Letters Home from the Front

A few weeks ago we received a small collection of letters from the descendants of a World War 1 American Expeditionary Forces surgeon. I've been scanning them so we can give digital and printed copies back to the family. Today I came across one that I've transcribed to post here. The surgeon is Luther B. Otken. He served in France and in the US. I realize this isn't as good as the handwritten letter, but it was multiple pages. I will post a scan of a page here and there so you can get a feel for the real thing, but in the meantime, here's one letter home.

"Bordeaux Sunday Sept 22 1918
Dearest Mother,

I didn’t get my letter from home this week –however I got a bundle of papers from Sister.

Everything running along in its usual manner now. Work going very smoothly. We got in a lot of new patients this week, among them a lot of wounded German prisoners – all came from the St. Mihiel fight a rather stolid ignorant looking lot, some old, some mere boys, one a Lieut, looks to be about nineteen years old. About half of them came in on litters, badly wounded, our boys had certainly worked on them with hand grenades. All my boys are getting along nicely – all getting well. One of the nurses in BH114, the unit next to us, died Friday from pneumonia – don’t know what part of the States she came from.

Our boys won a great victory at St. Mihiel + today we got word that Metz is just about to fall – I think the morale of the German army is fast weakening.

I operated a second time on my face case this week and completed the job, think I am going to get a fine result.

On some of the field cards that came in on the wounded in this last convoy, I noticed where Maj. Ney was the operator in Evacuation Hospital #4 so guess he is over here now.

We have been having a quite a lot of rain and it has turned much cooler – the nights are cold. The days feel like our fall days. Makes me want to be back there again out in the pine hills once more.

We have been in France three months now – the 19th , in one way it seems a long time in another it seems that we got here but yesterday.

I don’t hardly think we will win this war before Xmas but I don’t think it will even last another year, the Allies are hitting them at all points and are giving them no rest so that the German reserves are just about used up.

Hope I get some mail from you next week, we are about due some more mail from the States.

Hope all at home keep in their usual good health. Give my best to Dr’s. Inirs[?] + Reahew.

Love to all at home
Luther

Capt LB Otken M.C.
US Base Hospital 22"

Museum on Wired's Science blog?

Tim and I talked to them recently about scanning our historical medical photographs, so perhaps we'll be online today? I think we got bumped by the space station's problem with satellite debris, which thankfully didn't turn into a bigger story.

Oh, the things you miss when you stay home

Who went to WonderCon, the comics convention in San Francisco last week? Nobody? Then you missed your chance to buy your very own plush stomach, intestine, or spleen, or gall bladder. You could have had your own uterus too, but would have had to give it back; they've been the victim of an "impromptu hysterectomy:" the ovaries can be pulled off and are of chokable size, I guess.
All courtesy of "I Heart Guts! The Happiest Internal Organs on Earth." (And thanks to Wired for the story.)

The Wonders of Flickr

A Flickr user by the name of Endless Forms Most Beautiful included some of my photographs as his/her favorites so of course I had to go check out this person to see how nefarious their intentions are. Endless Forms says on their profile that "I'm using this as a place to collect interesting things for inspiration and teaching" and what a wonderful collection of images they have! This set, called Kunstformen, draves.org is from a series of 100 lithographs entitled "Kunstformen der Natur," German for "Artforms of Nature", created by Ernst Haeckel in 1899-1904. Here's just one example, that reminded me of something seen through an electron microscope. It's a fascinating set of images.

"A Village Hospital 1928 Through 1953"

Another of our researchers has just had her book published. Beverly Moore emailed me late last week that her book, A Village Hospital 1928 through 1958, is now available online. It was a lot of fun working with Beverly, finding pictures of hospitals and nursing activities of a time long gone. Best of luck, Beverly!

The Ball Collection. The End.

The final step has been taken on the James Moores Ball ophthalmology collection that I worked on for lo those many months. It is now online. You may enjoy the finding aid at your leisure.

Post recommends "ancient museum of veterinary science, complete with flayed human cadavers"

See "A Brush With The Paris Art Scene: Out-of-the-Way Sites Show Off The Avant-Garde Side of the City," By Blake Gopnik, Washington Post Staff Writer, Sunday, March 8, 2009; Page F01 for his recommendation of the 250-year-old National Veterinary School's museum. Here's the details on visiting from the Post -

WHAT TO DO: National Veterinary School/Fragonard Museum (7 Avenue du General de Gaulle, Alfort, 011-33-(0)1-43-96-71-72, http://musee.vet-alfort.fr). Admission about $8.75, younger than 18 free.

Any of our readers ever been there?

New book based on NMHM collection available

Paul E. Sluby Sr. tracked our St. Elizabeths Hospital Collection down a few years ago and says his book "Burial Ledger of St. Elizabeths Hospital is a straight transcription of the ledger you copied for me. In 1982, I published "Civil War Cemeteries of the D.C. Metropolitan Area." In this I covered the St. Elizabeths Civil War cemetery on the west campus and the continuation of those burials on the east campus." While the original ledger is available to anyone who'd like to see it in our Archives, this transcription will be much easier for genealogists or historians to use.

MOMA updates website, can NMHM be far behind?

Yes.

But this article "To Ramp Up Its Web Site, MoMA Loosens Up," By RANDY KENNEDY, NY Times March 5, 2009 is pretty interesting. Although given our parent agency (the US Army), you'd never know "The era is one in which blogs, photo sharing, social networking, bookmarking and many other ways of creating art-loving online communities have become a much more important part of museum Web sites..."

Photo contest entered by Archives staff

Kathleen, who takes a lot of photographs for us in the Museum, entered a Your-Dream-Photography-Assignment contest and would appreciate it if you would take a minute to vote for her and her idea of photographing religious architecture across America. You do that by clicking on the little box on the leftish side of the screen that has the word “Pics” in it. Here is the link: http://www.nameyourdreamassignment.com/the-ideas/tiz_herself/picturing-god-revealing-americas-religious-architecture/ You can see her photos on Flickr.

Of course if she wins, she'll be asking for a year off...

Osler and the study of death lecture online

John Erlen of the University of Pittsburgh sent in this video lecture link today, which I'm watching now.

February 26, 2009
Paul Mueller
Associate Professor, Department of Medicine, Mayo Clinic
“Foundations of Palliative Care: William Osler’s Study of the Act of Dying.”

Mueller found Osler's original statistical card study at McGill University and goes through it - very good! I do think that deleting the names of people from 1900 is over-'protecting' privacy.

History of Medicine videos from UVA on YouTube

Well, this is neat:

The Claude Moore Health Sciences Library and the University of Virginia School of Medicine are pleased to announce a new service: Medical Center Hours are now available for viewing on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/uvamch. Subscriptions to the channel are offered as a convenient feature for the new service. We encourage you to subscribe! The Medical Center Hour (MCH) is the School of Medicine's weekly forum on medicine and society. Produced by the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Humanities, The Medical Center Hour is an hour-long program held on Wednesdays from mid-September through March. Many Medical Center Hours are History of the Health Sciences Lectures, co-sponsored by the Library’s Historical Collections. The first MCH available on YouTube is Robert Martensen, M.D., Ph.D., presenting “A Doctor’s Reflections on Illness in a High Tech Era,” on 18 February 2009. Dr. Martensen’s talk is a History of Health Sciences Lectures, all available from this point forward at http://www.hsl.virginia.edu/historical/lectures.cfm.

'Brought to Life' Exhibit Features Battlefield Surgery Web Exercise

More than a few blogs are pointing out the opening of the new 'Brought to Life' exhibit at the Science Museum in London. This is from the Wellcome Library's blog:

Today has seen the launch of 'Brought to Life: Exploring the History of Medicine', a new online resource from the Science Museum.

The website showcases more than 2,500 objects, the majority of which were originally collected by or on behalf of Sir Henry Wellcome (1853-1936). Mostly populated by items now held in the Science Museum’s stores, the website also draws on items from the Wellcome Library.

'Brought to Life' places these items in their historical contexts, giving information on practitioners, their techniques, the medical objects they used and the patients they aimed to heal, all wrapped up in a timeline stretching from Ancient Egypt to the present day. There are also ten multimedia games, including a trip to a plague-ridden town in the Middle Ages and an immersive account of battlefield surgery through the ages.

Considering our own interests in battlefield surgery, I thought it was worth re-posting the Wellcome note here. I checked out the battlefield surgery exercise, pretty cool stuff.

Enjoy.

Medical Museums

I've been planted in front of my computer all day, editing photos. I came across this one from the History of Medicine museum in Paris


which reminded me a lot of the old Army Medical Museum in Washington with the similarities of the upper gallery, the rows of cases, the light flooding in....
.

The VisualMD

Anatomical Travelogue, a medical visualization company, has created a new site that should be pretty neat when its done, it's in beta testing right now. The site has health guides, a library of images and videos on various topics. A lot of images are recycled from some books they've done on various health topics. A lot of those images have been shown at the museum in past exhibits and some of the embryology images are from pictures and data from the Human Developmental Anatomy Center.

Researchers from Japan lead to news story

Here's a story on a 1954 fisherman whose death the AFIP consulted on: "US sought tissue from dead fisherman after 1954 H-bomb test," Chiba (Japan), Feb 23. Researchers from Japan were in last month, looking at various collections relating to radiation injury and then we got a call from a reporter a few days later.

James Hansen, the person who sent in the case and later donated his records of it, became the director of the AFIP in the 1970s and his daughter is planning on donating his personal papers to us this year. I didn't read the documents (which are in the AFIP Historical Files under "Hansen" for those interested), so I can't vouch for the accuracy of the news story. DeCoursey was on the ground after the atomic bombing of Japan, and took some motion picture footage, so it would make sense that he retained his interest in radiation injuries.

Walter Reed medical center WW1 photos appearing on Flickr

Kathleen's uploading a bunch of World War I photos from Walter Reed hospital up on our Flickr account now, since she purchased a Pro account for us. She's also put up some veterinary shots.

We've been pulling these photographs for a year to possibly include in a book on the campus, which is just about finished now. Produced by the Borden Institute, it should be going to the Government Printing Office this coming week, and be available for purchase by April. The photographs included come from many places including us, WRAMC's archives, the National Archives, WRAMC's Dept. of Public Works archive, and John Pierce, a collector and historian.

As of today, Flickr's stats are reporting that our 755 photographs have over 110,000 views. Web2.0 is an amazing thing.

Thanks for checking us out!

The day I merged the 4 Flickr accounts into one, and talked about it here, our viewership soared on the combined account: 2790 views on that day alone. Thank you!

Baby's Got a Brand New Name

I had a "duh!" moment today when I talked to Mike about coming up with a name for our combined Flickr account. Medical Museum just tripped off his tongue and so it is. You can find us here at Flickr.

Moving Day

This morning I finished moving both of the remaining Flickr accounts to consolidate them into one. Feel free to visit and add tags and send us emails if we need to add individual photos to sets or even add more sets.

We're also batting around ideas of what to call it, rather than 99129398@N00. National Museum of Health and Medicine is a little wordy, NMHM too cryptic, and we've blanked out on anything else. We could use some ideas.

We're Migrating...

...to one Flickr account. We finally have a pro account so I took a leap of faith and downloaded a migration program that I had to have Microsoft Explorer (ugh) for, downloaded that, and am now in the process of migrating Otisarchives2 to Otisarchives1. It takes a while so the other two accounts probably won't be done until tomorrow.

Brazilian pathology blog

Here's a tip from one of the pathologists at work - his friend Luciano Franco of Brazil has started The Background Doc, a blog about interesting autopsies he's done. Of the first four posts, I'd say two were of general interest - polycystic kidney disease and worms in the gut.

Sec of Smithsonian on future

Our friends at the Medical Museion linked to this first - "Wayne Clough is still trying to connect the Smithsonian Institution"

Washington City Paper Best of DC 2009 poll

The City Paper's just started its 2009 poll for Best of DC and you can vote for the museum. Go check it out and vote now.

City of Las Cruces City Museums annual report.

City of Las Cruces City Museums annual report? Why you ask? Museum exhibit dept. alum Carey Crane's heading a department out there now.

Leo Slater lecture on malaria at UMD

The cover of his new book is a photograph from us -

The Maryland Colloquium on the History of Technology, Science, and Environment (MCHOTSE) is pleased to announce its session for March 5, 2009.

MALARIA & WAR: THE U.S. ANTIMALARIAL PROGRAM IN WORLD WAR II
Leo B. Slater, author of "War and Disease: Biomedical Research on Malaria in the Twentieth Century" (Rutgers University Press, 2009).

The Colloquium meets in room TLF (Taliaferro Hall) 2110 at the University of Maryland, College Park. Social 'hour' with refreshments, 4:00-4:30 pm; presentation and discussion, 4:30-6:00 pm.

[no precirculated paper available for this talk]

ABSTRACT
Malaria-a major cause of mortality and morbidity during the twentieth century-remains one of the leading killers in the world today. Malaria's enormous impact on human populations throughout the modern era has often put this disease at the center of colonial expansion, warfare, economic transformation, and North/South global tensions. In the late 1930s, the growing global conflict brought new attention to malaria.

The US antimalarial program during World War II was a Manhattan Project for biomedicine. From 1939 to 1946, it screened some 14,000 compounds for antimalarial activity, clinically ratified atabrine as the drug of choice in 1943, and, by war's end, identified chloroquine as a superior compound. Initiated by the National Research Council, the program drew on a set of intellectual and organizational resources and models extending back to the German pharmaceutical and dye industries and to such domestic institutions as the Rockefeller Institutes and Foundation. Prospectively, the wartimeantimalarial program deserves historical attention as both an undertaking in its own right-one that helped to safeguard millions of GIs-and as a model for future large-scale biomedical research projects. Its later use as a model was perhaps most clearly seen at the National Institutes of Health.

The innovations of the US wartime antimalarial program chiefly lay in three areas: administration, scale, and communication. The program produced not just research findings, novel compounds, and clinical protocols, it also developed new organizational structures for scientific cooperation and distributed research networks. I argue that wartime work was essential to the development of NIH, if only because the confused and faltering structures of the early war years, 1939-1943, suggest that an organizational infrastructure for large scale, multi-center cooperative research did not exist prior to World War II.

****

Taliaferro Hall is up the hill past the Memorial Chapel, off of U.S. Rte. 1 (Baltimore Ave.) in College Park. The University's web site will provide a map as well as advice on parking [see: http://www.parking.umd.edu/themap; look for building 043]. Many restricted lots at the university are available to the public after 4:00 pm, but attendees are advised to read all parking lot signs carefully. Lots C and L are the closest unrestricted lots (after 4 pm) to Taliaferro Hall.

Calling All Knitters!

On Saturday, February 28, from 2-5 p.m. the NMHM will host a Knitting for Marines charity event to make and distribute helmet liners to Marines stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan. The liners help to protect our Marines and keep them warm during the harsh winters in these countries.

If you don't know how to knit in the round, this is a great time to learn. Instructors will be on site to help you through the project. If you are an experienced knitter and wish to get an early start on the project, you may download the knitting pattern.

I hope you'll join us! This will be an excellent opportunity to see our new exhibit, "Balad: Trauma Bay II."

More Lincoln news, this time mentioning the Army Medical Museum!

Another in recent news clips mentioning the Museum, though this one is a little different...

Last night was the official gala re-opening for Ford's Theatre after its two-year renovation. In this article on Bloomberg today you will find mention of the Army Medical Museum (today's NMHM). Here's the money paragraph:

In the aftermath of the assassination, the government bought the theater, which dates to 1861, from Ford for $100,000 and gave it to the War Department for use as storage space and an Army Medical Museum.

This news on the same day our exhibit received the last major element for installation - the remnants of a flag that hung in the state box at Ford's the night Lincoln was shot.

Enjoy.

Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America lecture this Saturday

Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America

When: Saturday, February 14, 2009, 11:00 a.m.

Where: Russell Auditorium, National Museum of Health and Medicine (AFIP, Bldg. 54)

What: Did syphilis travel from the New World to Europe on Columbus’ ships? What remedies did Lewis and Clark use to treat the disease on their expedition? Why were so many women with venereal disease quarantined in America in both world wars? What impact did the introduction of penicillin have on the spread of venereal disease? Join us for this Valentine’s Day talk with noted medical historian John Parascandola as he discusses his book, "Sex, Sin, and Science: A History of Syphilis in America." A book signing will follow the presentation.

Cost: Free

Odd copies of our Civil War pics in the Library of Congress

I saw one of these pictures referenced in a paper on Civil War wounded (more about that paper anon). They are linked from a nice little page on enlisted soldiers in the Civil War, which I thought was an excellent finding aid.


The top photograph, is a copy photo of four of our Surgical Photographs. The Library isn't quite sure who is in the picture, so I sent them this information via their Ask a Librarian interface:

Brink, John, Pvt. Co. K., 11th Pennsylvania Cavalry Reproduction number: LC-B8184-10376 - upper left. (Surgical Photograph 208)

Decker, Samuel H., Pvt. Co. I, 9th U.S. Artillery Reproduction number: LC-B8184-10376 - lower left (Surgical Photograph 205)

Shutter, Allison, Drummer, Co. C, 7th Pennsylvania Reserves - lower right (Surgical Photograph 204)

Warden, Sergeant. - upper right. (Surgical Photograph 207) - this may have been a fake name. He was found on the streets of Washington and came to the Museum for a photograph, but they never found a record of him.



LC-B8184-10377 Smith, Eben - man on lower left, w/ amputated leg. (Surgical photograph 029)

Volk, Edward, Pvt. Co. D., 55th Ohio Volunteers, Reproduction number: LC-B8184-10377 - skull in upper right corner (Surgical Photograph 212)

LC-B8184-10377 - lower right - not a Civil War soldier - Pvt. John Schranz, 7th Austrian Feldjagers (Surgical photograph 247)

The other skull is anonymous.

We've actually scanned all 400 of these images at 900 dpi - we just haven't figured out how to put them on the web for everyone yet.

Lincoln artifacts at Museum featured in Post

This article talks a bit about the Museum's Lincoln objects, and has pictures of them -
"A Curious-Looking Hero Still Mesmerizes the Nation: Even Tiniest Lincoln Relics Command Reverence," By Michael E. Ruane, Washington Post Staff Writer, Tuesday, February 10, 2009; Page A01.

Cartoons at Walter Reed hospital

Here's a couple of pictures with cartoon themes that have shown up in the process of doing a photo book on Walter Reed Army Medical Center:



Early 1970s ward in Walter Reed Army Medical Center hospital where soldiers wounded in Vietnam were treated. Note the Uncle Scrooge poster on the wall. From the WRAMC DPW collection.



Garry Trudeau visits wounded soldier at Walter Reed Army Medical Center hospital. Courtesy of the Stripe newspaper.

Lincoln Bicentennial Goes Into Overdrive

As we get closer (just a few more days!) to the actual bicentennial of Abraham Lincoln's birth, the pace of news coverage - about Lincoln himself and celebrations in DC and nationwide - is getting ramped up to a fever pitch.

Our new exhibit 'Abraham Lincoln: The Final Casualty of the War' - which Kathleen blogged about earlier - is included in the long list of exhibits in and around DC that are centered on the slain president. So, it's natural then that we're getting some collateral coverage (did I just coin that phrase?) in other write-ups of exhibits at Library of Congress or Smithsonian, or the re-opening at Ford's Theatre like in this article here. (Regrettably, the hyperlink they offer is incorrect. But the name and location is there.)

I'll try to make sure I post other links to worthwhile news coverage as it comes in.

Have you seen the new exhibit in the gallery yet? Are you planning a visit to DC and a visit to the Museum? Let us know about your experiences.

Death of a donor

Almost 20 years ago, Mrs. Dilorenzo contacted us about her husband, Dr. Anthony Dilorenzo's medical material. Alan and I went to her home and picked up a lot of pharmaceuticals, advertising material, books and some medical equipment. These types of visits are always tough, but have to be done. Mrs. Dilorenzo herself passed away recently - "Julie DiLorenzo Church Member," Washington Post Friday, February 6, 2009; Page B07. The collection of her husband's work is available in the Museum.

A Day in the Life

Last Friday, a British film crew crew came in on behalf of the History Channel to shoot some footage for a special on ... Lincoln! That was a shocker (in Washington now, every other thing is about Abraham Lincoln).

The crew had a team of 4 - director, videographer, sound man, and general fixer. They filmed parts of our new Lincoln exhibit (see?) and then shot some of Tim talking in front of parts of the Civil War exhibit. Then it was my turn.

I talked about surgery and amputations in front of the large mural in the Battlefield Surgery exhibit, then about reparative (ie plastic surgery) in front of the case that Alan and Steve did in that exhibit, and then talked briefly about Field Day, our picture of a pile of amputated limbs at Harewood Hospital.

Then the fun began. We went back to the Archives where they turned off all the lights and set up some of theirs with blue filters for that spooky 'archives' effect. I'm thinking we need to switch over to this permanently to cut down the number of walk-in requests. Then they filmed me turning the movable aisle handles over and over again. Then walking into an aisle over and over again. Then opening a bound volume of Civil War photographs over and over again. I think you're getting the picture (and this was a very good crew, who were working quickly).

I'm not a big fan of doing tv - it's too much like making sausage. Still it's neat when one of your neighbors rides by and says, "I saw you on tv yesterday" as happened to me last week.

Wow Wow Wow, Ophthalmology and Dissections

The Ball Collection, and I hope you're not bored to tears with it yet, continues to wow me. Here are the treasures I uncovered today, and no pun intended. All typos are mine alone.

Acc 20836-14 Dissection of the head to show the relation of the eyeball to the orbital margin, the course of the optic nerve, the position of the optic chiasma, the trochlear nerve in its whole course, the cavernous sinus, and the semilunar or Gasserian ganglion.






Acc 20836-10 The obicularis oculi muscle dissected away from the lateral side and swung medially to show the direct continuity of its pars lacrimalis with the pretarsal or pars tarsalis fibers which run along the lid margins. The relation to the upper part of the lacrimal sac, which has been exposed by cutting through the lacrimal fascia, is shown.




Acc 20836-8 Dissection of the eyelids, third stage. The orbicularis oculi and the septum orbitale have been completely removed, and the fore edge of the aponeurosis of the levator cut away to expose the tarsal plate; the orbital fat has been cleared away. The preparation shows the supra-orbital and supra-trochlear nerves, the pulley of the superior oblique muscle, the anastomosis between the ophthalmic and angular veins, the inferior oblique muscle with its so-called "check ligament" (the only instance of this structure the writer has met), and the lacrimal gland subdivided into its two parts by the lateral horn of the aponeurosis of the levator.





Acc 20836-6 The middle concha has been pulled upwards to expose the middle meatus. The position of the fossa for the lacrimal sac relative to this wall was ascertained by driving pins through from the opposite side and is outlined in black. Rods have been passed through the opening of the sphenoid sinus and down the infundibulum of the frontal sinus; the latter leads into the hiatus semilunaris, which is bounded above by the rounded bulla ethmoidalis and below by the processus uncinatus; the ostium maxillare of the antrum is also seen.




Acc 20836-9 The relations of the lacrimal gland. Dissection of the left orbit from above and also in front to show the aponeurosis of the levator palpebrae superioris muscle and the lacrimal gland. The pulley of the superior oblique and its tendon are also seen. Natural size.

Anatomy for the Younger Set

In one of those quirky, roundabout ways you have of finding sites on the internet comes American Science and Surplus, which has Anatomical Foam Fun:

Not just for toddlers anymore! While you can't start too young prepping for MCATs, our foam puzzles are must-haves for anyone planning a career as a gastroenterologist or orthopedic surgeon. You get (2) flexible, dense-foam puzzles in vivid colors, 11" x 6-1/4" x 5/16" thick. One is a 14-piece jigsaw of the digestive system, the other is a 21-piece skeleton model. Both have all the relevant parts labeled.

A bargain at $3.95 for two different puzzles. I'd show them but haven't figured out how to copy the image over.

NLM digitizes Journal of National Medical Association

PubMed Central Adds Historically Significant Journal of the National Medical Association (1909-2007) to Its Free Online Holdings

In celebration of Black History Month, the National Library of Medicine is pleased to announce an important addition to PubMed Central (PMC), its free digital archive of full-text journal articles: the complete archive of the Journal of the National Medical Association (JNMA), which observes its centennial this year. To see the archive, please visit: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/tocrender.fcgi?journal=655&action=archive

The National Medical Association (NMA), established in 1895, is the largest and oldest national organization representing African American physicians and allied health professionals in the United States. The JNMA was published quarterly from 1909 to 1938, bimonthly from 1940 to 1977, and monthly since 1978. The archive currently represents over 77,000 digitized pages of issues, cover to cover, through 2007. Current content will be coming at a later date.



Since its founding, this landmark journal has enabled African American health professionals to keep current regarding the latest medical and public health practices, even in the face of segregation and discrimination. This archive provides historical insight into the social, medical and public health issues that continue to be of particular concern to African American patients and physicians. It has also served as a venue to challenge disparaging interpretations of African American health history published in other medical and social science journals. The collection is of great interest to U.S. and international researchers concerned with the societal impact of health care inequalities. Scholars seeking to understand the historic barriers faced by the African American patient and physician will find this collection to be an invaluable resource.

To learn more about PubMed Central, or to browse its contents, go to: http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov.


Michael J. North, northm@mail.nlm.nih.gov
Head of Rare Books & Early Manuscripts
History of Medicine Division
National Library of Medicine
8600 Rockville Pike
Bethesda, MD 20894

(301) 496-9204 * fax (301) 402-0872
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd

Sickles at Gettysburg book PR

As most people who know about the Museum know, we've got part of Dan Sickles that he left behind at Gettysburg. Here's some PR about a new book by Jim Hessler which undoubtedly talks about what he left behind:

Many of you have asked me to keep you updated on the status of my Dan Sickles biography- "Sickles at Gettysburg". It is finally done and will be published on May 1, 2009! The book is full-length (400+ pages), hard cover, with maps and photos. I cover Sickles' entire life (including the murder trial, Chancellorsville, his efforts to remove George Meade from command, his expulsion from the NY Monuments Commission, etc.) with the primary focus, of course, on Gettysburg.

The book will retail at $32.95, and I intend to have signed copies available for a lower price sometime around publication (although I don't yet know that price). I did want to let you know, however, that Amazon is currently offering a pretty good pre-publication deal: $21.75 + free shipping eligibility. It's probably a few dollars lower than what I will be able to offer later, so if you are watching your money right now, I don't know how long Amazon will offer it at this price. (The author doesn't get consulted on these things.) Of course, if you do buy from Amazon, I'll be happy to sign it the next time I see you.

The Amazon link is here (or go to Amazon and search 'Sickles at Gettysburg') :

http://www.amazon.com/SICKLES-GETTYSBURG-Controversial-Civil-Committed-Gettysburg/dp/1932714642/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233799248&sr=8-1

You can read more about the book at my website: www.sicklesatgettysburg.com

The Lincoln Exhibit

Pictures from today's installation of the new Lincoln exhibit:

This one's not actually from today, but it shows our registrar with a drawer that slides in under the exhibit case which will hold a moisture-controlling substance.

















Jim is placing an original drawing of Lincoln's death scene, by Hermann Faber.
















The probe that doctors used to try to find the bullet in Lincoln's brain is being marked for position.















Now that the positions are marked and plexiglass posts are in place to hold everything where it needs to be, the panel is taken to the exhibit floor and placed on the stand. Jim and Steve fine-tune placement of documents.















The case's contents have been carefully laid into place and now Jim and Steve lower the plexi cover ve-e-e-ry gently and settle it down and around the platform.




















The contents of the second case have been prepped by being backed with stiffening board and held in place with mylar strips. Some of the things on this table are an account by the first doctor to treat Lincoln, Charles A. Leale (coincidentally, this pamphlet was republished by Dr. Leale's estate on the 100th anniversary of Lincoln's birth), and a tear sheet from the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, which lists Lincoln as another casualty of the war. He is listed in the book as A____ L____.
















The second case has been brought to the exhibit floor and more items have been added, including a lock of Lincoln's hair, fragments from his skull, a blood-stained cuff from a doctor who treated him, and the bullet that killed him.

Uh-oh, the cuff is in the wrong place. Jim is holding the envelope that held the cuff when it was donated to the museum as Andrea suggests the correct location for the cuff.















Jim removes Lincoln's life mask from the temporary storage cabinet to add to the 3rd cabinet. Sorry for the blur.















The case's platform is placed on the floor, the Lincoln mask (a life mask, not a death mask) is lowered onto batting, and we all hit the floor, making sure there's plenty of clearance.











All the items have been installed and the completed exhibit is open for visitors.

Non-ophthalmic images from the Ball Collection

After a couple of weeks of insanely fast-paced chaos in the archives, I was able to get back to the Ball Collection today for a short time. Here are two scans I made that don't begin to do the original images justice. I wish I could show just how gorgeous the originals are. They are both from Accession 18846: Book: “A Series of Engravings Explaining the Course of the Nerves with an Address to Young Physicians on the Study of the Nerves,” by Charles Bell, First American edition, 1818.



















The ghost image of the lower leg and foot you see here has been transferred from the page, where it was folded up on itself.

Skull from 54th Mass Viewable in New 'Virtual' Exhibit

We recently published two new 'virtual' exhibits and one of those new pages offers a link to Black History Month, but as those new pages might be hard to find (go here, scroll down to the bottom of the page), I thought I would post some easy links and a bit of teaser text.

An aside: Are these 'virtual' exhibits? Is there even a standard definition for 'virtual' exhibits? It's an easy term to apply in this case as the pages offer virtually most, if not all, of the text and photographs (and photos of objects) for temporary exhibits that have been previously installed in the Museum's galleries. I am a fan of capturing that exhibit text and some/most/all of the photographs (or photos of objects) and offering it for posterity via the Web site. Hopefully these offer some value to our Web visitors (which gets back to last week's conversation about The Long Tail.)

Back to the show...

One of the new pages features some interesting information and photographs of objects from the William Holland Wilmer Ophthalmology Collection.

The second page - titled "Effects of Canister Shot in the Civil War: Skull of a soldier of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers" - features the skull of a man who was a member of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers. Civil War-types will know that this was the unit depicted in the major motion picture Glory. (I mention that with some caution, as I know the movie usually prompts some interesting conversations about historical accuracy in film.)

Here is a bit of the text from the virtual exhibit itself, which is available online here:

This skull was discovered in 1876 on Morris Island, South Carolina, near the site of Battery Wagner, a powerful earthwork fort that had protected the entrance to Charleston Harbor during the Civil War.

The skull belonged to a man of African descent—a soldier of the famous 54th Massachusetts Volunteers, which had led the assault on Wagner on the night of July 18, 1863. Of approximately 600 men who made the charge, 256 were killed, wounded, or missing.

Let us know what you think!

Museum Audio Tour Now Available for Download

If you've had the opportunity to visit the Museum in the last year or so, you might have seen that we added a free audio tour. The first phase was installed in early 2008 and featured many of the Museum's long-standing exhibits and an update was added this past November that featured our two newest installations (RESOLVED and Balad.)

(At left, that's the graphic that graces some of the audio tour materials.)

But now, you aren't limited to listening to the audio tour just while visiting the Museum - enjoy it at home, the office or on the road! Visit the new Audio Tour page on the Museum's Web site and you'll find links to the series of MP3s that make up the tour. It's listed by exhibit with associated links to relevant Web content, and note that the list runs onto two pages!

Next time you are at the Museum, consider adding the audio tour to your visit. It's free and you can check out the listening wands at the Museum's information desk. Groups can reserve the audio tour, too. More information about the audio tour is here.

Let us know if you find a link that goes awry. Enjoy the downloads and tell your friends!

Abraham Lincoln Exhibit Coming up at NMHM, exhibit design by Navjeet Singh Chhina

Heres an early rendering of the exhibit. Kathleen took the photo of the the museum floor and I used that as a canvas to map the 3-d design to it, Its good to see what things look like at scale. I used photoshop, illustrator, Indesign, Vectorworks, and Cinema 4-d.

BTS on the new Lincoln exhibit

I've been able to get a few pictures of the in-progress Lincoln exhibit that will open next week at the museum.


This is the existing exhibit, one that's been on display long-term.


















The new cases that have just been delivered, and the backdrop panels that will have different things displayed on them:
















How the exhibit team plans what goes where, and will it fit:
















Navjeet, our immensely creative Exhibits Specialist, moving one of the panels (this is just for show; he was actually critically eyeing the existing set-up from a chair out front, but that doesn't photograph so well):

Historical Collections staffing at the Museum

Alan, our longterm collections manager, is off doing something more exciting for a year. Any queries about historical artifacts like equipment, microscopes, scalpels, wax models and the like should go to Jim Curley who's acting in his stead. Curley can be reached at 202-782-2206 or james.curley@afip.osd.mil

Long Tail idea, continued

I've gone on about this topic in the comments to Tim's post from earlier this week, but here's another example from the Smithsonian in today's Wash Post - "Going to Meet Its Public: Indian Museum Will Put Entire Collection Online," By Jacqueline Trescott, Washington Post Staff Writer, Friday, January 30, 2009; Page C01.

This Museum has a built-in lead - they were moved down to Washington recently (in Museum terms) and I'm sure they had excellent records and photos created at that time. When they set up the Museum, they decided to forego exhibit labels in the cases and instead provided a computer screen in front of the exhibit where you could look up what you were actually looking at (I despised this, because only 1 person at a time could look at an exhibit label and I didn't understand why they didn't just put that on the web back then).

So even with a running start, we read "The online project, part of the museum's regular Web site, will begin with 5,500 items and photographs. The goal is to have all 800,000 objects on the Web site, but it will take at least four years to achieve that. ... The museum has raised $750,000 for the first four years of the project, and Gover said a deadline has not been set for the Fourth Museum completion."

So that long tail takes a while to get long enough to trail off...

Shhh, we had Flickr access today!

When I got to work this morning I had no network access at all. No email, no shared drives. When the network finally came up I checked out my (work-related, I swear) blogs on Google reader and actually saw pictures! Normally I just get text, and there was Mike's smiling face from Tuesday's post.
Hmmm, I thought. Could it be that we had access to other very bad things that we're normally blocked from? Is the suspense building for you like it was for me? In went www.flickr.com and there it was. Wow. Like a second chance at life. Quick, now, before they glom on to the fact that I'm at a banned place, what can I post? Eight went up before I got back to real work, so take a look.

Happy Anniversary, Mike!

Anyone who's read the Annual Report for the Archives (raise your hand if you did; there's a prize for you) will know that 2009 marks Mike's 20th year at the museum. Today we had a mini celebration at the Collections meeting and caught Mike totally off guard. It was worth making those cakes from scratch (beat the butter for 3 minutes and 14 seconds, add 1/4 cup less 1 tablespoon of sugar at a time...) just to see the surprise on his face when he realized they were for him.

So, Mike, I won't say "And 20 more!!!" because I still have to work with you, but congratulations on the first 20 and hang in there for as long as you can.



P.S. That red thing on the cake is, as I said at the meeting, the closest thing Harris Teeter had to a superhero anything. It's a kind of nerf football with a copyright-violation Spiderman pattern to it.

Gretchen

For those in the "business" (a term that hardly describes the work that goes on in places like the museum), the late Gretchen Worden of the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia was the undisputed kahuna.
Gracious, mysterious, witty beyond mere mortals and a true force to be reckoned with, she was the Mutter.

The Mutter just unveiled her portrait. We can only hope to achieve the same in the afterlife.

[Mike here - it's a lithotrite for breaking bladder stones - aarggh! as Charlie Brown might say. Paul says that Chris Quigley has more info on her blog.

The Long Tail, Museums, the Smithsonian, oh my...

There is simply too much awesomeness in this article in today's Washington Post about this past weekend's Smithsonian 2.0 event. Please, read it, and I imagine that for curators working in today's environment, the quote from Anderson in the eleventh paragraph from the end, well, that might prove to be the fodder for watercooler talk, eh? I don't think I agree with Anderson, though. There will always be a place for the expert, especially in museums.

Here's one paragraph though, referring to Wired magazine's Chris Anderson:

"That would be Wired's Anderson. His "long tail" hypothesis has revolutionized how Web entrepreneurs think about their businesses. The basic idea, he explained at the event, was that in the Industrial Age, sales of anything were limited by shelf space. The result was the elevation of a priesthood of curators, editors and gatekeepers whose job it was to try to winnow through everything and offer up what they thought might be the best of the best -- or at least the most likely to sell to the most people. The Web has changed all that..."

I am a huge fan of The Long Tail. Like Good to Great by Jim Collins, it's the sort of book that offers a seachange in how you could consider approaching your work on a daily basis. I think about the long tail all the time in my work in communications. Both books, and their authors, are worth checking out if you've not had a chance to follow these movements (that's what they are, if you think about it) yet.

Now, go read. And let us know if you are reading something interesting!

Coming up at NMHM in Jan, Feb, and Mar

(Updated with an actual title. Sorry about that...)

Coming up at NMHM in the next few months:


How can you stay on top of the latest news and events?

1. Visit our Events page often.
2. Subscribe to our print newsletter Flesh & Bones or request a subscription to our new-ish monthly e-newsletter.
3. Subscribe to this blog (Feedburner offers those options, see the right-side of the blog.)

Hope that helps! See you at the Museum!

The Museum on Facebook

As Andrea mentioned in the previous post, the Museum now has a Facebook Page and you are invited to join.

I've been on Facebook for some time and its been an interesting experience, maybe better described as a learning experience. As we've thought of additional ways to promote the Museum in this new year, Facebook and other social media platforms always come up. I've done some reading on this - it's not hard to find critical, constructive thinking about the use of social media in museums - and as we explore the medium further, and even explore other platforms possibly in the future, I'll link more often to others who are talking and thinking about these issues.

Dozens, maybe hundreds, of museums (including heavyweights like the Brooklyn Museum of Art and cousins of ours like at the Navy Museum here in DC) have taken to Facebook in recent months in order to engage with the audience that the platform offers. If the research is accurate, there are potential segments of our core audiences that are best reached through platforms like Facebook. These are audiences who don't necessarily subscribe to e-newsletters or respond to appeals through traditional print advertising campaigns. It's not fair to generalize these audiences as simply 'young people' and move on: Facebook audiences do cross generational divides especially as the services grow in popularity. The number of baby-boomer moms joining FB is growing, I think, so that those moms can communicate with their children living in faraway states. (That's just one example I've seen on several occasions with my own circle of FB friends in recent months.)

So, here we are. It's likely we'll make a few missteps as we get used to how to use the Page and its features. But I remain convinced that this is a great direction for us. I hope you will join us.

The page, for now, includes links to two of our newest exhibits, as well as links to the Museum's five major collections. You will see that we take advantage of a Flickr badge to show off the latest images from the Archives' most recent Flickr uploads. And we'll promote new programs there, too, as well as news and notes from around the Museum.

Hopefully this link works: NMHM on Facebook. Obviously, you need to join Facebook to get the full picture. Let me know if that link fails. If you are already on Facebook, simply search for the Museum and look for the official page. Click the button to become a fan and let us know what you think.

It's a work in progress, which will have to be worked on away from work since social media sites like Facebook are blocked at the office. That doesn't diminish our enthusiasm for the project, though.

See you on Facebook.

NMHM Facebook page

The Museum has a new Facebook page. Search for National Museum of Health and Medicine and become a fan!

White House Physician Talk Set for 2/4/09

Thanks, Suture for a Living, for the link to our upcoming 'Health, Illness and the Presidency' program on Feb. 4th. I'm looking forward to this talk and we're hoping that it's well attended. The speaker worked as White House Physician for three presidents and was at Walter Reed, and we're glad Dr. Mohr was interested in talking about his experiences at the Museum. Are you planning on attending? Let us know in comments! See you there.

Ghoulish ride

Ghoulish ride
Originally uploaded by rasputina2

Another one. I can't contain myself.

Spinal

Spinal
Originally uploaded by rasputina2

I just might ride again if I could have a bike like this.

New malaria book by one of our researchers

One of our researchers, Leo B. Slater, just let us know that his book has been published. That's our photo on the cover, which has been cropped a bit and edited a bit more, and here it is, full size, from one of our Flickr accounts.

National Museum of Health & Medicine is CLOSED TODAY

The National Museum of Health & Medicine is CLOSED TODAY because the Walter Reed Center is shut for the Inauguration.

Otis Historical Archives Annual Report part 4 and final

Rhode served on the AFIP's Institutional Review Board and HIPPA committees as well as Museum committees including the Admin group, the collections committee (as did Stocker), and the database committee (as did Stocker). Volunteering to do so, Stocker photographed parts of collections for use in the museum’s newsletter, for exhibit production, and for uploading to the Internet Archive, and has photographed both in-progress and completed exhibits. Montgomery and Strigel worked on a brochure on the museum’s photographs and IMC’s role in scanning them, which is still in draft form.

Gaskins retired in September. He had been part of the Museum staff since 2004, but he was a mainstay of AFIP for years longer than that. He had been with the Institute for seventeen years, joining it from the Federal Records Center in Suitland. Gaskins singlehandedly ran the fifty-year old Medical Illustration Service Library of 3,000 boxes of hundreds of thousands of photographs. The library was the Department of Defense's official medical photograph repository from 1949 on into the 1990s and he inherited all of the responsibility for the Library as staff left and were not replaced. Gaskin's sense of duty and responsibility preserved the Library, through at least two moves, and in spite of disinterest or worse on the part of some. Gaskins joined the Archives due to the Information Manufacturing Corporation scanning project. The initial plan was to do a low-resolution scan of the Library’s photographs and then discard the originals. Fortunately we were able to modify that plan and add the collection to the Museum. Gaskins was an integral part of making possible hundreds of thousands of scans. His knowledge of the collection and willingness to share it has been the only thing that enabled us to make sense of the staggering amount of pictures. Without Tom, the project would not have gotten off the ground. He also worked in the Archives and scanned all of our Civil War photographs. Lauren Clark volunteered in the archives over the summer to see if she was interested in a museum career. She rehoused parts of the Vorwald Collection and added folder headings to the finding aid, as well doing cataloguing and filing trade literature in the GMPI Collection.

Research and historical material, mostly on military medicine, was provided to AFIP, especially the Public Affairs Office and the Departments of Dermatologic Pathology, Telemedicine, Radiologic Pathology, and Soft Tissue Pathology among others. External users included US Army Office of the Surgeon General; US Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery; OTSG’s Borden Institute; Bay Pines Veterans Administration Healthcare System; Home Front Communications; Samuel Merritt College (California); Columbia University; US Patent and Trademark Office; The Scientist Magazine; TRICARE Management Activity; Fort Lee (Virginia); Kunhardt Productions; USUHS; Ambo|Anthos Publishers (The Netherlands); Baker-Cederberg Museum and Archives (New York); Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen; George Washington University Law School; National Inventors Hall of Fame (Ohio); Command Surgeon, USSOCOM; NCI Communications; The Burns Archive; Canadian Broadcasting Corp.; Boston University; Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology (Illinois); Henry Holt Publishers; Actuality Productions, Inc.; Fuji Television Network, Inc. (Japan); Fairfax County Public Library; Taniwaki & Associates, Inc. (Washington, DC); Oxford Film & Television (England); National Museum of American History; US Army Historian’s Office; Los Angeles Daily News; Historian’s Office, Walter Reed Army Medical Center; The Many-Headed Monster, Live Art Development Agency (England); American Red Cross; National Library and Archives Canada; St Paul's Cemetery; Esras Managing; Steptoe and Johnson LLP (Washington, DC); Institute for the Study of Occupation and Health; National Geographic; ColourFIELD (Germany); Wisconsin Historical Society; Aslan Productions; Tucson Medical Center; NARA; Kingsmen Exhibits Pte Ltd (Singapore); North Carolina Museum of History; James F. Humphries & Assoc. (West Virginia); Rice University; National Building Museum; University of Michigan; Gettysburg National Military Park; Sovereign Pharmaceuticals; Communications Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (New Zealand); Health Protection Agency, United Kingdom; Compass Point Books; Public Affairs and Content Development, Armed Services Blood Program; CBS Eye Too Productions / Discovery Channel; Mind & Media; Phoenix Controls (Massachusetts); Foundation El Portavoz (Costa Rica); Indiana University; Hiroshima Peace Institute (Japan); Victorian Society at Falls Church; AOTF American Occupational Therapy Foundation; Weider History Group, Inc.; Synvasive Technology, Inc.; Journal AnBlokk (Hungary); International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery (TIGHAR); Visual Eyes, Inc.; South Windsor Historical Society and Wood Memorial Library; PMA Sciences (Canada); Turn of the Century Electrotherapy Museum (Florida); St. John's Riverside Hospital,/Cochran School of Nursing (New York); University of California – Irvine; Shawnee town, City of Shawnee, Kansas; University of Missouri – Columbia; Veterans Administration Medical Center (Wisconsin); Twofour Digital Ltd. (England); Design Minds, Inc; University of Alberta; University of Manchester; University of Toyama (Japan); Army Historical Foundation; Oxford University; NBM; AUDLM; and the University of Newcastle.

Sharing historical photographs

Boy, those Otis Historical Archives annual report segments are riveting, aren't they? But they're all about attempting to get information out to you, our interested constituency. Here's a good article about the Flickr Commons site, which we may still join, and mentions Wikipedia's Commons site that we'll be looking into now -

Link by Link
Historical Photos in Web Archives Gain Vivid New Lives
By NOAM COHEN
Published: January 19, 2009
Over the last year there have been important new efforts to put these classics online.

Otis Historical Archives Annual Report part 3

The Archives has a significant presence on the Internet including the Guide to the Collections of the Museum on the museum website which remains the main way researchers begin to use the archives. Stocker has revamped the Guide for the first time since 1998 and has it almost ready to go on the web. Several finding aids were added to the website. Finding aids for the Townsend Collection of aviation pathology records, the Donald Collection of World War 2 hospital ship material, the NMHM Audiovisual Collection, and the General Medical Products Information Collection (GMPI) were loaded onto the Museum’s website. Stocker has reformatted, added material, and edited the Ball Collection of ophthalmologic materials, and it is almost ready to be added to the website. No more archival collections were listed in the Library of Congress' National Union Catalogue of Manuscript Collections (NUCMC); however, finding aids should still be sent to NUCMC in the future for the different audiences it reaches.

In fall 2006, archives staff began adding interesting photographs to Flickr’s website. By late January 2008, approximately 400 photographs had gotten 48,000 views; in January 2009, 683 images had received 107,526 views, an increase of about 155%. This clearly demonstrates the appeal of the photographs held in the Archives; however, WRAMC now blocks access to Flickr so any additional photographs are added by staff from home. The Archives also received an invitation to join the Flickr Commons, a site for displaying the public photo collections of cultural institutions, which would increase viewership into the millions, but this has been waiting Legal Counsel’s review for several months. In the spring, Rhode began A Repository for Bottled Monsters, an unofficial blog for the museum, which has also attracted a worldwide audience. Because WRAMC blocks access to the blog, all posts to it are added by staff from home in their own time.

Books and documents scanned by IMC were uploaded to the free Internet Archive, where they are available for downloading. Titles uploaded included The Armed Forces Institute of Pathology - Its First Century 1862-1962 (1962); A History of the United States Army Medical Museum 1862 to 1917 compiled from the Official Records (1917) by Daniel S. Lamb; the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (six volumes, 1870-1888); the Medical Department of the US Army in the World War (15 volumes, 1923-1929); "The Annual" (Nursing Yearbook) from Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington, DC, and Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco, California (1921-1927); “Taps" Annual (Nursing Yearbook) from Walter Reed General Hospital (1929-1931); An Illustrated Description of First-Class Achromatic Microscopes, Apparatus, Specimens, etc., Miller Brothers (1879); 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 Sons (1866); A Medical Survey of the Bituminous-Coal Industry (1947); The Kennedy Autopsy Report by Pierre Finck of the AFIP; 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; Decorations and Medals of the United States of America (1943), John Wyeth and Brother broadsheet; Frances Pleasants' photograph album from the Civil War; When You Go Home - take this book with you - a WWI pamphlet directed at US troops about the dangers of venereal disease; Nouveau Appareils a L'usage des Medecins et des Chirurgiens - M.G. Trouvé Medical and surgical instruments from the M.G. Trouvé company, 1872, excerpted from Les Mondes, May 9 and 16, 1872; Nouveau Appareils a L'usage des Medecins et des Chirurgiens - M.G. Trouvé Medical/surgical instruments from the M.G. Trouvé company, Paris, excerpted from Les Mondes, July 15, 1869; Phase Contrast Equipment with the Heine Condenser microscope instruction manual; Instructor's Guide for Casualty Simulation Kit Device, a handbook for casualty simulation in disasters; The Graf-Apsco Company, 1943 catalog: a catalog of microscopes, dissecting instruments, and related medical and laboratory equipment; The Graf-Apsco Company 1946 catalog: a catalog of microscopes, dissecting instruments, and related medical and laboratory equipment; Kolff-Brigham Artificial Kidney (ca. 1950s) manual; Variable Axis Total Knee Surgical Techniques (ca. 1977) advertising booklets; Gillette Receipts (187?): a handwritten "receipt" (recipe) book from the late 19th century, of mostly pharmaceutical remedies, including those for asthma, cough, gangrene, "the itch," cholera, and bilious colic, but also for lucifer matches and liquid blacking.

Anatomy of the Orbit

Two more illustrations from the Ball Collection, from Agatz's "Atlas zur chirurgischen Anatomie und Operationslehre," 1860. These are real beauties when viewed in a larger size.

Acc. 18938
















And Acc. 18938-2

Otis Historical Archives Annual Report part 2

The Medical Illustration Service Library, through the IMC scanning project, continues to be digitized. Rhode is the Task Order Manager for the MIS part of the project; he and the assistant archivists and technicians selected material for scanning, reviewed the material, and recommended accepting the work on behalf of the government. Stocker provides the quality control. The members of the IMC team are processing and cataloging the images prior to scanning so the records of the images are complete upon their return. 350,000 images were scanned last year, and cataloguing and indexing are being finished. Collections scanned or added to the online system last year included the World War 1-Reeve Collection, Surgical Photographs, the Museum’s 19th century collections logbooks, captured Viet Cong medical journals, accession files for the Orthopathology collection, and HDAC’s Carnegie collection records. AFIP’s Veterinary Pathology Dept. 35mm teaching slide set was scanned, and added to the MIS Library as an electronic collection. 220,000 images are anticipated for this year including finishing 10,000 military medicine photographs newly added to the New Contributed Photographs collection and scanning the Museum’s Accession Files as well as images of WRAMC from their DPW department and historical images from the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Stocker identified an additional 1300 images from the WWII-era MAMAS collection, then catalogued and sent them to IMC for scanning. All roughly 500,000 photographs are searchable on the AFIP’s AWARS system to anyone who has registered to use the system.

Computerized cataloguing on the collection level has continued in the shelf inventory. Cataloguing of new material coming into the museum was done for the General Medical Products Information Collection, Medical Ephemera, New Contributed photographs, Audiovisual Collection, AFIP Historical Files, WRAMC Historical Collection and other artificial collections. Implementation of a comprehensive computer catalogue for the entire Museum continued with data from the archives being turned over to KE Software for conversion to their EMU database, although this project was slowed due to financial issues. Uploading of Archives data was finally resumed in the fall and has been tested three times. It is expected to be usable this spring. After all five collection divisions are included this spring, data from IMC’s database will be imported in the summer and an extensive single database of the Museum’s holdings should be available in the fall for widespread use.

New material acquired included a daguerreotype by William Bell depicting a man with drooping eyelid, ca. 1852, purchased through the generosity of Frederick Sharf, 5 Army School of Nursing yearbooks including Taps 1929, 1930, 1931 and The Annual 1926, 1927 from the US Army Medical Department Museum, a box of lantern slides and box of patient records associated with WWII service of neurologist Dr. Augustus McCravey, 11 boxes of research files from amputee service at Valley Forge General Hospital in Phoenixville, PA from the Vietnam War era, a framed Plexiglas print of synthetic estrogen molecule "Moxestrol" by Mara Haseltine, digital photographs from the book War Surgery in Afghanistan and Iraq from the Borden Institute, 6 linear feet of files related to AFIP radiologist Colonel William L. Thompson, circa 1907-1975 from the American College of Radiology, approximately 48 thousand 35-mm slides of gross veterinary pathology and 11 veterinary tools from Dr. John King, 1 linear feet of records of Dr. John (Henry) Budd of WWII service with 34th Evacuation Hospital, 4th Auxiliary Surgery Group on neurosurgery, items associated with the practice of Dr. Alexander N. Letko including one prescription pad for narcotics (1948) and a folder of papers and letters, dental lecture videotapes from the U.S. Army Dental & Trauma Research Detachment, one empty dressing packet for "Bontecou's Soldier's Packet for first Wound Dressing” and 21 books on medical photography authored by Dr. Stanley Burns from Dr. Burns, a copy of a dissertation on leprosy "Letters from Carville: Narrating the Unspoken Story of the Landry Family," (2007) and miscellaneous books.

Medical collection articles in University Museums and Collections Journal 1/2008

Our colleagues at the Medical Museion blog pointed out the first issue of University Museums and Collections Journal 1/2008 which has articles on medical collections in Vienna including a survey article and short specific pieces on drug and pharmaceutical collections (the drug link is broken as of this writing).

What the field needs now is an in-depth volume on the history of medical museums around the world.