Chest-compression-only CPR

Wired.com, one of my favorite news sources, reported a couple of weeks ago about the American Heart Association giving the OK for chest compressions only, in unexpected collapse of adults. The AHA says skip the mouth-to-mouth, which most people are unwilling to do anyway because of the "yuck factor;" quickly call 911 and give 100 compressions a minute until the paramedics arrive.

The more you know, the more you know

Mike and I were talking today about just what our digitization project has accomplished. This was in response to a meeting we'd attended where it was brought up that many researchers today think if something's not on the Internet, it doesn't exist and/or it doesn't matter (it must not be significant if it's not worth digitizing). For those of you reading this blog, I can imagine you either shaking or nodding your head - you've heard this before or just can't believe people think that way. But I heard it in library school so it must be so.

Anyway, this segued into talking about the first collection we scanned as a part of this project, in 2005 - the MAMAS collection. That stands for Museum and Medical Arts Services. I blogged briefly about MAMAS way back in this blog's infancy but, in short, MAMAS photographers were dispatched to the European and Pacific theaters during World War 2 to document the medical treatment the troops were getting. We scanned a dozen or so boxes of photos and realized we had very little from Europe. Didn't know where they were but they weren't in this batch of boxes.

Fast forward to late 2007. Over the years the archives has rescued countless documents that were being discarded for whatever reason. We've begun to dig through them and in the sort we realized that what we had were several hundred MAMAS photos from Europe. Happy day, and exciting. They're now in the process of being cataloged and will be scanned some time this year.

And so, this is the source of this post's title. If we hadn't scanned the first, "known" batch of MAMAS, we would never have "known" that these several hundred (and most likely will top 1000) photos were also part of that collection.

Indiana Medical History Museum now on Flickr

Check out all the photos from the Indiana Medical History Museum. There's some cool stuff here.

US war casualty statistics...

...can be hard to come by, so this site that Steven Solomon passed along is interesting.

Mark Your Calendar--National Hairball Awareness Day

It's April 27, if it's not already on your calendar. Make plans now for your salute to the bezoar--the museum is. We will host a special exhibition of hairballs. One of our human hairballs is already on display in our Human Body exhibit. To celebrate NHD, we'll display some of our veterinary specimens--they are impressive. Cats get hairballs and so do humans (trichobezoars). Ruminant animals do, too (cows, llamas, goats, etc.). They once were thought to be a universal antidote to any poison. Turns out that they just might work on arsenic. Here's a pic of one our human hairballs that is currently on display. It was surgically removed from a 12 year-old girl who had been eating her hair for 6 years.

The Army Reads Blogs - do they do it at work?

Wired.com reports that the Army reads blogs just to make sure that what's being said about it and its goings-on is the truth. Do they have to do it on their own time, from home? We can't read what bloggers are saying about our museum from our Army computers, and because of that have to print out what's being said about it from our own computers at home. I guess there are rules and there are rules.

Post on changes for Walter Reed soldiers

To read about some of the changes about patient care at the hospital, see "The Young Lions of Able Troop: To the Cadre on the Front Lines Of Improving Care at Walter Reed, The Challenge Can Rival Combat," By Steve Vogel, Washington Post Staff Writer, Thursday, April 10, 2008; B01.

AFIP's educational offerings

Dr. Mullick, director of the Pathology Institute, sent out this email today -

Congratulations to the Department of Medical Education and particularly to Mr. Carlos Moran, MS, Department Chair, for a most impressive achievement. The Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) accredited the Institute's continuing medical education program for six years. In addition, the ACCME awarded five commendations, further underscoring the exemplary nature of the AFIP education program. It is also interesting to note that only 8% of the many hundreds of ACCME accredited providers nationwide receive a six year accreditation, and even fewer do so with more than four commendations. This is truly and outstanding achievement and I would like to personally thank Mr. Moran and the Department staff whose dedicated efforts continue to strengthen the educational activities of the AFIP.

For many years the AFIP's conducted courses - the Museum's offered paleopathology, forensic anthropology and helped out in others. The radiology course is attended by most radiologists in the US I believe.

Longtime Archives research Beth Linker lectures on World War 1 in NYC

Medicine in Wartime

War and medicine share an ancient and intimate relationship, and the history of military medicine is a lively meeting-place for scholars from many fields. This year, the New York Academy of Medicine's Section on the History of Medicine and Public Health is dedicating four public lectures to the topic of medicine in wartime - specifically, the interplay between war, medicine and society. Our series explores the poisonous ideologies that fester into wars and the development and testing of deadly new weapons to fight them; the social and infrastructural stresses and fractures war brings; and the challenges of helping war's maimed and damaged soldiers find peaceful occupations when the fighting is over.

On April 24, Beth Linker will present the third lecture in the mini-series:

Medicine in Wartime III
Limb Lab: Getting Amputee Soldiers Back to Work in World War I America Beth Linker, PhD, University of Pennsylvania Sponsored by the New York Academy Section on the History of Medicine and Public Health

Reception at 5:30 p.m.; Lecture at 6:00 p.m.

Looking across the Atlantic in the spring of 1917 at the ravages of the Great War, the U.S. Council of National Defense prepared for the worst, envisioning its own country re-"arming" hundreds of thousands of limbless American soldiers. The Council thus ordered the Army Surgeon General's Office to create a "Limb Laboratory" where orthopedic surgeons would standardize and construct affordable prosthetic arms and legs for returning disabled veterans. The choices that Limb Lab orthopedists made concerning which type of artificial limbs best suited America's maimed veterans stemmed not only from medical theory and practice, but also from deep-seated political, cultural, and economic concerns shared by many other social progressives at the time. Defining masculinity as the ability to earn wages, orthopedists believed that artificial limbs were necessary to make disabled soldiers whole again, bringing them into their rightful place as "industrial citizens." With this aim in mind, the Limb Lab emphasized the utility of artificial limbs, claiming that amputee men should have "tool-like" appendages rather than anatomical replicas in order to be competitive with able-bodied men in the job market.

Beth Linker, PhD, is an assistant professor in the Department of History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Her teaching interests include disability, American health policy, bioethics, public health, gender and health, and the history and sociology of medicalization.

This event is free and open to the public. For more information about NYAM programs in the history of medicine, click here , write history@nyam.org , or call Chris Warren at 212.822.7314.

Save the Date!

Thursday, May 8, 2008, 6:00 PM (with reception at 5:30) Susan Smith, The Annual Lilianna Sauter Lecture, Medicine in Wartime, Part IV: "Human Experimentation with Mustard Gas in World War II"

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This event is free and open to the public. To register, visit http://www.nyam.org/events.

For more information about NYAM programs in the history of medicine, visit our website at http://www.nyam.org/histmed, write history@nyam.org, or call 212.822.7310.

Historical programs at NYAM are supported by the Friends of the Rare Book Room. Please join the Friends! Download a membership form at http://www.nyam.org/initiatives/docs/FRBR_Renewal.pdf.


THE NEW YORK ACADEMY OF MEDICINE 1216 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10029

Christian Warren, Ph.D.
Historical Collections
New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10029
Phone: 212-822-7314
Fax: 212-423-0273
email: cwarren@nyam.org

Change in mammogram technology causes change in diagnosis

Read this article to see how a change in technology is driving changes in diagnosis -

In Shift to Digital, More Repeat Mammograms
By DENISE GRADY
New York Times April 10, 2008
As doctors learn to interpret digital mammograms, they are more likely to request second tests.

Kidney transplantations

The first kidney transplant took place not quite sixty years ago in 1950, but became more common after anti-rejection drugs appeared in 1964. Yesterday, doctors at Johns Hopkins transplanted six at one time, into five needy people. Historians of medicine (and all types actually) caution against viewing history as a simplistic march of progress, but sometimes progress is progress, no?

New forensic paper based on Civil War specimens

Healing following Cranial Trauma by Lenore Barbian and Paul Sledzik (one of our bloggers) has appeared in the Journal of Forensic Sciences March 2008 issue. The two former curators of the Museum's anatomical section examined 127 Civil War soldier's skulls for evidence of healing after their wounding. The issue is only available online to subscribers.

Civil war soldiers' bodies secretly exhumed

This story about exhuming Civil War-era remains was making the rounds today, and since we're a Museum that features soldiers' remains from the war on display and in the collection, I thought linking to the story was worthwhile.

From USA Today:

"Working in secret, federal archaeologists have dug up the remains of dozens of soldiers and children near a Civil War-era fort after an informant tipped them off about widespread grave-looting."

Imaging technology invention

This is neat, if it works out - "Eyedrops that Probe the Brain: Gene probes deployed in eyedrops show brain damage in MRIs of mice."
by Anna Davison, Friday, April 04, 2008

Road Trip, Anyone? Anyone?

From today's Washington Post:

"Corpus takes visitors inside a large-scale human body with interactive, multi-sensory exhibits that reveal how it operates. Visitors enter the museum through the knee, then travel through eight exhibit spaces, heading up toward the brain. On the way, they can watch a 3-D film on fertilization, bounce on a rubber tongue while they follow a sandwich being digested and throw beanbags against a video screen to destroy bacteria."

They're talking about Corpus, a museum in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. And I would be adding this to my itinerary, for sure, if I were visiting the EU anytime soon. I would expect that others in the Museum are familiar with this cousin (?) of ours from abroad. Maybe they might elaborate further in comments.

Cell-sorting tech

Here's a story about recent biomedical history - "From the World of Modern Cell Science, A Long and Sorted Coming-of-Age Story, by David Brown, Washington Post Staff Writer, Monday, April 7, 2008; A06. For years, in our AIDS exhibit, we had displayed a Fluorescent Activated Cell Sorter on loan from the Smithsonian. I imagine it's the same piece mentioned in this article. In this online discussion, "Science and Medicine: Cell Technology," by David Brown and J. Paul Robinson, Washington Post Staff Writer and Professor, Purdue University, Tuesday, April 8, 2008; 11:00 AM, one can find a comment from the Medical Sciences curator Ray Kondratas who led the division at the Museum of American History for many years.

Adler Museum of Medicine in South Africa

Last week, we received the new issue of the Adler Museum of Medicine's Bulletin, which has articles on the Museum and South African medical history. It's a nice glossy publication and you can subscribe to it from their website. We send them our publication, Flesh and Bones, in exchange - it's a newsletter, not a journal, but comes out slightly more often.

the week on flickr - Korean war body armor, Civil War and mosquitoes

April 4th:


Emergency encephalitis laboratory. Jefferson Barracks, Missouri. (Major Cornell, Simmons and Sergeant Rhodes.) [The volunteer has put his arm in a screened cage to be bitten by mosquitoes. Scene. Laboratories. Military camps.]


Armored Vest Number 329 worn by Private 1st Class Willie Tufts, US 52077771, with bullet holes circled and marked 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Company E, 7th Regiment. Front view. 04/26/1952. [Korean War]


Captain Robert Bessey, Jr. (Cincinnati, OH), Infantry member of the Body Armor Team I, Company 15, Infantry Regiment, 30 Division, points to fragment hole in vest worn by Private Edward Schallack (4905 N. 36 St., Milwaukee, WI) who wore the vest on patrol. 04/24/1952. [Korean War]


Private 1st Class Leo Curran, Jr., 46 1/2 Allen Street, Hudson, NY. E Company, 7th Regiment, 3rd Division. Was hit in back with fragment while wearing body armor vest on patrol. No penetration. 04/18/1952. [Korean War]

April 1st:


"Gunshot wound of hip." Private William W. Wrightman, Co. L, 2nd New York Heavy Artillery. Wounded at Petersburg, VA on March 31, 1865. Treated by Reed Bontecou at Harewood Hospital.[Civil War]

Unexpected consequences in universal health care

Apparently there aren't enough doctors doing primary care in Massachusetts to take care of all the newly-insured. This has got to be one of the stupider reasons for not being able to get a physical this year, but it probably was unpredictable. See the article for the details.

In Massachusetts, Universal Coverage Strains Care
By KEVIN SACK
New York Times April 5, 2008
An influx of newly insured patients is widening the gap between the supply of primary care physicians and the demand for their services.

Brain Awareness Week mascot; OR, you can go home again if you squint

Former museum graphics guy Bill Discher wrote in to point out that the Brain Awareness Week mascot, seen here...


didn't quite look the way Bill remembered leaving him when he moved on last fall...



...so Bill reworked him again for this look...



..and since he cared enough to do this and write in, you can all see that Museums design by committee at times.