibit. That's a transfer case draped with a flag and a backdrop from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command Forensic Anthropology Lab at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, showing the process of reconstructing human skeletons with the aim of identification. I always assumed it was a casket that brought our soldiers home, but it's not. The same grim purpose, a more utilitarian box.

Military medicine training article

Speaking of moulages and training, here's an article that talks about their current use. "Trial by (Simulated) Fire: Military Doctors Learn to Practice Wartime Medicine on Mock Battlefield," By Philip Rucker, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, August 8, 2008; B01. I met the doctor who's quoted at the end, Capt. Trueman Sharp, last year when the museum got a collection of Vietnam-era medical data from his department for scanning - the Wound Data Munitions Effectiveness Team (WDMET) records include wounding information, x-rays, 35mm slides and sometimes fragments. We've got the material being scanned now, but it's going to take a while to finish.

1918 flu comic for downloading

In my private life, I dabble in comic art history. Dave Lasky's done a comic book "No Ordinary Flu" about the 1918 influenza epidemic for King County in Washington State. You can download it as a pdf in multiple languages. Their website reads:

To promote pandemic flu preparedness, Public Health - Seattle & King County has developed a 12-page comic book on pandemic flu. Targeting readers of all ages, this story tells the tale of a family’s experience of the 1918 influenza pandemic. It also explains the threat of pandemic flu today, illustrates what to expect during a pandemic (such as school closures), and offers tips to help households prepare.

You can also hear Lasky on KUOW's Sound Focus for August 6th - "No Ordinary Flu and Recipes for Peaches." Here's a direct link.

Thanks to cartoonists Scott Gilbert and Scott Faulkner for the tips!

Is there any place for human remains in a museum (these days)?

Mike's post yesterday about a conference at which the title of this post will be discussed leads me to show you these pictures. They're all from our Resolved exhibit on identifying human remains. I'll show more pictures of the exhibit in future posts, but try to imagine the gaps if these body parts, out of squeamishness or political correctness, were no longer in our collection. Imagine our anatomical collections manager trying to explain, in words alone, how a female and male pelvis are different. Or what the mandible of a child of a particular age looks like (remember, no objects for illustration). Or the differences among the skulls of Europeans, Asians, and Africans. I'm still kind of new to the museum game as an employee, but as a long-time museum-goer, I think there's not a lot of place for this kind of question from museum professionals.

Human remains symposium in Paris text online

My colleagues at Biomedicine on Display caught this - International Symposium "FROM ANATOMIC COLLECTIONS TO OBJECTS OF WORSHIP". It dealt with human remains in museums, and the issues of repatriating them. The panels were as follows:

first round-table : repatriating human remains: why, for whom, under which conditions?
second round-table : Is there any place today for human remains inside museums?
third round table : the status of human remains from a legal, ethical and philosophical point of view
fourth round table : How to reach a mutual understanding? Institutional mediations and negotiations

Obviously the phrasing of the 2nd round-table just bugs me right away. Why shouldn't there be a place for human remains in a museum? I don't particularly care if mine end up there, and former museum pathologist Daniel Lamb insisted on it.

The whole text of the symposium is downloadable and I'm looking forward to reading it.

War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq featured by New York Times

This book, War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq, is by a friend of mine who's been working on it for several years. The book is in the grand tradition of the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion which was also compiled to address problems of injuries during a war. It's published by the Borden Institute at Walter Reed where a lot of my friends and colleagues work as well - we're currently working on a photographic history of Walter Reed medical center for the 100th anniversary, right before they shut it down.

The article about the atlas of injuries is "To Heal the Wounded," By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr., New York Times August 5, 2008

There's also audio files linked to on the main page, as well as photographs.

Limb lab continuation - that Civil War amputee

In a paper for Invisible Culture 5 - "Shooting Soldiers: Civil War Medical Images, Memory, and Identity in America," by J.T.H. Connor and Michael G. Rhode, we used Stratton's image. We noted, "After the war, disabled veterans used their photographs to support themselves in a variety of ways. Private Alfred Stratton took the most direct route. During the war, he endured a double amputation of both arms in 1864 and, as a result, received a pension of twenty-five dollars a month. In 1869, he visited the Museum and had his photograph taken. In later years, he sold carte-de-visites of himself in a uniform as a disabled soldier."

Here's the medical museum's photograph of Stratton:



And the cartes-de-visite Stratton sold to support himself:


This paper has pretty much everything I know about the Museum's Civil War photography and is one of my favorites of articles I've written.

Complicated grief

The Washington Post ran an article today about a condition called complicated grief. We have all had loss in our lives that we have grieved over but as deep as the grief is when fresh, over time it lessens. People who suffer from complicated grief don’t experience that lessening. A discovery that a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens is activated by thoughts and memories of what was lost helps to explain this phenomenon. This part of the brain is associated with cravings and addiction, and in anticipating a reward. The theory is that those people who can't adjust to their loss are experiencing something pleasurable in their memories and "are addicted to the happy memories."

This discovery also explains why these people don't respond to traditional remedies for depression, which act on a different brain system involving serotonin. Scientists thing that a drug that acts on dopamine, which is involved with the nucleus accumbens, might be more effective.

Limb Lab presentation report at blog

Dr. Val Jones reported on Linker and Reznick's presentations a couple of weeks ago on her blog Revolution Health. I'll see if I can put up a picture of the Civil War amputee that sold the pictures of himself - his name was Alfred Stratton, I think.

Appalling practice by US hospitals reported by Times

This extensive investigative report must be read to be believed: "GETTING TOUGH: Immigrants Deported, by U.S. Hospitals," By DEBORAH SONTAG, New York Times August 3 2008.

Many hospitals are taking it upon themselves to repatriate seriously injured or ill immigrants because nursing homes won't accept them without insurance.

Surgeon General's Lecture Series at 1100 on 8 August 2008 in Memorial Auditorium, NNMC, Bethesda, MD

My buddy Andre sent this announcement about a lecture. I imagine you cant contact him if you need any additional information:

This is just a reminder that the Surgeon General's Speaker Series is set to continue on 8 August 2008 at 11:00 AM in Memorial Auditorium at the National Naval Medical Center, in Bethesda, MD. The lecture, "Jonathan Messersmith Foltz: Colorful Naval Surgeon and Friend and Foe of President James Buchanan," will be delivered by Ludwig Deppisch, MD, author of the recently acclaimed book, The White House Physician: A History from Washington to George W. Bush. This lecture will be open to all who wish to attend. As a note, this talk will hold special appeal to anyone interested in mid-nineteenth century American political and naval history. The subject of the lecture is a notable Victorian-era Navy surgeon who was linked to many famous literary, political, and scientific figures of his day including President James Buchanan, Admiral David Farragut, Samuel Morse, Edgar Allan Poe, and Queen Victoria. Dr. Foltz served as the first military White House physician, a Fleet Surgeon with Admiral David Farragut at the Battle of Mobile Bay, and in 1871 he was appointed as the Surgeon General of the Navy (becoming only the second person to hold that post).

André B. Sobocinski
Deputy Historian/ Publications Manager
Office of the Historian
Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED)
Tel: (202) 762-3244
Fax: (202) 762-3380
E-Mail: Andre.Sobocinski@med.navy.mil
http://navyhistory.med.navy.mil/

Moulage instruction booklet

As mentioned a couple of days ago, here's an instruction book for moulages meant to simulate mass casualties - Instructor's Guide for Casualty Simulation Kit Device 11E10

Mid-Atlantic history of medicine seminar

Since I'm on vacation, I can actually post to the blog during the day. Here's an announcement that Andrea wanted up:

Announcing the 6th Annual Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of
Medicine, to be held the weekend of September 26-27, 2008, and hosted
by the Section of the History of Medicine and the Program in the
History of Science and Medicine at Yale University in New Haven, CT.
The seminar is organized and coordinated by graduate students across
North America working in fields related to the history of medicine.
Our mission is to foster a sense of community and provide a forum for
sharing and critiquing graduate research by peers from a variety of
institutions and backgrounds.

There is no fee for the Seminar, but registration is required.
The deadline for registration is September 10, 2008.

Please email Julia Irwin at JASMed2008@gmail.com to register.
For further information, see our website at www.jointatlantic.org

Establishing identity

Here's another shot from our Resolved exhibit. It shows the lines of evidence that must be explored in order to establish identity.
Forensic identification is the application of science to establish personal identity.
Postmortem data are an individual's physical characteristics recorded by scientists from a person's remains after death.
Antemortem data are the physical characteristics that a person is born with and acquires throughout life.
Identification results when a person's postmortem data matches an individual's antemortem data to the exclusion of everyone else.
Lines of evidence are those scientific disciplines that contribute to an identification, such as material evidence, fingerprinting, dentistry, anthropology, DNA, and pathology.
A case is resolved when an American returns alive, the remains are recovered, repatriated, and certified, or there is convincing evidence that neither of the two options is possible.

Neat article on why bacteria can make you sick

They group together and plot. See "Social Lives of Bacteria May Yield Benefits for Humans," By David Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, July 28, 2008; Page A05.

Resolved

This image is what greets the visitor at the entrance to our new "Resolved" exhibit on identification of war dead. I think it's universal in language, eloquence without words.

Let's look at a photo

This one's for Johanna of the Morbid Anatomy blog - she's seen this picture before, but let's take a look at it.



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.

For many years, models were a way to convey information in medicine and natural sciences. Color printing had to be hand-done, and photography first didn't exist, and then each photograph for a book had to be printed individually and glued into the book. And hand-tinted if required. So well into the 20th century models like Auzoux's above, or ones like this x-ray burn were produced for education.



Breast. Burn, X-Ray. Wax model. No. 92 X-ray burn involving right breast and axilla. Necrosis of tissue producing sloughing ulceration, the bottom of which includes pleura and lung tissue. X-ray treatment was applied for carcinoma of the breast. Colored, woman, age 35 years. Army Medical Museum model prepared by Dr. J.F. Wallis. [Circa World War 1, 1918].

The museum's model-making skills continued into the 1950s, when a technique called moulage, which simulated injuries in rubber overlays were developed. A soldier would put on a moulage of a nuclear radiation injury for example and then the trainees would attempt to treat him. I'll attempt to get some photographs of them up, although I think we scanned the kit's whole instruction book recently as well.

Check out this conference in Europe on models and Auzoux too.

Memorial to French doctors

This relief is on an exterior wall at the Musée d'Histoire de la Médecine in Paris, kind of tucked away and probably not noticed much. I'm glad I found it. It's a memorial to the 1800 doctors who gave their lives for their country in World War 1.

Victor McKusick, Abraham Lincoln and the Museum

A couple of decades ago Dr. Victor McKusick suggested that Abraham Lincoln may have had Marfan's syndrome and that the museum's specimens should be tested. I'm going by memory here, but I think a blue-ribbon committee was convened, debated, and a decision was made not to test the material because the science wasn't advanced enough yet, and it didn't really matter if Lincoln had Marfan's. Read the three NY Times articles linked above rather than trust my memory. McKusik died recently and the Washington Post ran an obituary and an appreciation while the NY Times ran an obituary.

At the moment, the museum is not contemplating DNA tests on Lincoln's remains, nor any other individuals.

Reminder: Limb Lab Program Tomorrow

Afternoon Coffee Talk at the National Museum of Health and Medicine

Title: "Limb Labs: Getting Amputee Soldiers Back to Work After World War I"

Speakers: Beth Linker, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania and Jeffrey Reznick, Ph.D., Honorary Research Fellow in the Center for First World War Studies at the University of Birmingham and Director of the Institute for the Study of Occupation and Health, AOTF

What: Join a discussion about early efforts to standardize and construct affordable prosthetic arms and legs for amputee soldiers by orthopedic surgeons in America and England during World War I.

When: Thursday, July 24, 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Where: Classroom (AFIP, Bldg. 54)
http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum/about/directions.html

Cost: Free! Coffee!

Former museum staffer on weight vs height vs driver's license

Anthropologist Tony Falsetti was on the Museum's staff a decade or so ago. He popped up in the news recently - once for a project to match people's self-images with their body reality - "License, Registration And Weight, Please: For Many Drivers, Telling the Whole Truth Is Too Heavy a Burden," By Brigid Schulte, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, July 21, 2008; C01.

He also was wandering around Russia looking into the Czar's assassination.

New exhibit in Museum sheds light on identifying missing soldiers, sailors and airmen

The Museum's opened a new exhibit on forensic identification of war dead that goes from the 19th through the 21st centuries. One can see how it is relevant in the newspaper on a weekly basis. Here's a recent article -"Remains of MIA Pilots Identified: Vietnam War Casualties, One From Vienna, to Be Buried," By Ian Shapira, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, July 19, 2008; Page A3.

Urology exhibit in Washington-Baltimore area

The Post ran this story on the William P. Didusch Center for Urologic History in Maryland - "Appetizers in The Urology Museum," By Gabe Oppenheim, Washington Post Staff Writer, Saturday, July 19, 2008; Page C01.

Trepanation

You see old illustrations of this procedure and it kind of makes your skin crawl and makes you very glad it's not you under the awl or drill. According to wikipedia, cave paintings as far back as the Neolithic era give the earliest documentation of this medical procedure, used for a variety of disorders from migraines to bad spirits. I can kind of identify with that. I used to get some hellacious headaches and if a hole drilled in my head would have relieved them, I would have signed up on the spot. Trepanation is still used today but a little more circumspectly. Regarding this picture, though, even for my headaches, I would have insisted on a nice, lie-down position. This picture was part of a small museum attached to an excavated 12th century church in Dublin, Ireland.

Old Walter Reed Hospital

Have I posted this before? I lose track. I was just looking at my Flickr stats and saw that this picture of the old (original) Walter Reed Hospital was viewed several times yesterday. I took this last fall, the second-best time of year to be in Washington. If you haven't been here in spring, put it on your Bucket List. Washington is indescribably beautiful in the spring, but fall is almost as good. Look at the color of that sky.

Agent Orange's lasting effects

I'm going to get on my soapbox for a minute and if I've written about this before, just skip this post.

About three years ago my husband went for a routine physical and got the bad, terrifying news that he was diabetic. Even though I have a sister who's diabetic and I thought I knew all there was to know, it turned out neither Bob nor I knew much of anything. He had no family history whatsoever. Overnight, it seemed, he lost quite a bit of weight because he was afraid to eat anything. The doctor told him no bread, potatoes, rice, or pasta and he gave it all up cold turkey. He manages pretty well now, thanks, but has a pretty good idea of what awaits him down the line.

Now here's the kicker. About a year after he was diagnosed, his brother was trolling the VA website and found information relating diabetes to Agent Orange. The bottom line is, if a soldier set foot in Vietnam and now has diabetes, the VA makes the presumption that Agent Orange is the cause. You don't have to prove anything other than show your DD214. Sure, they make you jump through hoops but if you have it, pass Go and collect your claim. And it's not just diabetes. If you know a Vietnam vet who's having health problems, please direct him or her to the VA website.

SOPs for death of employees

"

"

"

I've been processing a collection from a former director of the AFIP (Armed Forces Institute of Pathology), a doctor who was in the forefront of aircraft accident investigations, causes, and pathology, back in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Much of the collection relates to papers he wrote and conferences he spoke at and attended, interesting to a certain point, but still... However, among his papers I found these gems that, 50 years on, made me smile. I know you'll have to click through to read them. I think they're worth it.

Resolved: The Story of Capt. Robert M. Young and His Return Home

As part of the next NMHM Docent Meeting and to coincide with the opening of the museum's newest exhibition, "RESOLVED: Forensic Identification of U.S. War Dead, the museum will host a special talk on Wednesday, July 23 at 11 a.m. If you are interested in attending, please call 202-782-2673.

"Resolved: The Story of Capt. Robert M. Young and His Return Home"

In the spring of 1970, a U.S. Army helicopter was hit by enemy fire and
forced to land on the border of Cambodia and South Vietnam. The soldiers
on the aircraft were captured and interred as prisoners of war. In 1973,
several of the soldiers were released while others remained
missing-in-action. Two of the soldiers were found to have died in the
camps. One of these soldiers, Capt. Robert M. Young, left behind a young
wife and three-year-old daughter.

Over 25 years later, Capt. Young's remains were positively identified by
the Central Identification Laboratory through several lines of evidence,
including an examination of anthropological remains and DNA analysis.
This family's story provides a real-life illustration of the process of
identification exhibited in "RESOLVED: Advances in Forensic
Identification of U.S. War Dead."

Afternoon Coffee Talk at the National Museum of Health and Medicine

Afternoon Coffee Talk at the National Museum of Health and Medicine

Title: "Limb Labs: Getting Amputee Soldiers Back to Work After World War I"

Speakers: Beth Linker, Ph.D., Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania and Jeffrey Reznick, Ph.D., Honorary Research Fellow in the Center for First World War Studies at the University of Birmingham and Director of the Institute for the Study of Occupation and Health, AOTF

What: Join a discussion about early efforts to standardize and construct affordable prosthetic arms and legs for amputee soldiers by orthopedic surgeons in America and England during World War I.

When: Thursday, July 24, 2:00-3:30 p.m.

Where: Russell Auditorium (AFIP, Bldg. 54)
http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum/about/directions.html

Cost: Free!

Customer service at museums

I came across this blog, her newsletter and book (which I am looking forward to reading) when doing some Googling this past week, and wanted to offer a link here for our readers. I liked this tidbit from a post of hers: "Tip of the day: If you're answering the phone, smile before you pick it up. It changes your brain chemistry, making you more open and helpful, as well as warming up the tone of your voice."

Experienceology: Customer service and the visitor experience

"Pioneering Heart Surgeon"

Quoting here from the Washington Post's obituary, which ran on Sunday's front page (below the fold):

"Michael E. DeBakey, 99, the father of modern cardiovascular surgery, who invented scores of medical procedures and instruments, developed the Mobile Army Surgical Hospital and established what later became the Veterans Affairs hospital system, died July 11 at Methodist Hospital in Houston. The hospital did not release the cause of death, but he had undergone heart surgery in 2006."

There are numerous posts out there about DeBakey, but I thought it was worth linking to this brief note from the crew at NPR's Science Friday.

The Vietnam Center and Archive Blog

The following post came through an archives listserve today. I took a quick look - it seems like a good resource. In the museum, we actually have a massive amount of Vietnam War medical records, but most are not yet processed. We've got hundreds of hours of video footage from the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research's film team for example, but no inventory of it. The Wound Data Munition Effectiveness Study (WDMET) was recently transferred back to us from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences and we're in the process of digitizing over the 10,000 records of wounds suffered, usually by American soldiers, during the war.

The Vietnam Center and Archive Blog

The Vietnam Center and Archive is proud to announce the launch of our new blog located at http://www.vietnamarchive.blogspot.com. This blog will be used for a variety of topics and will be updated often by members of the Vietnam Center and Archive staff.

Blog topics will include: Vietnam Center and Archive news and updates, information about the Oral History Program, updates concerning the Virtual Vietnam Archive and the physical archive, interesting items from our holdings, website updates, and reference resources and outreach. We hope this new blog will both be a way to keep people informed about the progress of the Vietnam Center and Archive, as well as provide a valuable research tool. Several articles have already been posted, so
please visit our blog and leave us your comments.


A link to our blog is also located in the top right corner of our website [http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu].

Mary McLain Saffell, C.A.
Associate Director, Archivist

The Vietnam Center and Archive
Texas Tech University
Special Collections Library, Room 108
Lubbock, Texas 79409-1041

A day in the life...

Turned on the computer this morning and saw the screen above and this email...

Effective immediately, when you log onto the AFIP network you will see a New DOD Consent Banner and User Agreement. Please take a moment to read this banner, by clicking ok you are in agreement with the consent banner.

The new warning and consent banner establishes that there is no expectation of PRIVACY when using DOD Information systems and all use of the Information system is subject to searches, audits, seizure, and monitoring.

In the past the helpdesk personnel have waited many hours to implement needed updates for security and software. This new banner makes it clear that when such needs arise the systems can be accessed by the personnel without prior notification. However, we will continue to make courtesy calls unless restricted by deadlines.

If for some reason you are not in agreement with the new banner and user agreement you will NOT have access to Information systems within the organization. This is a directive of MEDCOM, which means we MUST follow it. I can hardly contain my enthusiasm for seeing that message every day, or working for people whose level of trust mandates it.

Later in the afternoon, Kathleen and I went down to the Borden Institute, which publishes the Textbook of Military Medicine series, to work on a picture book on the history of Walter Reed medical center. With the other editors, we culled some of the photos from the 'teens and twenties chapters as we had too many.

A Flickr / Getty Images deal in the works?

Somehow I stumbled across a report today that says Getty Images, one of the mammoth stock-image companies, is in talks with Flickr about trolling for images that have been uploaded there. Of course Flickr can't make deals on people's work but it can give exclusive rights to Getty for that kind of access. Some people who have commented say it's not so much that Getty wants access for art's sake (my paraphrase) but to keep access from other companies. I don't really know, but just in case, being the Flickr addict that I am, I'm going to have to start beefing up my tags on my own pictures. Oh, and if you're wondering what this has to do with the museum, etc., etc., if this is indeed the case it can only mean better exposure for our own pictures that we've uploaded. The latest account is here.

Do Not Smoke

I ran across a blog that I think might be interesting to some of our readers. Street Anatomy covers the use of human anatomy in art, advertising, and design. I thought this artwork featured on one of the posts was very cool:

Stop Consuming Your Body

June 23rd, 2008 by misvan

“Stop Consuming Your Body”

Advertising Agency: NeogamaBBH, Brazil
Art Director: Sidney Araújo
Copywriter: Alexandre Gama

Leprosy Stigma

Afternoon Coffee Talk at the NMHM

What: Lecture, "Carville, the Landscape of Stigma," by Elizabeth Schexnyder, Curator, The National Hansen's Disease Museum

When: Wednesday, August 27, 2:00 p.m.

Where: Russell Auditorium, National Museum of Health and Medicine

Leprosy is known as the "Biblical" disease and has been associated with a stigma that affects the lives of those with leprosy, both physically and socially. Did you know that at one time Coca Cola refused to pick up empty Coke bottles from the National Leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana for fear that contact with the bottles might spread the disease? Join Elizabeth Schexnyder, curator of the National Hansen's Disease Museum, for a discussion of the meaning and significance of the social response to leprosy in the development of the National Leprosarium in Carville, Louisiana. She will describe how the process of "othering" human beings diagnosed with leprosy along with the socio-historical factors affecting the disease stigma shaped the unique landscape--both social and physical--of the National Leprosarium.

Jim Cassedy lecture at National Library of Medicine

I didn't know Jim well, but he was always very friendly and I'm sorry that I won't get a chance to read the book on John Shaw Billings, head of the Museum and Library, that he had been working on. Billings had a strong interest in statistics and helped compile the Census.


NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE,
History of Medicine Division Seminar - First Annual James Cassedy
Memorial Lecture Tuesday, July 15, 2008, 2-3:30pm (Note Revised Date)
Lister Hill Center Auditorium, Bldg 38A, NLM Bethesda, MD

"Medicine by the Numbers: Revisiting James Cassedy's America."

Robert Martensen, MD, PhD
Director, Office of NIH History

To honor the distinguished historian of medicine and long-time National Library of Medicine staffer Jim Cassedy, the History of Medicine Division at NLM is sponsoring the first annual James Cassedy Memorial Lecture. The first speaker will be Robert Martensen, MD, PhD, who will speak on "Medicine by the Numbers: Revisiting James Cassedy's America."

During his long career, Cassedy repeatedly explored the rich history of counting and calculating that preoccupied many mid-19th century American physicians. While numerical inquiries had long interested social historians and demographers, Cassedy's American Medicine and Statistical Thinking, 1800-1860 (1984) and Medicine and American Growth, 1800-1860 (1986) stimulated intellectual historians to analyze how and why our medical forbears embraced statistics. In this talk, Martensen re-visits
Cassedy's mid-century accounts and explores how physicians re-defined medical arithmetic as medicine turned increasingly to laboratory science in the century's closing decades.

All are Welcome

Note: The next history of medicine seminar will be on Thursday, July 24, 2-3:30pm in the Lister Hill Visitor's Center NLM's Bldg 38A. Doctoral candidate Chin Jou of Princeton University will speak on "Prescribing Bodies: Medical Critiques of Fat and Thin, 1890-1930."

Cool article on London's archeological skeletons

The Times June 28, 2008

Museum of London's skeleton key to the bodies under city's streets

Tens of thousands of skeletons that lie hidden beneath the streets, houses and offices of London have been revealed for the first time on a map, in a collaboration between the Museum of London and The Times.

When robots operate

I thought this was interesting. For the moment, we have a prototype robotic surgical assistant on the gallery floor: learn more about Penelope right here.

The invasion of the surgeon robots. - By Kent Sepkowitz - Slate Magazine: "There is one realm, however, in which robots really are joining the gang: the operating room. It turns out that Americans love to be operated upon by them. Last year, robots participated in thousands of surgeries, and the years ahead promise even more choices. Cancer surgery, heart surgery, brain surgery, you name it—R2-D2 awaits your call. The robots even have their own medical journal (OK, it's run by the humans who operate the robots, but egad!)."

Eakins' The Gross Clinic

The Philadelphia Museum of Art will bring back The Gross Clinic this summer. According to the latest newsletter, it is "described by some as the most important painting by any nineteenth-century American artist." It will be exhibited in gallery 119 from August 2 until February 2009. Read more about the painting itself, including how it was nearly lost to Philadelphia, at wikipedia.

Acupuncture

Here's a mannequin from the History of Medicine Museum in Paris that I think is pretty neat. If I read the French correctly, the label says it shows acupuncture points. The other picture is a close-up of some cards that are in the case with the mannequin.

For those of you without personal acupuncture experience and perhaps doubt that it really can work, let me tell you it does. My husband always said he'd quit smoking when cigarettes hit $1 a pack. Of course, this was a very long time ago, and also of course, easier said than done. But he heard about a doctor in Austin or Houston, I don't remember now, who performed acupuncture and for $50 decided to give the guy a try. The doctor put one little staple-looking thing in Bob's ear, in that ridge of cartilage, put a piece of tape over it, and told him to leave it until it fell out. About a week later it did, but from the time the staple went in, Bob never smoked again. He said the cravings came and went in a flash, more quickly than he even had time to think about them, and gradually faded away. Amazing, isn't it? I'm a believer.

Rhode hasn't been here cracking the whip

and so postings to this blog have gotten pretty slack. But he's back now and trying to make us all feel guilty. It's working.

Well, as I promised, or warned, depending how you want to look at it, here are a couple of pictures of kidney stone removal tools. (I wish they were a little sharper, but you do what you can with what you have. In this case, the camera was hand-held.) If these don't make you get your 128 ounces of water every day, I don't know what will.

Flickr - we are not alone

The Smithsonian's joined Flickr Commons (which we're still waiting on actually) and the Army's got a Flickr page too.

Wow. Wow. Wow.

Awesomeness must not be misquoted or paraphrased:

Human egg makes accidental debut on camera: "Look closely: this is history in the making. These are the clearest pictures ever taken of what is the starting point of every human life: ovulation occurring inside a woman's body."

Human ovulation captured on film: "Following the publication last week of the best ever photos of the ovulation of a human egg, we now go, Fantastic Voyage-like, to the first video footage of the moment itself."

Thanks to New Scientist for bringing this to us.

Mememto Mori, or, The Head of Janus

I made a rewarding visit to the Musée d'Histoire de la Médecine in Paris last month, but thoroughly grossing out my husband with its extensive exhibits of surgical tools, including kidney stone extractors. Not something that a man who has had a kidney stone especially wants to look at. I've not had kidney stones, and I found the tools and illustrations painful to look at, and I've seen some pretty gross things in the course of my job. Do you want to see them? Next time.

I really liked this ivory carving from the 17th century, called the Head of Janus. I don't know if the Catholic school I went to didn't teach mythology as a matter of theology or what, but I never learned about the myths. So wikipedia to the rescue: "Janus was usually depicted with two heads (not faces) looking in opposite directions, and was frequently used to symbolize change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, the growing up of young people, and of one universe to another. He was also known as the figure representing time because he could see into the past with one face and into the future with the other."

There's nothing that says transition from one condition to another like a face on one side and a skull on the other.

Telemedicine, literally

Wired.com reports on a new strategy to get TB patients to take their medicine: free cell phone minutes.

While human interaction is still necessary because self-reporting isn't always reliable, allowing patients to text-message results from their urine tests - and get free minutes as a reward - apparently gets better participation during the six-month regimen.

Companion Animals for Stress Response - program at Walter Reed

This came in via email today, but before you get to it, let me introduce you to a companion animal I met one day at lunch, Georgia the assistance dog ---->:

Her "uncle," the brother of the patient who Georgia assists, let me take several pictures of her while she was out for some exercise. She's a beauty and full of energy. I think it was very hard for her to lie still for 30 seconds.

Now, back to our sponsor:

Dear Friends of CAMP PTSD,

Please join us for our next program, Benefits of Companion Animals for
Stress Response on Thursday June 26, 2008 at 4:30pm - 6pm at the Joel
Auditorium at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

Our presenters are:

* Kevin Simpson, Director of Animal Behavior and Training at the
Washington Humane Society, and
* Joan Esnayra, Phd, Founder of the Psychiatric Dog Service
Society

Please forward this message to anyone you know who may be interested in
this fascinating program.

To RSVP, contact Elsyse Greenberg at elyse.greenberg@amedd.army.mil

Hope to see you there!

Robin Carnes, Chair
Complementary and Adjunctive Medicine Practitioners PTSD Study Group at
Walter Reed Army Medical Center
(240-423-8544)
CAMP PTSD Study Group

A Day in the Life...

I meant to write these more often, but somehow the life keeps staying busy.

Here's one from a few weeks ago. We're part of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (see the sidebar history) and their Radiology Department had a lead on some personal papers they were interested in. The American College of Radiology has stored their records with the History Factory in Chantilly, VA, and in their collection they had personal papers of Dr. William Thompson. Thompson was instrumental in setting up the large radiology program at AFIP. The ACR was willing to hand over this series of records to AFIP since it didn't really relate to their core holdings. I tend to wear a dual hat as AFIP's archivist as well as the Museum's so I was on the job.

Poaching from other archives never thrills me, although at times it makes sense. Years ago, we returned photographs of unidentified corpses that we had received from the NY Medical Examiner to the NY Municipal Archives to reunite them with the paper records of the cases. I was fine with that, but there have been plenty of times when people come in to do research and say "wouldn't this be better if it was in..."

Anyway, two people from the radiology dept., and 3 museum staffers took a van from Walter Reed while I drove myself from home. I beat them by about an hour so I hung around with the archivist there. He showed me the collection - it was pretty straightforward personal papers including diaries, some awards and some photographs, both personal and professional. I've seen dozens like it, and at 3 linear feet, it wasn't large. So we talked shop and then when everyone else arrived, they looked at the records. The radiologists were particularly interested as one doesn't see fifty-year old diaries every day, I suppose. We took a quick look in the stacks at the rest of the ACR collection - most archives look alike especially in the 'bulk' storage areas - and I've got to say that they have a nice set of advertising trade literature if you're doing anything on radiology's history. We also looked at the 3-D artifacts because there was some confusion in our party if we were supposed to be checking on them as well.

After signing the paperwork transferring it to us, we headed back to AFIP. Lauren Clark, who's volunteering as an intern this summer, has processed the collection and written a finding aid to it, which should make it onto our regular website soon. There's nothing deeply interesting or dramatic in Thompson's papers, but they help round out the history of radiology at AFIP.

Two more links for you, if you can handle the excitement

• The iPhone gets all the cool new apps. Sometimes I wish I'd gone into medicine so I could get access to all those wonderful toys.
  

• Morbid Anatomy - where you can find the awesome with each post - offers a snippet about a cool "20th century facial prosthetic" someone "found at an estate sale." I never find anything like that at estate sales.

Three words: "Belly button escargot"

Without further comment, I offer this link: "Tales from Saint Boonie's: Gross, and I mean GROSS, Anatomy."

He had me at "I apologize in advance..."

If you look carefully, you'll see something familiar to this blog's readers and our visitors. Once you spot it, leave your answer in comments. First person (not on the staff or former staff!) to guess correctly gets the best reward of all: my sincere gratitude for reading all the way through this post.

All the good headlines were taken

I had seen this previously, but after seeing more links to gummi bear anatomy today, I figured I'd better post it here, too. Besides, we're the ones who spent some quality time looking for radiographs of a gummi bear bezoar. Come on, admit it, now you want to know more, right?

And yes, I am probably giving away a slice of my blog reading habits by linking to those two blogs above, but for gummi bear anatomy, it's worth it.

Our West Coast Connection

Our recently-departed public affairs specialist Nicole M. has landed out west - in San Francisco, California. We heard from her today, that she's settling in at the San Francisco Airport Museums. No, I hadn't heard of it either (but some people haven't heard of us either) but take a look for yourself, and next time you are passing through SFO, pause for a moment to enjoy the view. And, hi, Nicole, stay in touch and good luck.

Enjoy.

Upcoming lunchtime lectures this month at NMHM

SAVE THE DATES: Two exciting lunchtime lectures at the National Museum
of Health and Medicine this month!

On Thursday, June 19 at noon, AFIP pathologist Wayne Meyers, M.D. will
discuss the history of leprosy in America.

Then, on Thursday, June 26 at noon, James L. Krahenbuhl, Ph.D., director
of the federal National Hansen's Disease (Leprosy) Program will offer a
talk about the need for a greater awareness about leprosy in the U.S.

Both lectures are free and will take place in Russell Auditorium at
NMHM. After the talks, take advantage of the opportunity to visit our
temporary exhibition, "Triumph at Carville: A Tale of Leprosy in
America."

Here are the details:

What: Lecture by pathologist Wayne M. Meyers, M.D., Ph.D., Armed Forces
Institute of Pathology
When: Thursday, June 19, 2008; 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Where: Russell Auditorium at NMHM (on Walter Reed Army Medical Center,
Building 54)
Cost: Free! Bring a bag lunch.


What: Learn the 113-year history of the "national leprosarium" and the
need for an awareness of leprosy in the U.S. medical community, with
James L. Krahenbuhl, Ph.D., director of the federal National Hansen's
Disease (Leprosy) Program
When: Thursday, June 26, 2008; 12:00-1:00 p.m.
Where: Russell Auditorium at NMHM (on Walter Reed Army Medical Center,
Building 54)
Cost: Free! Bring a bag lunch.

Museum Address: 6900 Georgia Avenue, NW, Building 54, Washington, DC,
20307. (Photo identification required.) Free parking is available.

Contact: (202) 782-2200 or http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum

Army School of Nursing Annuals now on Internet Archive

Kathleen got the rest of them up over the past two days:

The Annual
1921 http://www.archive.org/details/ArmyNursingAnnual1921
1923 http://www.archive.org/details/ArmyNursingAnnual1923
1925 http://www.archive.org/details/ArmyNursingAnnual1925
1926 http://www.archive.org/details/ArmyNursingAnnual1926
1927 http://www.archive.org/details/ArmyNursingAnnual1927

Taps
1929 http://www.archive.org/details/ArmyNursingAnnual1929
1930 http://www.archive.org/details/ArmyNursingAnnual1930
1931 http://www.archive.org/details/ArmyNursingAnnual1931

1923 Army Nursing Annual now online

1923 Army Nursing Annual now online at the Internet Archive. We have all of these but one and we've scanned them all for posting.

1921 Army Nursing School Annual online

We've loaded a 1921 Army Nursing School Annual up to Internet Archive. These schools were based in Washington at Walter Reed and in California. More to come!

Yet another new Flickr page

While we're waitingwaitingwaiting for Flickr to grant us a Creative Commons account, we've filled our third account and have started a fourth. Please take a look - the five pictures now residing there are feeling a little lonely.

Cool Flickr site

Virginia Commonwealth University's Tompkins-McCaw Library Special Collections' photostream - a mixture of photographs, artifacts and scans from books. They linked to one of our flickr sites last week. I liked the editorial cartoons, but the photographs of medical school dissections probably get more viewers.

Free Health Fair at the National Museum of Health and Medicine!

Free Health Fair at the National Museum of Health and Medicine!

Saturday, June 7, 2008 -- 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

Tell your friends! Tell your family! Children's activities, too!
Explore the Museum and take advantage of free health screenings!

Screenings for health indicators: cholesterol, glaucoma, blood sugar, vision, blood pressure, hearing, body mass index

Children's activities, too! Including hands-on experiences with plastinated organs, dolls and mannequins!

Participants: Columbia Heights Lions Club, D.C. Diabetes Prevention and Control Program, D.C. Healthy Families, Food and Friends, Health Pact, Inc., Men's Health Network, National Ovarian Cancer Coalition of Northern Virginia, and Prevention of Blindness Society of Metropolitan Washington

WHERE: National Museum of Health and Medicine, on the campus at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, 6900 Georgia Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C. 20307. (Enter at Georgia Ave. and Elder Street, NW.) (Photo identification required.) NMHM is in Bldg. 54.

WHEN: Saturday, June 7, 2008, 10:00 a.m. - 2:00 p.m.

CONTACT: On the Web http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum or call (202) 782-2200.

NOTE: Free parking, free admission! No reservations required.

National Museum of the Marine Corps

Today I went to the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia. It's terrific, with a lot of interactive exhibits (care to lift a pack that a recruit has to carry (that's the pack there, on the right), or listen to drill instructors screaming at you from every direction?) and lifelike combat scenes. Here's one of a Marine being cared for by a corpsman. I thought the look on the wounded Marine's face was perfectly portrayed. What I liked about this one, in addition to the face, is that we have photos just like this in our collection, right down
to the IV bottle suspended from a rifle stuck in the ground bayonet first (just out of view here but you can see the line being inserted in his arm). It's a great museum with free admission, both indoor and outdoor exhibit space, and is open 364 days a year. If you're in the neighborhood, I recommend a visit.

More thoughts on exhibit signage

I've written previously about signs in exhibit spaces like the National Zoo and the New York Historical Society and how, if I were queen of the world, I would do things differently. I'm still on my queen kick after going to the just-fabulous maps exhibit at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. (It closes on June 8, so hurry yourself to Baltimore.) This is a really good, interesting exhibit of maps brought in from all over the world. They have excellent descriptions of what you're looking at, but many of them are on the front of the cases, hip-high, and in necessarily dim illumination, so you have everyone who wants to read about that map packed in a small space, and certainly not more than one deep. It was easy to identify those of us of a certain age - we were the ones trying to adjust the bifocals to get the right perspective and usually ended up bent over like cranes hunting for fish. Oh, for good spot lighting on a wall.

Thought Control

I read Mike's post down below about Dean Kamen's new prosthetic arm, and it truly is a wonderful invention. If you haven't looked at the video I encourage you to do so. At first I thought this was the same device I saw on TV in Dublin last night (doesn't that sound so cool - I was in Dublin last night, and I'm not talkin' Ohio), but I've just checked the internet and what I saw was different. Their story was about a monkey whose arms were restrained but could use its thoughts to control a robotic arm to bring food to its mouth. Simply amazing to see. Interestingly, the project is being done on this side of the pond by Andrew Schwartz at the University of Pittsburgh. The study was published in the journal Nature.

Friday, May 30 - Museum closed

The museum's closed due to the installation of a new power generator. Also we'll probably be closed on Saturday June 1 as well. Call 202-782-2200 or 2201 after 20 am on both Saturday and Sunday to check the status.

Exhibit Development at the Pentagon

Some of the team made it out to the pentagon this morning to work on possible exhibits for the 

Assistant Secretary of Defense of Health Affairs, look forward having some of our work in the Pentagon, that will help bring some positive attention to the Museum of Health and Medicine.

Check out some of our photos, with some made up quotes, just for kicks. Later Kids.

NC

Dean Kamen designs prosthetic arm for military amputees

Yahoo finance has a three-minute video of Dean Kamen's new prosthetic arm, which looks absolutely amazing. It's just stunning.

Friday, May 30 - Museum closed?

Anyone planning on visiting the Museum on Friday, Saturday or Sunday should call first at 202-782-2200 or 2201 to confirm that it's open. A generator is being replaced starting Friday at noon which will cut power to the whole building.

New Guy at the Museum

Hello Everybody

just wanted to leave a short spot on my first month in the Museum, My name is Navjeet Singh and I am the new guy at the museum, my position is exhibits specialist and I do exhibit development and exhibit design for the museum, I am not new to exhibit design, I have been doing exhibits since 1998 and recently did contract work for the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the exhibit is Sikh's Legacy of the Punjab, and also have done exhibits for National Museum of the American Indian, Air and Space, National Museum of Women in the Arts, FAA, NOAA, GSA, I recently did an large graphic mural and exhibit for National 4 H in thier headquarters. I attached a short video small size of some exhibit work.(apple quicktime) I have also done other museums and some international shows. In addition I also teach at the Corcoran College of Art and Design and have been adjunct faculty there since 2003, while also teaching at other local colleges and schools....Now I have been at NMHM for about a month, actually its been a month and a half, and have met mostly everyone now and am getting a good feel for what we're all about. I am really enjoying it, and I truly enjoy working with everyone on the staff, some excellent people... so far its alot of work, and much more to do, as most the exhibits need some work, right now I'm working on the RESOLVED exhibit, "Resolved; Advances in Forensic Identification of U.S. War Dead", and have just a few weeks left in putting all the pieces together, We are looking at a July 4th opening date, so only a few weeks left to install, We are doing some fun stuff in this exhibit and hope to treat the visitors to some impressionable exhibits and feel as we are on the right track, I have developed several large murals, and am using different medias / substrates and some very interesting artifacts will be displayed, we have some other ideas to include interactive stations, and I hope that I can put together a short video piece for the exhibit by opening, but also have other exhibits to consider. June will bring the Balad exhibit, and so right now have a full plate, but am really enjoying myself. My office is in an interesting space, for those of you who don't know, I am in the former ballistics range, very interesting indeed, some stories I have heard was they used to shoot cadavers, pigs, bones, tissue in gelatin blocks, and some of that material decorates the celling in my work area. Not sure how much of that is true, but have heard this from staff who were here when they did that. So far I have only done a few things here, National Hairball Awarness was one of the first, I attached a pic, and just the Stroke awareness exhibit, but am hoping to get the museum some attention with RESOLVED. I look forward to keeping you all informed, keep it positive in the end its all about the journey.

Cheers!

NC

British military medicine conference CFP

[this is run by Pete Starling]

SECURING THE ULTIMATE VICTORY П

A conference exploring the history of military medicine and health care

15th -17th April 2009

ARMY MEDICAL SERVICES MUSEUM Mytchett, Surrey

The Army Medical Services Museum is to host a conference exploring the history of military medicine and health care covering the period from 1600 to the present. The conference will take place in the Defence Medical Services Training Centre, Keogh Barracks, Mytchett, Surrey, where the museum is situated.

Papers are invited on the history of military medicine particularly covering the following themes: Nursing, catastrophe and post conflict medicine, veterinary medicine, dentistry, pioneers of military medicine, disease prevention and research, the influence of the military on civilian medicine and the history of dedicated hospitals for the care of the sick and wounded military patients.

Closing date for the submission of abstracts is 1 August 2008. Abstracts should be submitted using the attached form and sent to:

Director

Army Medical Services Museum

Keogh Barracks

Ash Vale

Aldershot

GU12 5RQ

01252 868820 Email: armymedicalmuseum@btinternet.com



SECURING THE ULTIMATE VICTORY П




Title: Full Name:

Name of Institution (if applicable):

Full Postal Address:


Email address: Telephone No:

Title of Abstract:

Bookings for the conference will open on 1 September 2008.

For booking forms please contact:

The Director

AMS Museum, Keogh Barracks, Ash Vale, Aldershot, GU12 5RQ

armymedicalmuseum@btinternet.com

Wash Post on leprosy

Sally Squires and her husband John Wilhelm have done an interesting and touching documentary film "Triumph at Carville: A Tale of Leprosy in America" which can be seen at the Museum with a small exhibit on leprosy (aka Hansen's Disease). Today she had an article in the Post about how the disease is still around, but not as dangerous as it has been in the past. See "A Scary Diagnosis Hits Home When a Tiny Rash Turns Out to Be Leprosy, A Teen and Her Community Learn the Modern Reality of Living With the Biblical Disease," By Sally Squires, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, May 27, 2008; Page HE01. On June 19th, we'll have d a free lecture on Hansen's disease by Wayne M. Meyers of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology. Dr. Meyers is an expert on the disease, which used to be a major area of research in the AFIP, and we have an oral history with him. Drs. Meyers and Chapman Binford were the main doctors working on it. We have some of Dr. Binford's records:

OHA 114

* Binford Leprosy Material, 1922-1975
* .5 cubic foot, 1 box.
* No finding aid, arranged, inactive, unrestricted.
* Public Health Bulletins, reprints, manuscript articles, journals, and photographs related to leprosy. Includes articles and correspondence by Chapman H. Binford, chief of the AFIP Geographic Pathology department.

Museum mentioned on History News Network

See "Memorial Day, the Great War, and America’s Last Surviving World War I Veteran,"
By Jeffrey S. Reznick, a former curator at the museum. Jeff used a couple of photos from the archives, as you can too if you click on our Flickr links to the right.

London history of medicine conference includes military medicine

History of Medicine Research Student Conference
Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL
Thursday and Friday 19-20 June 2008

The conference will feature eighteen papers from research students in
four areas of the history of medicine:

- Understanding Medicine and the Body in History

- Medicine, Health and War in History

- Asian Medicine in History

- Healthcare in British History

There will also be panel discussions chaired by established academics including Professors Steven King and Paul Weindling of Oxford Brookes University and Professor Roger Cooter of UCL

The conference will close with a keynote address from Professor Anne Hardy of UCL, Editor of Medical History

Places are limited and will be assigned on a first come first served basis. There will be a small fee to cover registration and cateringcosts.

If you are interested in attending the conference, contact George Gosling at gcgosling@brookes.ac.uk by Friday 30 May 2008.

The full conference programme and poster can be accessed by following
this link: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/histmed/library/hmrs_conf

For information on this event and other opportunities see the 'History
of Medicine Research Students' group on facebook at
http://brookes.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6213918604

Forensic identification of dead in China disaster

We're opening an exhibit later this year - Resolved - on forensic identification of military dead. This article has some interesting parallels to the difficulty of identifying people after time has elapsed.

China’s Rush to Dispose of Dead Compounds Agony
By EDWARD WONG
Published: May 24, 2008
Family members have not been able to identify relatives and traditional reverence for the deceased has been upset.

Article on future of military museums

This article is mostly on the Navy museum, but could some of the same issues apply to the Medical Museum?

"Museums Look Into the Future of Military History," By Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, May 25, 2008; Page C01.

A medical museum reopens in UK

See "The history of medicine," By Natalie Slater, 19/5/2008 on 'the newly refurbished medical museum at the Royal Berkshire Hospital.' The difference between a national museum like ours which was built by the federal government and the more common university or hospital museum needs to be examined more, I think.

A day in the life...

An interesting research request came in through the Radiology department today. Someone's looking for fluoroscope burns. So far I haven't turned up exactly what they want, which is modern color shots, but check out this photo of a wax model that I did find:



The caption reads: Breast. Burn, X-Ray. Wax model. No. 92 X-ray burn involving right breast and axilla. Necrosis of tissue producing sloughing ulceration, the bottom of which includes pleura and lung tissue. X-ray treatment was applied for carcinoma of the breast. Colored, woman, age 35 years. Army Medical Museum model prepared by Dr. J.F. Wallis.

Wallis means that it was done during World War 1, because that's when he was on the staff. We might still have this model in historical collections, but that department was working at the warehouse today, and thus missed the coffee and cake that we had to celebrate the Museum's birthday.

So how does one find something in the Archives? We've got an internal database (or fifty) that you can access a derivative of at our Guide to Collections. With the help of contract Archivists from the Information Manufacturing Company, we're scanning tens of thousands of images per year and uploading them into an internal database, only available to our staff now, but eventually we'll open it to a wider audience. And some of the finding something is me or one of the other archivists knowing where something is because we put it away a decade ago or so.

Today is our birthday

So far the Museum's survived four name changes, at least 8 moves, several shutdowns for moves or wars, and is 146 years old today.
Surgeon General Hammond

In Circular No. 2, issued on May 21, 1862, Army Surgeon General William Hammond specifically stated "Medical Directors will furnish one copy of this circular to every medical officer in the department in which they are serving." (Henry p. 12) This circular established the Museum, stating:

As it is proposed to establish in Washington, an Army Medical Museum, Medical officers are directed diligently to collect, and to forward to the office of the Surgeon General, all specimens of morbid anatomy, surgical or medical, which may be regarded as valuable; together with projectiles and foreign bodies removed, and such other matters as may prove of interest in the study of military medicine or surgery.

These objects should be accompanied by short explanatory notes.

Each specimen in the collection will have appended the name of the medical officer by whom it was prepared.

Shortly after the initial circular letter was issued, Hammond recalled John Hill Brinton from duty on the western battlefields. Brinton arrived hoping to receive one of the newly-created medical inspectorships, a job for which he felt well-qualified. Instead, he was assigned to the examining board for surgeons, placed in charge of the Museum, and told to prepare the surgical history of the war. Brinton's colleague, Joseph Javier Woodward, had been assigned to the Surgeon General's Office on May 19, and was responsible for the medical (ie caused by disease) collections and history of the war.

2 articles on military medicine

Steven Solomon sent in these two links:

"Military medical advancements benefit civilian health care," by Navy Lt. Jennifer Cragg, American Forces Press Service - which is always nice of course, but here's the takeaway quote, "In today's war, in the combat theater, 97 percent of those people who
were wounded in theater survived those wounds because of the medical care," Dr. Kilpatrick said. "That's just a phenomenal number, and it's because that care is so immediate.

and

"AFMC surgeon general: joint medical teams saving lives," by Chuck Paone,66th Air Base Wing Public Affairs, and the quote to note is: But what's more, follow-on studies are now showing that military trauma care professionals are achieving identically dramatic fatality reductions at home. "That means they're bringing these skills back with them and getting the same results for people who suffer non-combat-related traumas," he said.

Prosthetics ruled equal, not better

A South African who races on two prosthetic legs, designed to mimic a cheetah's hind legs, can compete in the Olympics if he can qualify. The decision was made after testing his oxygen consumption to determine that he was in fact, working as hard as someone with two natural legs would be. I'll spare you my editorial comment on that and for more details, see "Double-Amputee Allowed To Compete for Olympic Bid: Appeals Court: No Edge Gained From Blades," By Craig Timberg, Washington Post Foreign Service, Saturday, May 17, 2008; Page A01.

And what about the future of Walter Reed (and thus the Museum?)

Beats me, but an article from the Post today had some interesting sentences, including "The 2009 defense authorization bill that emerged from a House committee late Wednesday would halt construction of replacement hospitals for Walter Reed Army Medical Center until the Defense Department demonstrates that it can deliver world-class health services." and "Murtha's concerns include his view that there has been insufficient oversight of the design of the new hospitals, as well as the fact that estimated costs for the expansion in Bethesda, which will be renamed Walter Reed, have increased to $940 million today from $201 million in May 2005."

See "House Panel to Delay Work on Two Projects: Bill Seeks Better Military Health Care," by Amy Gardner, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, May 16, 2008; Page B01.

A day in the life...

I've been realizing this blog is drifting towards aiming squarely at history of medicine types, so I'm going to try to wrench it in a slightly different direction. Here's how I spent part of my day as an archivist today.

I was walking through the exhibit floor this morning and heard voices coming out of our Human Body, Human Being exhibit. The exhibit flooded over the weekend when Washington got 5-7 inches of rain. That side of the museum is built into a hill and has been flooding off and on for about a decade now. On the past Monday, the exhibits and collection staff had dismantled the exhibits against the wall - on the urinary system and bones - and moved them out of the way so the building engineers could look up and say, "yup, it's leaking water."

The whole hall (the Anatifacts area in this map), which is about 1/4 of the exhibit floor, was closed all week, but this morning Steve Hill, head of our exhibits staff, Tim Clarke Jr, our public relations guy and Beth Eubanks, our registrar, were muscling some of the exhibit cases into a new configuration about 10 feet from the wall. I lent a hand and helped and a little after opening the cases were in place. Brian Spatola, collections manager of anatomical collections, brought the specimens back from storage and the four of them put the display back together. Meanwhile...

...I was leading a tour of people who had bought a silent auction benefit behind-the-scenes tour. Our former PR guy Steven Solomon had started these a few years back. We started in historical collections where collections manager Alan Hawk pulled out a bunch of surgical kits dating from the Civil War until World War II, and then showed them wax and plaster models of facial reconstruction surgery from the same time period. Anatomical curator Franklin Damann was giving a tour of his own in anatomical collections, so we swapped groups and he showed my group Civil War amputated femurs, Ham the space chimp, plastinated organs and a quick glance into the wet tissue room where specimens are stored in bottles of formalin.

We combined the two groups and neuroanatomical collections manager Archie Fobbs displayed some of our brain slides. Instead of making a microscope slide, his predecessors sectioned and mounted slices of whole brains and you can see stroke or tumor damage. I think the high point for the group was when Archie opened up his demo tub of a brain preserved in alcohol and let people handle it. Nobody was in the Human Developmental Anatomy Center, so I did a quick riff on scanning slides of embryos which had been collected 100 years ago to make first wax or plaster models of organ systems. These are now being scanned with the models made in the computer. Finally I gave my standard tour of the archives, including a letter signed by Walter Reed, a 1917 doctor's diary, a revised confidential asbestosis report for Johns Manville from 1949, a lantern slide photograph of a survivor from Hiroshima, an album of the museum's Civil War Surgical Photographs and some of our trade lit advertising material.

So there's a good bit of a typical day. If there's interest in more posts like this, comment below please.

New Grog Ration from Navy's medical historian

André B. Sobocinski, the Deputy Historian/ Publications Manager of the Office of the Historian of the Navy's Bureau of Medicine and Surgery (BUMED) has a new issue of The Grog Ration newsletter about medical naval history out now.

The table of contents:

Page 1: Care Amidst the Shortage: The Relationship between the American Red Cross and the Navy Nurse Corps in World War I by Jennifer Telford, RN, PhD
When the United States declared war on 6 April 1917, the nation had but a nucleus of an army and a navy. The swift growth of the number of troops within a year from 100,000 to 4 million men presented a problem of enormous magnitude to the nursing profession; it was a shortage of epic proportions. The Army Nurse Corps had a mere 400 nurses on active duty, while the Navy had 160. The need for a rapid expansion of nursing in wartime to provide care both on the home-front and overseas brought about a controversy over who, in fact, was qualified to serve. The role of Katrina Hertzer, the liaison officer between the Red Cross Nursing Service and the Navy Nurse Corps, and who aided in the enrollment of nurses into the Corps, is of particular interest.
Nursing leaders during World War I debated about whether or not minimally trained nurses' aides should be recruited to help offset the professional nursing shortage. The result was the formation of an Army School of Nursing and the enrollment of volunteer nurses' aides into the Red Cross. The recruitment of nurses' aides to offset the nursing shortage of the World War I era was a logical solution to meeting the needs for nursing personnel. Whether or not this action compromised the status of nursing as a profession is still a matter of interest.
This article is adapted from lectures given at the Society for the History of Navy Medicine (SHNM) session in Rochester, NY, and as part of the Surgeon General's Speaker Series (SGSS) in Bethesda, MD, in April 2008. A PowerPoint of her SHNM lecture can be found at http://www.history-navy-med.org/home.html. A video of her SGSS lecture can be accessed at http://www.health.mil.

Page 7: Elvis Has Boarded the Ship
In 1958, LTJG Julia Pickering was one of two Navy nurses serving aboard the troop transport USS General Randall (AP-115) in port at Brooklyn, NY. Also on board this ship was a newly enlisted Army sergeant who had already established his name as an American pop icon. In a 2004 interview with the Office of the Historian, Pickering remembered this special passenger.

Page 8: The Surgeon's Log: Navy Medicine in Washington, DC
In 1908 a young hospital apprentice named Albert B. Montgomery reported for duty at the Naval Hospital, Washington, DC, then located on old "Observatory Hill" in Foggy Bottom. Years later he looked back upon his experiences-from racing horse-driven ambulances on cobblestone streets to obtaining study specimens at the city morgue for Naval Medical School students.

Page 11: Scuttlebutt
Find out about the upcoming Navy medical events (e.g., film premieres and lectures).

Page 12: Navy Medical Quiz
Good luck on this issue's quiz. As always, the first person to submit correct answers to all questions will receive a special prize. The answers from our previous quiz can be found on page 13.