Wired discovers the Museum's online photographs

See "Rare Trove of Army Medical Photos Heads to Flickr," By Alexis Madrigal, Wired.com's Science blog March 17, 2009 and "Bringing Hidden World War II Photos to the Masses," By Betsy Mason, 03.17.09.

I think I come off as a bit strident there, but we are creating a massive new resource and need to make it available in new ways. Most of these photographs were never described in any database (although there is a set of index cards that fills a wall) and we're discovering and seeing them for the first time too. There are so many pictures that no one of us is seeing all of them - the contractor's scanning team working on this has 7 people just getting the pictures catalogued to be scanned. And there's at least 2000 boxes left to go.

Remember that these photos are in the public domain so you can repurpose them for your own use - let us know if you come up with something particularly interesting.

By the way, at 10 pm, we're at 64,787 views for the Flickr account (formerly Otis Archives1) that Kathleen paid for and then collapsed all 4 pre-existing accounts into (and the old Otis Archives 2 has 32,778; 3 has 23,897; and 4 half-full with only 104 pictures has 2,206). That's 123,668 views since we started on September 22 2006.
(By 10:23, we're up to 65,505 views on the main account - enjoy!)

Duncan Winter artwork

Those wild young men in Anatomical Collections were looking for illustrations for their annual course, and I recalled that AFIP artist Duncan Winter had done some nice illustrations of bones that we had. Kathleen scanned and mounted some on Flickr.

Dry Storerooms? We got Wet too

I just finished reading Dry Storeroom No. 1 by Richard Fortey, about the British Natural History Museum. It’s an admittedly idiosyncratic account of one man’s time there in the 2nd half of the 20th century and his colleagues and the collections they care for. He gives a good idea of what it’s like to work in a museum, especially one like the medical museum with one foot in a the natural history field and one foot in the history field.

Prosthetics of a Different Color

This one's thanks to Susan Lomuto at Daily Art Muse, who writes, "Aimee Mullins is an accomplished athlete, a motivational speaker, an actress and a model. Aimee Mullins is also a double amputee who wears prosthetic legs the way some women wear a new pair of expensive shoes, a drop-dead piece of jewelry or the latest pair of body-hugging designer jeans: with attitude; exuding confidence and leaving you wanting more. This is a TED talk you should not miss. Watch and listen as Mullins talks the talk AND walks the walk (in 4 inch heels!) regarding the myth of being dis-abled, the truth of being super-abled, why individual shifts in consciousness work and a new definition for wearable art. Sheer, pure inspiration.

More about Aimee Mullins here and here."

Walter Reed hospital 1950s pictures on our Flickr site

Never let it be said that we don't listen to our readers - Kathleen's uploaded a bunch of 1950s Walter Reed hospital pictures in response to a comment made yesterday.

My friend Joe Levin has died

For many years, Jeanne Levin was the tour and volunteer coordinator of the Museum, shepherding various groups around for various reasons. I met Jeanne when I was a callow student intern, long before I became the wizened archivist. I used to see her husband Joe at events and functions, and eventually became friends with him despite our age difference. We'd meet for lunch once in a while and I did an oral history with him in late 2005 about his World War II service. After earning a law degree and being drafted, Joe was with the 17th Bomber Group in North Africa, Italy and France. He was the adjutant of the 34th Bomb Squadron of that Group and ran the Group's newspaper. Here's a couple of photographs from him, one of him at the beginning of the war and one he took at the end as France is being liberated. Joe and I kept planning on getting the oral history down to the Library of Congress' Veterans History Project, but never got around to it. I'll make sure that the recording and copies of his photographs do get down there though. The family's death notice from the Post follows. Requiescat in pace, Joe, January 24, 1919-March 9, 2009.




On Monday, March 9, 2009, JOSEPH LEVIN of Bethesda, MD. Beloved husband of Jeanne Levin; devoted father of Michael (Christine Ims) Levin and Cynthia Levin; dear brother of Samuel Levin and the late Sara Zash. Also survived by many loving nieces, nephews and friends. Funeral services will be held on Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 10:30 a.m. at Congregation Beth El of Montgomery County, 8215 Old Georgetown Rd., Bethesda, MD. Interment following at King David Memorial Garden, Falls Church, VA. Shiva will be observed at the late residence on Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Memorial contributions may be made to Hadassah, 1220 East-West Highway, Suite 120, Silver Spring, MD 20910 or to the Jewish Social Service Agency Hospice, 6123 Montrose Rd., Rockville, MD 20852. Arrangements entrusted to TORCHINSKY HEBREW FUNERAL HOME, 202-541-1001 (endorsed by the Rabbinical Council of Washington).

Published in The Washington Post on 3/11/2009

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....
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