Museum souvenier DIY repost

Should you be looking to make … distinctive… holiday gifts, you can use the Museum’s public domain photos on Flickr and a printing company like Zazzle or Café Press.

Here’s how you do it.

Go to the Medical Museum flickr site. Look through the photos and select the one you like. There's roughly 1600 photographs in the account.

Click on it and then on the top of the photo, click on ‘all sizes’. Select ‘download’ for the large size which will save it to your harddrive.

For Zazzle, where I’ve been experimenting, go to http://www.zazzle.com and establish an account. Click on ‘create a product’ and pick a product. Click on ‘add an image’ and then pull the picture off your harddrive. Position it on the product until you like it. You can add multiple images or text to some products. You can also make multiple products using the same image which will have been stored in your account under ‘my images.’

Click on either ‘add to my cart’ or ‘post for sale’ when you’re happy with the way it looks.

Pay them and do what you will with the finished product. They can be a bit cranky when it comes to publishing stamps and wouldn’t let my Civil War surgery experiment go out to the world, although they sold me the stamps.

Have fun. Let me know if you do anything particularly interesting.

Holiday Mail for Heroes

From today's Stripe, the Walter Reed newspaper:

The American Red Cross again is sponsoring a national "Holiday Mail for Heroes" campaign to receive and distribute holiday cards to service members, veterans, and their families in the United States and abroad. The card campaign includes those working and receiving care at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The American Red Cross and Pitney Bowes Inc. will partner for the third year to provide screening of all mail sent to the following P.O. Box address:

Holiday Mail for Heroes
P.O. Box 5456
Capitol Heights, MD 20791-5456

People should not send cards to Walter Reed unless they are addressed to a specific wounded warrior. Due to security reasons, Walter Reed cannot accept generic mail. Cards should be postmarked not later than December 7 to reach service members recovering at Walter Reed.

Yellow Fever vaccine

I heard on NPR this morning that millions of yellow fever vaccines, about 12 million actually, are now being offered in Sierra Leone, Liberia, and Benin. According to the World Health Organization, since 2007 a total of 29 million people have been protected through mass vaccinations conducted in other African countries.  We have in our Registry of Noteworthy Research in Pathology some records of Max Theiler, who received a Nobel Prize in 1951 for his development of an effective vaccine against the disease.

 

The Journal of Experimental Medicine published an article in 2007 about Max Theiler and his years-long efforts to develop a vaccine. The first field trial in Brazil in 1938 proved to be highly successful and since then, more than 400 million doses have been shown to be safe and effective. The vaccine is still produced the same way as Theiler developed it in 1938: by passing the virus through chicken embryos.

 

Theiler won the Nobel Prize after just four nominations. The first time was in 1937 for his work on yellow fever in mice. The committee wasn't impressed. In 1948 the second nomination came from Albert Sabin (later of polio vaccine fame). The committee was a little more impressed but said Theiler's work would be prize-worthy if someone could show it was he and not his colleague Wray Lloyd who had conceived of and planned the work. The committee accepted the documentation that was produced and said good job, but gave the prize to Paul Müller for his work on DDT.

 

1950 produced another nomination. The committee said really good job this time but gave the prize to three other researchers for their discoveries on hormones of the adrenal cortex.

 

In 1951, on the very last day that prize nominations were being accepted for the year, the chairman of the committee, Hilding Bergstrand,  slid in his recommendation for Theiler under the wire. Theiler was in competition with Selman Waksman for his discovery of streptomycin. Can't you see the committee holding yellow fever vaccine in one hand and streptomycin in the other, weighing them against each other? To Theiler's advantage, not only did Bergstrand do the nominating, he also did the evaluating. Fourth time was the charm, and Theiler won the only Nobel Prize ever awarded for a vaccine. Waksman won the following year but it had taken him 39 nominations over six years.

Mologne House

Mologne House
Originally uploaded by tiz_herself

The Walter Reed Society is selling their annual ornament to further their mission to aid soldiers and their families. This photo of the Mologne House is on this year's ornament, which sells for $15. You can call the Society's office at (202) 782-6607.


(what Kathleen didn't say was that the WRS saw her photograph in the WRAMC History book and asked her if they could use it, and she kindly said yes - Mike)

Dr. John H. Brinton

Dr. John H. Brinton
Originally uploaded by tiz_herself

I finally got a shot of this portrait of John Hill Brinton, which lives at the National Gallery of Art. We're just letting them borrow it.

Marine Biologists

I just found this while looking for something else. That's usually the way it is around here. It's from the BUMED (U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine) collection that we scanned. It has to be under copyright, so hopefully someone will tell us who the cartoonist is.

Reeve 035097

Reeve 035097
Originally uploaded by otisarchives1

I just uploaded several medical illustrations of empyema on our Flickr page. I came across at least a couple of dozen of them today and this is the first installment.

Another one of those weird coincidences

Yesterday I received a question about a Dr. Trudeau who practiced from about 1830-1877 (who, it turned out, we don't have any information about). Out of curiosity and because we have the massive Vorwald Collection that includes tuberculosis research done at the Trudeau Foundation at the Saranac Laboratories in New York, I Googled the name and dates and found this entry on Wikipedia:

[Edward Livingston] Trudeau had two sons, Edward Livingston Trudeau Jr., who died of tuberculosis, and Francis B. Trudeau, who succeeded his father at the sanatorium as director until 1954. Francis B. Trudeau's son, Francis Trudeau, Jr. is the father of cartoonist Garry Trudeau.

Where the coincidence comes in is that we have original art for the April 21 and 22, 2004 Doonesbury comic strips, which of course are done by Garry Trudeau.

Good advice during this flu season

Some helpful advice I found while searching for images in the Archives -

 

Jasmine High, MA

Archives Technician

Otis Historical Archives

National Museum of Health and Medicine

Graphic Tales of Cancer in America

I'll be lecturing on this on Sunday, November 22 at 10 am at the History of Science Society meeting. If you're planning on being there, stop in and say hello. - Mike

Otis Archives' Flickr image used to make art

Joanna of Morbid Anatomy pointed out that Tanya Johnston used some images from the Ball Collection on the Archives' Flickr site to make a piece of artwork. Cool! That's what public domain is all about.

To see it, click through the link to her site, click on illustration at the top, and then click on the right arrow to get to the second page of illustrations. It's the bit with all the eyes in the middle.

Only a pathologist

Who else would make art based on a house fly's intestinal parasite?

On defining a psychiatric disease

Op-Ed Contributor

The Short Life of a Diagnosis

By SIMON BARON-COHEN

Published: November 10, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/10/opinion/10baron-cohen.html

 

Asperger syndrome and autism should be thoroughly tested before being lumped together in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

 

Dissection makes Amazon's Top 10 for 2009 in Science

Dissection, based on works from a medical museum, has made Amazon's Top Ten Best Books of 2009 in Science, Editor's Picks.

Medical challenge coin challenge

Challenge coins have been proliferating in recent years, due to decreasing costs among other reasons.

Information can be found in this article -http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/11/01/AR2009110102261.html

 

We have an extremely large, but not well-catalogued, numismatics collection occupying a couple of safes in Historical Collections. To better position the Museum for the long-term addition of these to the numismatics collection, I’ve proposed that we scan the ones that people have on their desks, and record who was giving the coin out and when. I did the ones on my desk this morning

 

Einstein correspondence

This week, or maybe it was last week, I found two letters that were signed by A. Einstein. I think they may have been form letters because they were addressed to Dear Friend, but it looks like the signatures are original. Maybe an expert out there can make a guess.

James Carroll turns up again

I think I wrote about James Carroll, who volunteered to be bitten by a mosquito carrying yellow fever. He contracted the disease which had long-term effects on his health and when he died, several years later, his widow was unsuccessful in securing a government pension.

 

His name turned up again just now. We got a request for some information on a soldier wounded at Little Big Horn, which led me to pull the accession file that includes an article written about skeletal remains at the battlefield. There's a photograph of a skull and the caption says it was discovered by hospital steward James Carroll of Fort Custer, in 1886. Could this be the same man?

 

Sure seems like it. The James Carroll who died of the effects of yellow fever was at Fort Custer during this time and was later assigned to be Walter Reed's assistant when Surgeon General George Sternberg chose Reed to teach Clinical and Military Microscopy at the US Army Medical School. Reed and Carroll served together again on the US Army Board which pursued scientific investigation of infectious diseases in Cuba.

 

I'm always amazed at these coincidences. Even today, those two places are huge distances apart and what are the odds, I wonder...

International Museum of Surgical Science featured

I visited the International Museum of Surgical Science about a decade ago. They've got some neat collections and were headquartered in an old mansion near the lake in Chicago. Here's a pictorial on them. Note that the collection isn't all surgery - there's an iron lung and patent medicines shown in the photos.

Have you ever heard of the Isthmian Canal?

My education is sorely lacking. I never heard the Panama Canal referred to as the Isthmian Canal, but saw a reference to it today when I went through a truly fascinating set of lantern slides from the William Gorgas era of the Canal. Here are two of several dozen that date from about 1902 to 1914. I wish I could scan them all.

This first one is a lovely hand-tinted lantern slide of Spanish laborers.






















This second one is a chart (table?) showing a marked decrease in fatalities from various diseases, supposedly when sanitary measures were put in place- such as covering food, digging drainage ditches, oiling still bodies of water, etc. Note the Americans giving themselves a big old pat on the back.

Lecture on Smithsonian's Arts and Industries Building

The Army Medical Museum and Library building, demolished in 1968, had the same architect. - Mike







The Latrobe Chapter of the Society of Architectural Historians



proudly presents



What's New in What We Know About the Smithsonian's Arts & Industries Building



Panel Discussion led by Cynthia Field, Emeritus Architectural Historian, Smithsonian Institution



Monday, November 9, 2009



Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives



6:30 P.M. - light refreshments, 7:00 P.M. - lecture



Five years ago, Cynthia Field thought she told us everything there was to know about Adolf Cluss and his fascinating masterwork, the Smithsonian's Arts & Industries Building. That was then, and this is now. Join us to hear from Dr. Field and the Smithsonian team who have been studying the building in ever greater detail. They will present findings so new they have only just been learned using sophisticated analyses as well as old fashioned research.



The panel will consist of three Smithsonian members: Cynthia Field, now Emeritus Architectural Historian for the Smithsonian; Sharon Park, Associate Director, Architectural History and Historic Preservation; and Christopher Lethbridge, Project Manager. They will be joined on the panel by two members of the Washington office of Ewing-Cole who worked on the historic structures report: Gretchen Pfaehler, Managing Principal, and Cristina Radu, Architectural Historian.



After a brief reminder of the important historical information, Park and Lethbridge will discuss the sustainability aspects their studies have revealed and consultants Pfaehler and Radu will tell us their findings about the use of materials in the building.



Their work will elucidate the structure we have come to regard as one of Washington's grandest buildings. All the members of the panel will answer questions following the presentations.



The discussion takes place at The Charles Sumner School Museum and Archives,



1201 17th Street, NW, Washington, DC. Reservations are not required.



$10.00 for Latrobe Chapter Members and full-time students (with ID), $18.00 for non-members.



For general information, please see the Latrobe Chapter website at www.latrobechaptersah.org, or contact Caroline Mesrobian Hickman at (202) 363-1519 or cimhickman@yahoo.com

You never know where your name will turn up

I'm mentioned in an article here.

 This turns out to be about the Kennedy Assassination.

The 1997 report I wrote that the article mentions is online here.

The original Finck report was scanned this past year and we put it online here.

84 Charing Cross Road

I watched 84 Charing Cross Road last week so imagine my pleasure when I came across a folder in the Registry of Noteworthy Research in Pathology that holds correspondence, invoices, and customs forms for book purchases, mostly from Europe. The correspondence is between Dr. Esmond Long and booksellers in London, Florence, Amsterdam, Paris, Leipzig, Berlin, and Zurich in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

One letter from R. Lier & Co. in Florence says they're sending him the book he ordered and, "As we have not had the pleasure to do business for you other times, we should appreciate very much your kind remittance by cheque soon. We take advantage of this opportunity to send you, under separate cover, our last Bull. XI on Anatomia and Chirurgia in the hope that you will find in same something interesting. Please believe us." I don't know what that last sentence means, but I like it, and think about getting something in the mail you have not yet paid for.

Some of the names of the bookstores are Emile Nourry Librarie Ancienne (Paris); Libreria Antiquaria Editrice (Florence); and Buchhandler und Antiquar (Leipzig). I think they'd be great places to poke around in.

What was 'black tongue?'

We got a research inquiry today asking ‘what was ‘black tongue’ which threw me for a moment as I’d never heard of it. Fortunately my predecessors recorded information about it.

Black Tongue was a common name for erysipelas – see the two attached documents from the Medical & Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (3^rd Surgical vol.) in the footnote starting on the first page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erysipelas gives an overview and you can see why it would be a dangerous disease before antibiotics.

Latest Flickr statistics

1,625 items - 885,625 views.

This mustard gas testing shot has been popular lately:



We're working on a project to get many 700,000 images we currently have scanned online for searching and use (although as many as 50,000 of those are book pages we've already loaded onto Internet Archive). Stay tuned for more details.

Clubfoot treatment developer dies

Fascinating article here on Ignacio Ponseti and his development of non-surgical treatment for clubfoot, which took fifty years to become widespread.

Ignacio Ponseti, Hero to Many With Clubfoot, Dies at 95
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
Published: October 24, 2009

Photographic coverage of military war dead at Dover

Here's a good article from the Washington Post about changes in media coverage of the arrival of military dead to Dover Air Force Base -

With ban over, who should cover the fallen at Dover?
Few in media choosing to capture events, but military posts pictures
By Christian Davenport
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, October 24, 2009

- after the fallen soldiers arrive, they're examined by the Armed Forces Medical Examiner which is part of AFIP (until BRAC finishes)

Oct 26: Museum on History Channel's Death Masks

 I think I was interviewed for this about Lincoln and the Civil War and they filmed in the archives with spooky blue lighting - Mike

 

Bring your kids! Halloween at the Medical Museum, Sat. 10/31, 10am-1pm

Halloween at the Medical Museum

 

When: Saturday, October 31, 2009, 10:00 a.m. - 1:00 p.m.

 

Where: The National Museum of Health and Medicine

Building 54

 

What: The National Museum of Health and Medicine and Family Magazine will host family-friendly Halloween activities for ages 5 and up. Children will be able to participate in a costume contest (with prizes!) and make skeleton crafts (a dancing macaroni skeleton, a medieval plague mask, and a skeleton wall hanging) as well as join in a Halloween-themed family yoga demonstration by Shakti Yoga.

 

Cost: FREE

 

Photo ID required.

 

For more information: nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil or (202) 782-2673

 

http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum

 

NEW TEMPORARY EXHIBITION OPENS ON HALLOWEEN:

Outbreak: Plagues That Changed History

 

On Exhibit October 31, 2009 – January 22, 2010

 

OUTBREAK is the story of epidemics that changed human society. Learn how diseases such as smallpox, cholera and yellow fever shaped our history, our culture and our civilization. Featuring the art of Bryn Barnard.

 

More Agent Orange news

Maybe you remember that I wrote about the link between the Vietnam War's use of Agent Orange and diabetes. Well, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki just added three new ailments to the list: hairy-cell leukemia and other B-cell leukemias, Parkinson's disease, and ischemic heart disease. Thanks to a recent National Academy of Science's report, there's enough evidence to make the presumption that if you're a Vietnam vet and have these, you don't have to jump through 1000 hoops to receive services. These latest three, which will probably be official early next year, join this infamous list:

Acute and subacute transient peripheral neuropathy
AL amyloidosis
Chloracne
Chronic lymphocytic leukemia
Diabetes Mellitus (type 2)
Hodgkin's disease
Multiple myeloma
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
Prophyria cutanea tarda
Prostate cancer
Respiratory cancer
Soft tissue sarcoma other than osteosarcoma, chondrosarcoma, Kaposi's sarcoma or mesothelioma

Here's a link to the Washington Post article about Agent Orange and the new diseases.

Morbid Anatomy in Time Out New York

Joanna Ebenstein has an article profiling her in Time Out New York. She's the force behind morbidanatomy.blogspot.com which has said kind things about us in the past. There's a lot of pictures on the website.

http://newyork.timeout.com/articles/halloween/79539/morbid-anatomy-library

Blog tip - Civil War Medicine (and Writing)

Steven Solomon, our former public affairs officer, pointed out this Civil War Medicine (and Writing) blog to me today. At my first quick glance, the author Jim Schmidt has a couple of posts about the Medical Museum - one on the Museum proper and another new one on Doctor (and photographer) Reed Bontecou which is the one Steven pointed out. Besides Blair's articles mentioned therein (I think I'm a co-author on the 2nd), anyone interested in Civil War medical photography might want to check out this Shooting Soldiers article.

Trade literature additions

A couple of weeks ago, I personally bought a few pieces of 1950s trade lit for the collection - these pharmaceutical ads are all blotters for fountain pens. They're filed under companies' names now. They're not exciting, but the price at the flea market was right, and now perhaps someone will use them. Blotters, Phedrol, Agarol, Alcaroid... all gone.


Blotter - Phedros eases spasmodic and irritating bronchial coughs due to colds.


Blotter - Agarol for Constipation, William E Warner & Co.


Blotter - Alcaroid, an effective alkalizer and digestant, American Ferment Company.
[American Ferment Company? An honest name at least.]

Dr. Paul Cannon's vision of the future

Paul Roberts Cannon is another name on the list of Noteworthy Pathologists. He received the Golden Cane Award (a kind of interesting story I'll tell another time) in 1965 and we have his handwritten notes for his acceptance speech. He led off with paraphrasing what Jack Benny said when Benny received the Eleanor Roosevelt Award: "Modesty should force him to say that he didn't deserve it. But he couldn't do that because he also had arthritis and he didn't deserve that either."

But he ended with his vision of the future. I think he'd be pretty disappointed to see what little progress has been made.
--Vaccinations for leukemia and cancer
--Control of population explosion
--Control of atherogenic elements [having to do with cardiac disease, if I read Google correctly]
--Control of air pollution
--Control of water pollution
--Control of factors of mental health

Another museum selling collections to pay bills

Widow of Crawford Auto-Aviation Museum founder works to save husband's legacy

By Joan Mazzolini, The Plain Dealer

October 05, 2009, 6:29PM

http://blog.cleveland.com/metro/2009/10/post_52.html

NARA on MSHWR

This was a bit of a surprise* when it was pointed out to me, but I'll be there.

National Archives
9th and Penn Ave, NW
Tuesday, October 27, at 11 A.M.
Room G-24, Research Center (Enter on Pennsylvania Avenue)
Civil War Medicine
Archives specialist Rebecca Sharp and reference librarian Nancy Wing discuss The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, 1861–1865. This published source contains details of Civil War medical and surgical procedures, and information about individual patients. (This lecture will be repeated at the National Archives at College Park, MD, in Lecture Room B, on Thursday, October 29, at 11 a.m.)

This one looks relevant too:

Tuesday, October 6, at 11 A.M.
Room G-24, Research Center (Enter on Pennsylvania Avenue)
Documenting Death in the Civil War
John Deeben, genealogy archives specialist at the National Archives, explores death records created during and after the Civil War by the War Department, examining how they documented personal circumstances of soldiers’ deaths in various situations, including the battlefield and military hospitals and prisons. (This lecture will be repeated at the National Archives at College Park, MD, in Lecture Room B, on Thursday, October 8, at 11 a.m.)

*The Army Medical Museum (ie us) wrote the book and we retain original records and specimens that were used to compile it.**

**We also scanned it for you all.

More good stuff from the Registry

I finally got back to work on the Registry of Noteworthy Research in Pathology and today found some letters.

James Carroll was a Major in the Army who worked with Walter Reed on his yellow fever research. He volunteered to be bitten by a mosquito that had previously bitten three others who had yellow fever. He contracted the disease and several years later died of cardiac disease that was attributed to his bout of yellow fever.

Here's a letter from the President of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, petitioning a Congressman to grant a special pension to Carroll's widow.

Page 1














Page 2




















And here is the Congressman's reply.






















Maybe I'm missing something, but I thought being a Major in the Army meant you were in military service to your country.

Red Cross selling items from Archives to close budget gap

The NY Times has the story today -

Red Cross to Auction Off Little Pieces of Its History
By STEPHANIE STROM
Published: October 3, 2009
To help address a $50 million budget deficit, the American Red Cross will sell some of the memorabilia it has squirreled away over many years.

This is a trend we're seeing more and more of.

Garfield autopsy letter

I just scanned this letter, written by the surgeon (D.W. Bliss, but the signature doesn't look like "Bliss" to me) who performed President James Garfield's autopsy, where he certifies that the bullet shown with the letter was taken from the body of the president. Thought you might like to see it.

You never know what you'll find in the archives

Balkan Owls, ca 1913, by Merl LaVoy. (Reeve 39645)

And our Flickr stats for the moment stand at 1,618 items / 876,972 views, up only ~7000 views in the two weeks from Sept 15th when I posted 1,605 items / 870,097 views.

Two pictures from 1898

SKIN LESIONS OF HOG CHOLERA. AMM 489

SENDING CARRIER PIGEON FROM RELIEF (DURING THE SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR). AMM 64

This is a test to see what emailing photos to the blog results in...

More new pictures will go up on our Flickr site tonight as I browsed and picked some using the new software.

Museum's scanning software upgrade adds thumbnails

We've got 2 online catalogues running now - EMU for our internal databases and another for our scanning project. The scanning project one got upgraded yesterday. The latest version of NISC's AWARS / Wizard software carries thumbnails with it, making photo research much easier as you can see from the  picture. This is three shots from our Surgical Photographs collection which began with the Civil War but wandered into other types of surgical problems as the years went on. Hopefully we'll figure out how to share these photos online soon. More new pictures will go up on our Flickr site tonight as I browsed and picked some using the new software.

 

Feed the Dawgs

Mike Lemish, one of our researchers who wrote a book on military working dogs in Vietnam, (due out in February) sent me an email about a fund-raising effort to Feed the Dawgs. A small group of volunteers provides a steak dinner to returning and deploying dog handlers, and they need cash to do it. If you can help, please do. This latest fund-raising effort is for Marines at 29 Palms. OOHRAH!!

Here's Mike's email:

Just wanted to pass this along to all my "dog friends." I know things are tight all around but if your are looking to support our troops (both 2-legged and 4-legged) this may a good choice.  More info at their site http://feedthedawgs.com/FeedtheDawgs.aspx If you get a chance, check it out.

 ARF!

Mike

Vaughn,

Will you forward my email to the other VDHA Unit Directors and have them pass it on to the members of their units.  The Feed the Dawgs guys are doing a great thing for today's dogmen and women.  They can use our support if any of the guys can afford to make a donation.

Thanks,

Jim Stewart    377 SPS Unit Director VDHA

                    377 SPS K9 9/67-9/68  Dobe 7X49

 

Guys,

I just received an email from our brother 377 SPS dogman, Jon Hemp.  He is involved with Feed the Dawgs, to which I have just made a donation, and they could use some additional donations to keep going.  Jon explained their upcoming project like this.

 Just about every time it looks like we're running out of fuel and headin' for the ditch, someone steps up.  No money from donations has ever been spent on anything BUT the new troops.  A big piece of your donation will go towards feeding 82 3rd Marine Division Dawgs at 29 Palms on 7 November.  Best guess is that the event will cost us approximately $700 to $800 once we have a final headcount including family members, vet detachment, PAO personnel and the Base Commander - estimated now at 130 people.

 The Feed the Dawgs web site is at:  http://feedthedawgs.com/FeedtheDawgs.aspx

 If you can help this group of guys feed some of today's MWD handlers send your donation in the name Jon Hemp to:

 Jon Hemp

1437 Revelation Way

Redlands, CA  92374

"New" Civil War picture found

The other day someone asked about Civil War surgeon Eugene Shaw. I would have walked right to the Shaw collection, but Jasmine handled the request and ran his name through our Emu database. In doing so, she found the CDV below that was filed in our biographical files (we've since moved it to the collection).





The text says, Eugene Shaw M.D. Written up in New York Herald for bravery and skill on the battle fields of the Civil War - 21 years old when he was made Ass't Surgeon, 116th NY Regiment.

Rec. Feb. 1939.
Ac. 52965.

Digital archives

A friend sent me a link to an article in Library Journal, The E-Memory Revolution, which discusses a topic that is so important to archives and archivists - digital archiving. I can't imagine an archives that isn't affected by this revolution, unless it's run by Luddites.

One thing that gives me the heebie-jeebies, though, is where the author says, "We horrify archivists when we talk about digitizing things and then throwing them away. Of course, one need not destroy the physical object after making a digital copy, but one of the most enjoyable aspects of Total Recall is the reduction of clutter; it is especially satisfying to shred one's papers and eliminate rows of filing cabinets and shelves. When curators come to deal with our archives, they will surely find hundreds fewer physical objects because of Total Recall. But they will have hundreds of thousands of additional digital artifacts. Whether you agree that is a highly positive trade-off, it is surely coming."

Archivists are fascinated by having/handling the real thing. I'm a big fan of not keeping multiple copies of some journal article but no way is some one-of-a-kind document going through the shredder because we've scanned it. Will I pitch my uncle's handwritten pages of his poetry because I have 600 ppi scans of them? I'll keep that clutter, thank you.

Darwin Symposium: Finished Proofs? A symposium to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859)

The History of Medicine Division of the National Library of Medicine and the Office of History at the National Institutes of Health are pleased to announce a symposium:

 

Finished Proofs? A symposium to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859)

 

Location:        Lister Hill Auditorium, National Library of Medicine (NIH)

                8600 Rockville Pike, Bldg. 38A

                Bethesda, MD

Date:            1 October 2009

Time:            9:00 AM – 6:15 PM

 

 

SPEAKERS:

 

Janet Browne, Harvard University

Eric Green, National Human Genome Research Institute

Michael Ruse, Florida State University

Barry Werth, Independent Author

Edward O. Wilson, Harvard University           

 

COMMENTATORS:

 

Nathaniel Comfort, Johns Hopkins University

Alan E. Guttmacher, National Human Genome Research Institute

Joe Palca, National Public Radio

Maxine Singer, Carnegie Institution for Science

 

Program: http://history.nih.gov/about/conferences.html

 

All are welcome.

 

 

 

Michael J. North, northm@mail.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

National Institutes of Health
Department of Health and Human Services

 

Inventor of medical ultrasound has died

Interesting obituary for him in JOHN J. WILD, 95; Doctor Advanced Medical Uses of Ultrasound, By Patricia Sullivan, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, September 24, 2009.

Civil War Reenactment at NMHM next Saturday, 10/3, 10am-5pm

“Civil War Reenactment at the Medical Museum”

 

When: Saturday, October 3, 2009, 10:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.

 

Where: The National Museum of Health and Medicine

Building 54

 

What: The grounds of the nation’s medical museum will be transformed into a living history experience of Regular Army life during the Civil War. Displays on Civil War medicine and the role of the Sanitary Commission will be available along with exhibits on camp life, infantry drilling exercises and 19th century weapons displays. Children will enjoy hands-on activities such as building a replica of the hospital ship USS Red Rover, making a medical unit flag and creating a pin-hole camera.

 

Performances by the Federal City Brass Band at 10:00, 11:00, 1:30 & 2:30.

 

The reenactment is made possible by members of the 3rd U.S. Regular Infantry Reenactors. AFIP’s very own YN2(AW) Kelly Cochran is a member of the 3rd U.S. and will participate in the program!

 

While visiting the reenactment, visitors are encouraged to tour the Museum's permanent exhibition "To Bind Up the Nation's Wounds: Medicine During the Civil War." NMHM was founded in 1862 to study battlefield medicine in order to improve the care of the soldier.

 

The event will take place on the west grounds of the museum and in the museum galleries. This family event is open to the Walter Reed community and the general public.

 

Cost: FREE

 

Free parking available. Photo ID required.

 

For more information: nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil or (202) 782-2673

 

http://www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum

NY Times on insurance falling behind medical technology

Insurers Fight Speech-Impairment Remedy
By ASHLEE VANCE
Published: September 15, 2009
Devices like iPhones and netbook PCs that can help the speech-impaired are not covered by Medicare or insurers.

Flickr picture statistics

Since the Flickr site is blocked at work, we've been spending less time updating it - it's no longer a useful tool for showing researchers a picture we're trying to describe over the telephone for example. But our current statistics are 1,605 items / 870,097 views. I put up a new Korean War-era prosthetic photo tonight.

Ruminations on the latest issue of museum & society

This rolled in recently:

 

 

Hello, Subscribers to museum & society ,

 

The latest issue of museum & society is now available online at: www.le.ac.uk/ms/museumsociety.html.

 

contents

 

‘Journey without maps’: unsettling curatorship in cross-cultural contexts

Lisa Chandler

 

Translations: experiments in dialogic representation of cultural diversity in three museum sound installations

Mary Hutchison and Lea Collins

 

Objects, subjects, bits and bytes: learning from the digital collections of the National Museums

Siân Bayne, Jen Ross and Zoe Williamson

 

Review Article

 

Simon J. Knell, Suzanne MacLeod and Sheila Watson (eds),

Museum Revolutions: How Museums Change and are Changed

Kylie Message

 

 

Best wishes,

 

Jim Roberts

Production Editor

museum & society

 

******************************
Jim Roberts Hon FMA
Webmaster
University of Leicester
School of Museum Studies

 

http://www.le.ac.uk/museumstudies

 

The third article is of interest to me. One point that I think wasn’t emphasized enough is that non-art museums can only put about 1%, in a best case scenario, of their collections on display. Therefore the online museum gives people an opportunity to access objects that no one else, including the curators, are using or paying attention to. In our scanning project, we have over 700,000 images created. Some of them are books, but the great majority are photographs that nobody had looked at since they were taken and the only record of them had been an index card in a nondescript building in Washington, DC. Someday soon, these will be available to anyone in the world who has Internet access. To me, that’s a big change in the status quo.

 

Interesting public health article on social media and hapiness

This has some very interesting ideas in it - I think I believe they're correct. Any opinions?

Is Happiness Catching?
By CLIVE THOMPSON
Published: September 13, 2009
Nicholas Christakis and James Fowler say your friends — and even your friends’ friends — can make you quit smoking, eat too much or get happy. A look inside the emerging science of social contagion.

Excellent water public health article in NY Times

The Times has an excellent investigative report on the public health issue of clean water in today's paper -

Toxic Waters
Clean Water Laws Are Neglected, at a Cost in Human Suffering
By CHARLES DUHIGG
Published: September 13, 2009
In the past five years, companies and workplaces have violated pollution laws more than 500,000 times. But most polluters have escaped punishment.

Today's Post has an editorial on Walter Reed

The New Walter Reed: Less Than 'World Class'?
By Stephen Schimpff
Sunday, September 13, 2009

Teddy Bear Clinic on Saturday

Teddy Bear Clinic to take place Saturday, September 12

On Saturday, September 12 from 1-3 p.m., the National Museum of Health and Medicine will its first Teddy Bear Clinic. It should be a lot of fun!

 

We’re asking kids in PreK-3 to 2^nd grade to bring their favorite stuffed animals to be checked out by the experts. First they’ll visit a craft station where they’ll make doctor’s headbands, nurse’s hats, and doctor’s bags. Then, they’ll visit several stations where their stuffed animal’s vitals and teeth will be checked, shots will be administered, and healthy eating and exercising habits will be discussed.  (Hopefully the kids will learn a few things, too!)  At the end of the program, their friend will be issued a clean bill of health certificate.

 

This will be the last in a series of programs that were designed to complement the exhibition entitled “David Macaulay Presents: The Way We Work.” The exhibit closes on September 20, so stop by soon if you haven’t had a chance to see it.

 

The Public Programs staff would like to thank Aileen Mavity, one of the museum’s summer interns, for her help in designing this program!

 

On a couple of nondescript stereographs

Here's a couple of stereographs I bought over the weekend, due to their rough relationship to the Museum:


The 'Dutch Courtship' was probably intended to be humorous.


This crowd scene is meaningless now without its caption.

So, why did I buy these?




Both are by William H. Rau.

So?

He was William Bell's son-in-law. Bell was the Museum's best photographer of the 19th century who took photographed many of the Civil War soldiers at the Museum. He was the subject of a small exhibit at the American Art museum last year.

We've been blogged

A couple of our flu photos have shown up on the blog e-l-i-s-e. When I saw the title of yesterday's post - GRIPPE ESPAGNOLE 1918 1919 - SPANISH FLU - INFLUENZA - I had I feeling I'd see something from our collection. She used our ever-popular NCP 1603 and Reeve 14682.

Museum to Participate in Cultural Tourism DC's Fall WalkingTown DC

Museum to Participate in Cultural Tourism DC’s Fall WalkingTown DC

 

Below is the listing from Cultural Tourism’s website (www.WalkingTownDC.org) for the walking tour that the Museum will take part in on September 19. If you’d like to join in, make your reservation soon because we can only accommodate 30 participants. Last spring, we participated in WalkingTown for the first time with rave reviews.  This year, John Pierce, Walter Reed Society historian, will lead the walking tour of the Walter Reed campus—he plans to take the group into the lobby of Building 1 to share the history of that beautiful structure. He will end his portion of the tour at the Museum, where Andi Sacks, Museum Docent Extraordinaire, will provide an introduction to the exhibtions and walk around with the group to describe highlights.

 

Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Museum of Health and Medicine
Saturday, September 19
9 - 11 am
Meet at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Building 1 (enter Georgia Avenue/Elder Street gate)
Nearest Metrorail/Metrobus: Takoma Park Metro station (Red line), 70 Metrobus
End at National Museum of Health and Medicine, Building 54
Reservations required: Online
Explore the 100-year history of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and learn how one man’s dream led to one of today’s leading medical facilities. Landmarks include the original US Army General hospital, where Eisenhower and General of the Armies John J. Pershing spent their final days, the new hospital complex, the formal Rose Garden, the Memorial Chapel, the Walter Reed Memorial, and the spot President Lincoln was nearly shot during the Battle of Fort Stevens. Then tour the National Museum of Health and Medicine to learn about the history of military medicine, including a special exhibit about the medical care given to President Lincoln during his last hours. Tour is just over one mile long. Led by John Pierce, a retired Army physician and historian of the Walter Reed Society and Andi Sacks, a National Museum of Health and Medicine Docent.
Note: Photo ID required.

 

Development of the Historical Archives

The Registry of Noteworthy Research in Pathology disgorged another treasure this morning. We have a copy of the AFIP Letter, this particular issue from April 1969, which has a feature on the "Old Red Brick" closing. The Old Red Brick was the museum's home on The Mall, when the Museum was the parent organization and the AFIP the child. This article notes we vacated it January 7, 1969 and everything was put in storage. We knew that. What's interesting here is that an "extremely active" program in the museum during the prior year was the development of the Historical Archives. At the time of this article, the archives had amassed a collection of more than 1169 items. I think I have that number of items sitting on my desk right now, a tiny little drop in the now vast bucket of the archives.

Bring your kids! Teddy Bear Clinic at NMHM, Saturday, 9/12, 1:00 p.m.

“Teddy Bear Clinic”

 

When: Saturday, September 12, 2009 (1:00-3:00 p.m.)

 

Where: National Museum of Health and Medicine

 

What: Bring your favorite stuffed friend and explore the Teddy Bear Clinic with activities and crafts designed to highlight the body, nutrition, physical fitness, and healthy habits.

 

Recommended for grades PreK-2.

 

Cost: FREE!

 

Information: nmhminfo@afip.osd.mil or (202) 782-2673

 

www.nmhm.washingtondc.museum

2 pictures of Sickles

One of our main Civil War attractions is General Sickle’s legbones, which he sent into the Museum. I found two pictures of him on the web today, at New Jersey’s Archives website at http://www.state.nj.us/state/darm/links/guides/sdea4010images7.html . They’re at the bottom of this page.

Swine flu

Another cool find from the Registry of Noteworthy Research in Pathology - I just opened the Richard E. Shope folder which contains his original, handwritten research records documenting the first isolation of swine influenza. In an article from the Medical Tribune of June 17, 1963, Dr. Shope "described the appearance of a new respiratory disease among swine in the Midwestern states, in the autumn of 1918. Since there existed at that time a widespread outbreak of human pandemic influenza, and since the disease in swine, both clinically and at autopsy, resembled the human disease, it was named swine influenza." He said that swine flu was suspected to be as a result from an infection from humans, but because no virus from the human disease was yet available, it was impossible to make the connection.

But!! When the human influenza virus was discovered in 1933, it was found to be closely related to the swine virus, which supported the notion that swine flu originated in humans. So why did swine flu continue to appear once human flu more or less disappeared, at least as a pandemic, in about 1920? Dr. Shope maintained that the virus found a way to perpetuate itself in the hog population, which was ultimately proven when the swine lungworm, a nematode parasitic in the respiratory tract, was discovered. It serves as a reservoir and intermediate host, which is why the flu sticks around. If not for this reservoir, swine flu would have subsided about the same time as the human influenza virus.

Still with me? The article in the Medical Tribune, where I got all this information, is illustrated with a photo of Dr. Shope receiving the Ricketts Award from the son of Howard Taylor Ricketts, the doctor I wrote about yesterday, and for whom the award was named.

Rickettsial spotted fever

As part of the work I'm doing on processing the Registry of Noteworthy Research in Pathology collection, I've just come across a little bit of material on Howard Taylor Ricketts. This is the man who discovered the bacterium that causes Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (called rickettsia) and epidemic typhus. We have a copy of a letter he wrote to his wife, which is the first mention of his having seen the micro-organism of typhus, nine days after his arrival in Mexico City. The letter was dated December 20, 1909.

"I kept at the microscope this afternoon because I felt pretty sure that I was finding some micro-organisms in the blood taken from the spots of the patients. I think I am not mistaken. They resemble the spotted fever bacilli somewhat, but stain poorly. I hope within a day or two to feel pretty sure one way or another. They are so hard to recognize that I doubt whether any one else here would see them. But I have so strongly suspected a relationship between spotted fever and typhus that I was looking for that very thing. Don't get excited over it, for it may be some accidental affair. However, I shall push it as rapidly as I can, and as soon as possible shall begin a paper so that there would be little delay in publication..."

Think of the excitement he had to have been holding in check, and hoping he wasn't seeing something that wasn't there.

Within six months he died from typhus, at the age of 39.

Commercialism, merchandising and the role of a museum

This is an interesting article - Kennicott's got a good perspective on the issue. As someone who's interested in popular culture, I personally feel that more could be done. He cites the National Portrait Gallery as a good example of an institution that let time decide some issues... however, they're way behind in collecting movie posters as a result, even though they were some of the most evocative images of artists of the 20th century. Read the article and let us know what you think in the comments.

Artifact or Artifice?
If Simon, Randy and Paula's Desk Sits in the Smithsonian, Is the Institution Performing Its Proper Role in Chronicling Our Culture?
By Philip Kennicott
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 30, 2009

NY Times op-ed on Sigmund Freud's visit to the US

Here's an interesting bit on the history of medicine...

Freud’s Adirondack Vacation
By LEON HOFFMAN
Published: August 29, 2009
How an invitation from a prominent American scientist 100 years ago gave psychoanalysis its start in the United States.

PR: Eä - Journal of Medical Humanities & Social Studies of Science and Technology

This email came through the Caduceus history of medicine list today - I took a very quick look at the TOC for the first issue and it looks like they've got a good selection on South American history especially Argentina.

 Dear friends,

It is our great pleasure to inform you about the publication of Vol. 1 Nº 1 of Eä – Journal of Medical Humanities & Social Studies of Science and Technology (ISSN 1852-4680), a periodical electronic journal in an interactive format publishing papers on Medical Humanities and Social Studies of Science and Technology. The journal is available at the URL www.ea-journal.com.

The journal aims to be in the junction between academic excellence and the development of the new technologies of information and social networks. The journal gathers a prestigious editorial committee, is peer reviewed by international referees and meets the requirements of periodical publications indexes. Eä publishes three issues a year (April, August, and December). It is presented in Spanish and English, and accepts texts in Spanish, English, Portuguese and French, reaching global impact. This publication has been created under the Web 2.0 paradigm, with a dynamic layout that promotes user-reader's interaction between them and with the website.

We invite you to go through the contents of this first issue and we wait for your comments and suggestions in order to improve this journal. Next deadline for submitting papers to be published in Vol. 1 Nº 2 (December 2009) will be October 1st. We invite you to help us by spreading this initiative among your colleagues, and we also invite you to submit papers for publication for our next issue. You may find information for authors in the following link: http://www.ea-journal.com/en/information-for-authors or you can send us an e-mail to submit@ea-journal.com.



Yours sincerely,



Jaime Elías Bortz, Academic Director

Gabriela Mijal Bortz, Editorial Director

Bert Hansen's book on mass media images reviewed in today's Times

This article -

 

When a Doctor Is More, and Less, Than a Healer

By ABIGAIL ZUGER, M.D.

August 25, 2009

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/25/health/25book.html

 

Reviews Bert’s new book -

 

PICTURING MEDICAL PROGRESS FROM PASTEUR TO POLIO

A History of Mass Media Images and Popular Attitudes in America. By Bert Hansen. Rutgers University Press. 348 pages. $37.95.

 

-which I thought was excellent. We have a copy in the Museum.